Thread: Thai language CD/book combi for absolute beginners?

Can anyone recommend a self-study CD/book set, preferably available from SE-EDs or Asia Books, please?

many to choose from; this one was recommended to me by the school I took lessons at


Thai for Beginners by Benjawan Poomsan Becker

this site lists it in its 10 of the best books to Learn Thai language

Cheers, both!

The best place for information on this stuff is Women Learning Thai… and some men too ;-) - they have reviews of all the books, schools, websites, etc.

Or try YouTube

Given the poor quality of phonetic transliteration, I would think that the only way to be able to pronounce new vocabulary correctly would be to read it from thai, so what are your reasons for saying that being able to read thai will not help with your spoken thai?

Now I will say one thing, knowing how to read Thai and being able to speak Thai clearly are horses of a different color. Reading Thai well ain't gonna improve your pronunciation in spoken Thai all that much.

Not true. There are phonemes in Thai which the Roman alphabet can't easily distinguish between or which are close but different in English and Thai so if you're stuck with Roman transliterations, you're almost certainly going to have worse pronunciation than a beginner who struggles with the Thai alphabet. And since all the tone rules are encoded in the Thai orthographic system, your alternative to learning to read and then simply knowing the tone of a word is just to learn all the tones individually. Learning to read in Thai is a minor, easily surmountable challenge which will immediately have benefits, though how large those benefits will be will probably vary somewhat according to your learning style.

Originally Posted by Zooheekock

The best place for information on this stuff is Women Learning Thai… and some men too ;-) - they have reviews of all the books, schools, websites, etc.

A supplement site for self study, will be the very deep thai-language.com

Quite extensive with an active forum for advice/info.

Sorry this is long, hope you will find marginal value. Learning this language is a “pet project” of mine, call it a “hobby”…

Phonemic transcription or what is often called "transliteration" but what I call "karaoke" (using one language's characters and additional symbols to represent sounds in another language) can be fraught with peril, however it is the way MANY second languages are taught to non-native learners. Heck even Thais learn English by reading the Thai language “karaoke” under the words. There’re hundreds and hundreds of books in every bookstore which teach English to Thais this way. It’s also one of the reasons Thais have so much trouble pronouncing English correctly. They learned the word from reading the Thai karaoke and when it’s written in Thai it hasta follow Thai tone rules, NOT English.

About the best "karaoke" system out there is Benjawan's "Paiboon Plus". This is the latest incantation and once you know it, you can pretty much get the vowel length and intonation with a high degree of accuracy. It is being used in more and more Thai language schools in Bangkok, mostly because if a school uses that version they can easily use Benjawan’s vast catalog of material as supplemental teaching tools. Paiboon Plus is certainly "close enough for government work" and will get you speaking something which resembles Thai enough that native speakers will understand you and reply in kind.

I know foreigners who've gone thru every level of a "Union based" Thai language method and still can't read character one of Thai. Their Thai is easily understandable, clearly enunciated, well-structured and yet they learned totally by "karaoke".

Face it you ain't ever gonna be confused for a native speaker of Thai by ANYONE here ever, no matter how much the Thais lavish on the praise of your Thai language ability, it just ain't gonna happen. I mean Thais can tell within a few sentences of listening to another Thai speak Bangkok Thai where it was the speaker grew up; often right down to the Amphur in the Province. I mean they're that good at accent identification.

The tones rules and the quirky spelling of Thai words which are exceptions to the rules were beaten into the children's heads in school a word at a time. A Thai probably can't tell you the tone of a word or a syllable in the word by looking at it written down because they didn't learn words that way, they learned them by rote.

Thai language as it is today is a total hodge-podge of ancient Thai, Cambodian (which the Thais had to learn because that's who happened to be governing what later became Thailand when the Thais wandered down here way back when) Pali, Sanskrit, some Chinese and now about a gazillion English loan words. That's the reason Thai has 6 characters which make a "T" sound (ฐ, ฑ, ฒ, ถ, ท, ธ), 5 characters which make a "K" sound (ข, ฃ, ค, ฅ, ฆ), 4 characters which make an "S" sound (ซ, ศ, ษ, ส) and so on. It is to show "word origin" because there're words from so many different languages in Thai as it is today.

I taught myself to read Thai before I could even speak "2-word-tourist-thai", or "phrozen-phrasez". Learning to read Thai is nothing more than memorizing groups of characters (coincidentally called words). I mean memorizing TONZ and TONZ of them. No one reads ANY language character by character, you read by recognizing groups of characters and having that tied to a meaning in your head.

I knew the meaning of the six common "Cow-words" in Thai by sight before I could say them with any reasonably correct vowel length or intonation. It was because I memorized the differences between them when I saw them written down and tied those characters to a meaning in my head.

Being able to read Thai ain't gonna tell you how to pronounce กรุงเทพมหานคร which actually has 6 syllables. Nor is it likely you're gonna be any better at pronouncing สุวรรณภูมิ especially if you look at the horrific "government approved" version of transliteration; Suvarnabhumi. You'd never guess it as Su-wan-a-phum. (Heck the Thai language doesn't even have a character for "V" in it!! The closest character they got is a "W"!!)

I'm only relatiing my personal experience that being able to read and comprehend Thai doesn't help you speak Thai all that much clearer.

I freely admit my "opinions" about acquiring the Thai language may run counter to yours. That's fine by me, and you should do whatever works for you. After all I'm just a dumb country boy from the U-S-of-A; what I ain't is a cunning linguist or a teacher.

Oh and in case you were wondering what the six common "Cow-words" are;
เขา - the 3 person singular pronoun for he, she, him, her, they; animal horn; mountain
เข่า - knee
เข้า - enter
ขาว - white
ข่าว - news
ข้าว - rice

I agree the website Thai-language dot com is an excellent resource. Make sure you go to “site settings” because you can select from a variety of “karaoke” styles, select to “hide the transcription” to hone your pronunciation, and also select “allow racy and gay content” which gives you way more contemporary slangy words. Thai2English is another one which is pretty good. A site used a LOT by Thais is Longdo dot com.


I always tell people I learned this language mostly because I realized that there are 65+ million Thais here who seem to speak and understand Thai just fine. It came to me that it's almost a statistical impossibility that all 65+ million are smarter than I am. Sure some are, but not every last one of 'em. I know it is a skewed motivation to learn a language, but it sounds better than sayin' I had to learn Thai because these people pretty much suck at English...

Phonemic transcription or what is often called "transliteration" but what I call "karaoke" (using one language's characters and additional symbols to represent sounds in another language) can be fraught with peril, however it is the way MANY second languages are taught to non-native learners. Heck even Thais learn English by reading the Thai language “karaoke” under the words. There’re hundreds and hundreds of books in every bookstore which teach English to Thais this way. It’s also one of the reasons Thais have so much trouble pronouncing English correctly. They learned the word from reading the Thai karaoke and when it’s written in Thai it hasta follow Thai tone rules, NOT English.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make but you're agreeing with the previous posts saying learners should learn the alphabet.

Being able to read Thai ain't gonna tell you how to pronounce กรุงเทพมหานคร which actually has 6 syllables.

That's not true. กรุง and เทพ are straightforward. If you read Thai, you'll recognize มหา as a prefix and know what it means but even if you don't already know it, you'll know that there must be a missing vowel, which according to the rules of Thai is going to make it มะ-หา. Likewise, with นคร. When you get these three-consonant words, the first vowel is อะ and the second is ออ and ร as a final consonant becomes น so you have นะ-คอน: กรุง-เทบ-มะ-หา-นะ-คอน If you can read Thai, you can read it perfectly and understand it.

Of course there will be exceptions but they're not things the beginner is going to have to worry too much about and they can be learnt one by one. And you wouldn't say to a Thai-learner of English that learning the Roman alphabet wouldn't help his or her pronunciation because of the danger of pronouncing 'though' as 'thuff' (as in 'rough').

I like watching that Biggs chap on MCOT. When I hear and see him speaking the Thai word as written it all becomes clear and I get all enthused but alas his tuition is bite sized and all too short.

I wonder how much he would charge for personal tution. My problem in trying to speak Thai is grappling with the tones and trying to replicate the way the Thai speak. He has a big gob and seeing how he is actually forming the syllables is a great aid.

Actually the Andrew Biggs Academy (which really specializes in teaching Thais English) also has a teach foreigners Thai class too.

I think (although I'm not sure) I reviewed them briefly before. I did go to the school and look at the books, which were really well put together and written by a Thai who specializes in teaching Thai to non-native speakers.

If I remember correctly they don't offer group classes but do teach 1 on 1 private lessons.

That series Andrew has called "Tongue Thai'd" is a good thing to watch. Here's his website link with 25 episodes on it ;
Andrew Biggs Academy Tongue Thai'd

and here's a Women Learn Thai You Tube link with 40 episodes;
WLT Tongue Thai'd Andrew


There are TONZ of good learning Thai resources on You Tube if you look around.

I’m still of the mind that as a beginner you don't need to frontload the huge amount of time it takes learning to read Thai to be able to speak understandable Thai, but that's just me I guess...

Good luck however you go about learning the language...

Frontload my arse.

With the becker book, I learnt to read doing a couple of hours a day for two or three weeks.

Slowly but surely over the next few months by reading road signs, shop fronts and labels on products it all came together.

A comment on the Becker karaoke:

It was said above that Paiboon karaoke is among the best (of the easy ones) around.
Although it is not fully comprehensive its pretty good.

I have tried a number of Thai learner books. Nowadays before buying a book
I check the karaoke the book uses. If it ain't Paiboon karaoke, I don't buy the book.

I find the Paiboon karaoke very easy to learn, easy to use for my own karaoke
writing. It feels quite natural for me to pronounce Thai words (reasonably good) using the Becker/Paiboon karaoke.

As you understand, I am not a native English speaker. My mother tongue belongs
to the germanic group of European languages.
When I feel very comfortable and at ease using Becker karaoke
(the sounds in Thai are just obvious to me when I see the karaoke) I always
think that Becker karaoke must be difficult for native English speakers.

The sounds (in Thai) cannot come easily and natural to English speakers when
they read Becker karaoke.
At last, that is what me thinks. Maybe I am wrong.

Also, when I see the karaoke used in some other beginner's books, I often see
karaoke obviously geare towards native English spakers.

One typical example would be GOOD, di or dii in becker and de or dee in non-becker.

Another karaoke comment.

In many books that use karaoke (not necessarily books for learning Thai) there are often some comments on the karaoke system used in the Introduction/Foreword part of the book.

I tend to work myself up and get pissed off when I read statements/explanations
to the effect that:
thai has so many consonants and so many vowels english only have so many,
hence it is not possible to describe all thai sounds by means of using the english
alphabet + some auxillary characters ([]=+-,* etc etc)

There is nothing in the thai language (or any other language for that matter)
that cannot be encoded by means of the English alphabet. Its purely a matter
of elaborating the coding scheme and you can describe anything between heaven
and earth by means of the English alphabet.

Great banter in here, gents!

There is nothing in the thai language (or any other language for that matter)
that cannot be encoded by means of the English alphabet. Its purely a matter
of elaborating the coding scheme and you can describe anything between heaven
and earth by means of the English alphabet.

That's true but not very useful. How are you going to distinguish between เปี๊ยะ (the pia in por-pia or spring roles) and เบียร์ (beer)? They're going to sound pretty much the same to most English-speaking beginners (although the vowel lengths are different, the initial consonant is different and they are in a different tone) and whilst you could make up some code in the Roman alphabet to distinguish them, it's not really going to correspond to anything in English so an English-speaker has to give new sounds to a set of letters - that's learning a new alphabet. But if you're learning a new alphabet, you may as well learn one that actually has some use: the Thai one. If you know the International Phonetic Alphabet, then using that is possible but almost nobody does know it so just learn the Thai alphabet. It really isn't very difficult.

Originally Posted by Zooheekock

There is nothing in the thai language (or any other language for that matter)
that cannot be encoded by means of the English alphabet. Its purely a matter
of elaborating the coding scheme and you can describe anything between heaven
and earth by means of the English alphabet.

That's true but not very useful. How are you going to distinguish between เปี๊ยะ (the pia in por-pia or spring roles) and เบียร์ (beer)? They're going to sound pretty much the same to most English-speaking beginners (although the vowel lengths are different, the initial consonant is different and they are in a different tone) and whilst you could make up some code in the Roman alphabet to distinguish them, it's not really going to correspond to anything in English so an English-speaker has to give new sounds to a set of letters - that's learning a new alphabet. But if you're learning a new alphabet, you may as well learn one that actually has some use: the Thai one. If you know the International Phonetic Alphabet, then using that is possible but almost nobody does know it so just learn the Thai alphabet. It really isn't very difficult.

I fully agree, the best approach would be to learn the Thai alphabet.

My point was mainly that I object to blunt statements in language books
that it is impossible to render the thai language sounds by means of the English alphabet ++. Such statements make me doubt that the authors have the necessary
education, competence and lingvistic knowledge to write books on languages.


In Becker karaoke,

beer biia
spring roll bp) bpiia

Becker karaoke tends to double the vowel when its long.

As far as I remember Becker karaoke does not address tones,
other transliteration systems do.

But, I agree that learning the Thai alphabet is the best way.

English import words are usually tougher to nail down the vowel length. In Thai the difference between a long and short vowel is NOT a difference in the sound the vowel makes but a difference in the duration of time you voice the sound.

English doesn't put such rigid restrictions on the duration of time you can voice a vowel and not change the word. For example the words, Heello, Hellooo, and Heelloo are all understood in English as the same word by the listener while in Thai, that'd be possibly three different words.

I don't think;
beer - เบียร์ - bia and the last syllable of spring roll - เปี้ยะ - bpîa are that good representations only because one word is an English loan word.

An example of how Becker’s system (and indeed most karaoke systems in use a Thai language schools for foreigners) show intonation differences is by using what's called diacritical marks. They designate the tones like this;
no mark - mid tone
◌̀ - low tone
◌́ - high tone
◌̂ - falling tone
◌̌ - rising tone

Here's the words near - ใกล้ - glâi and far - ไกล - glai showing the marks in use. Even though these two words use different vowels they make the same sounds so it's the same representation.


Usually the vowel length is denoted by doubling the vowels in English, but on occasion when no corresponding vowel can be written in English there are additional characters used such as a u with a strike thru it denoting the vowel เอือ like this "believe - เชื่อ - chʉ̂a" or "hand - มือ - mʉʉ" to show อือ.

As a new learner of Thai I believe students should see the Thai script and start to identify how written Thai goes together or what's what in Thai. In fact most Thai language schools have the English, the Thai and the karaoke version on their material.

I'm most definitely NOT saying don't learn to read Thai, because it opens the entire country up to you, I'm just saying; learn it at the appropriate time. For me, starting to learn it on hour oneof day one is not the most cost effective use of time. Your mileage may vary...

In Thai the difference between a long and short vowel is NOT a difference in the sound the vowel makes but a difference in the duration of time you voice the sound.

Are you saying that the vowel is partially unvoiced? That's not true. All Thai vowels are voiced (as they are in almost all of the world's languages). The difference between เอีย and เอียะ is that the latter is going to be shorter and it ends in a glottal stop.

I don't think;
beer - เบียร์ - bia and the last syllable of spring roll - เปี้ยะ - bpîa are that good representations only because one word is an English loan word.

Being a loan word has nothing to do with it. melvin said that you could write Thai in the 'English alphabet'. I picked those two because any romanization which doesn't introduce non-standard letters (u with a strike-through or diacritics for example) is going to have a hard time making clear the three ways in which these two syllables differ. Doing so in a way which is readable is probably impossible.

I'm just saying; learn it at the appropriate time

I agree. And for any serious learner, the appropriate time is almost certainly going to be as soon as you start learning Thai.

The fact is, and you can theorize and frontload about it all you want, that the brain of a tonal language speaker is attuned to different sounds to that of a non tonal language speaker, and only years of exposure to the sounds will rewire and retune the brain.

The important, relevant sound in a tonal language occurs mid syllable, the important relevant sound in a non tonal language occurs at the beginning or the end of the syllable. Thai brains are hotwired to concentrate on the middle, with less emphasis on catching the initial or final part of the syllable snd western brains concentrate on the initial or final sound in preference to the middle.

And thats why thais have difficulty with endings and falangs have difficulties with tones.

I'm loving many of the observations being presented in here, folks.

Keep 'em coming!

That argument about a tonal language and a non-tonal language is stuff cunning linguists can beat to death. It certainly doesn't take YEARS of training to begin to hear the tone differences in spoken Thai!!

I have said before that in English we use tones to carry emotive value to what's being said. We certainly don't speak in a mono-tone. In fact English can represent every single tone used in the Thai language and native English speakers use all of them routinely.

Single word questions use a rising tone; "Right?"
Expressing dismay usually uses a falling tone; "Ohhh”.
Expressing shock usually uses a high tone; "What?"
A non-committal attitude is usually expressed with a low tone; "Umm okay.."
The mid tone is just about for everything else.

The reason foreigners say they can't hear the tones in Thai is simply because we're listening for the tones for the WRONG reason.

Regular Thai spoken at speed by Thais isn't the sugar-coated, over-pronounced, spoon-fed version of Thai a teacher will use on students so they start to hear the tone differences.

Falangs <sic> or whatever karaoke version of the Thai word for ฝรั่ง (fà ràng) or บักสีดา (bàk sǐi daa) if your significant Thai other is from Isaan) don't have difficulty with the tones in Thai once they train their ears to listen for them for the right reason.

I still say the only thing which changes between a "long" and a "short" Thai vowel is the length of time you make the vowel sound. Thai has approximately 32 "vowel sounds". They're usually parroted by the Thais as pairs like this; อะ-อา, อิ-อี, อึ-อื, อุ-อู, เอะ-เอ, แอะ-แอ, โอะ-โอ, เอาะ-ออ, เออะ-เออ, เอียะ-เอีย, เอือะ-เอือ, อัวะ-อัว, ฤ-ฤา, ฦ-ฦา, อำ, ไอ-ไม้มลาย, ใอ-ไม้ม้วน. The last three vowels are only short vowels and no long vowel exists with that sound. You can say their different any way you want, I ain't a cunning linguist and don't pretend to be one. I just hear a long duration sound and a short duration sound, but I hear the same sound.

Conversely, Thais have difficulties mostly with words which end in a consonant no word in Thai can end with. There are only 8 ways a word can EVER end spelled in Thai, that's it. Three are called "dead endings", five are called live endings. Thais learn 'em like this (the Thai letters in parenthesis are the characters which make this sound when they end a syllable or a word);
แม่กก - (ก ข ค ฆ) the "-c", "-g", "-k", "q" and "-ck" sounds at the end of a syllable; a dead ending
แม่กง - (ง) the "-ng" sound at the end of a syllable, a live ending
แม่กด - (จ ฉ ช ซ ฌ ฎ ฏ ฐ ฑ ฒ ด ต ถ ท ธ ศ ษ ส) the "-d" and "-t" sound at the end of a syllable, a dead ending
แม่กน - (ญ ณ น ร ล ฬ) the "-n" sound at the end of a syllable, a live ending
แม่กบ - (บ ป พ ฟ ภ) the "-b" and "-p" sounds at the end of a syllable, a dead ending
แม่กม - (ม) the "-m" sound at the end of a syllable, a live ending.
แม่เกย - the "-eeuy" sound at the end of a syllable, a live ending
แม่เกอว - all the words ending with วอ แหวน; a live ending.
Of course Thai can have "open syllables" that's just a consonant and a vowel, so there are those too. What Thai can't do is end a word with an "L" or an "R" sound because ล's & ร's in Thai change to n's at the end of words!

Thais also have problems with English consonant clusters which can't be represented in the Thai language. It's why you often hear a Thai voice words like, stop, slowly and stupid as "sa-top, sa-lowly and sa-tupid. The "s" character in Thai has to have a short 'a' (-ะ) sound with it when it's spoken. Even the "in-trend" English loan word สเปค (sà bpèek) which Thais use for "specification" is pronounced with the -ะ after the s, because they don't have an "sp" in Thai. In Thai only the following are "true consonant clusters that can start words; กร- gr กล- gl กว- gw ขร- kr ขล- kl ขว- kw คร- kr คล- kl คว- kw ตร- dtr ปร- bpr ปล- bpl ผล- pl พร- pr พล- pl. (That's just 11 if you don't count the duplicate sounds).

Some of the consonant clusters used in English just can't be said easily by Thais, they have to "train" their mouths to get them down with any degree of proficiency. It's the same for foreigners saying Thai words which start with the ง "ng" character. We don't have ANY words in English which are pronounced with a leading ng, so it's one of those characters foreigners are gonna hafta "train" their mouths to say.

Face it, I taught myself to read Thai before I could speak, and after 4+ years of learning Thai I still speak a horrifically mangled, errant-toned, American accented version of it. Looking back I learned it backwards and I should have concentrated more on speaking Thai than on my reading/writing. At this stage I wouldn’t trade my reading/writing ability away, but still I’d give almost anything to speak clearer Thai..

I am of the opinion that just about any foreigner who puts their mind to it can learn to speak and read Thai IF they want to. It's the internal motivation not the degree of difficulty that makes most foreigners throw in the towel and crap out after a while. It reminds me of what my grandfather told me, "things worth knowing don't come cheap or easy, and things that do come cheap ‘n easy aren't usually worth knowing". I don't know that he made it up, but he told it to me..

Sorry this was long and possibly off topic... Hope someone hung with it until the end...

Good Luck learning Thai...