Quote Originally Posted by Klondyke View Post
I have started many times and always gave up after few days. The disturbing thing is the illogicality and why not to separate the words? Even with a very good dictionary (e.g. by Paiboon Publishing) you are lost, where the 2nd, 3rd, etc word starts. Then take the no longer used letters e.g. at K (5 letters). The kids learn Kho Khon In my idea, the learning of reading/writing is more easy (and possible) for those who already know the language (e.g. the kids) - unlike at other languages learned together by speaking/reading/writing. However, even the kids need so many years to manage the reading/writing, not much learning time left for other knowledge...
You've identified the underlying problem of learning Thai - it's unnecessarily complicated, illogical, often incorrect and takes so long to make any progress.

Which is why I devised the Rapid Method after about 10 years of trial and error. I throw away anything that's obsolete (I don't even mention the "kho khon"). I don't bother with the alphabetical order, or with writing. And we learn how to read progressively, starting with the most common letters and then gradually incorporate the more obscure letters as and when they are needed (on a need-to-know basis).

As for the lack of spaces between words, you really don't need them. We cover this in the workshop. One of the main reasons is that certain vowel letters act as natural demarcators - e.g. all the "left-hand" vowels (ไ ใ โ เ แ) tell you that "this is the start of a word". They kind of act like left parentheses. Other letters act like right parentheses (e.g. ะ). Once you learn this then you can separate out 80% of the words immediately. The remaining 20% can usually be easily guessed at or becomes easier when you have a bit of vocabulary and recognize "sight" words.

after she started again and again and gave up... before finally biting the bullet and coming to the workshop.