สวัสดีค่ะ! Hi everyone! I decided to make this post because I’ve been studying Thai for a little bit over a month now and I wanted to share my experiences with the language so far and potentially connect with other people learning Thai or Thai speakers.
Some background information: I’m learning Thai because I’m hoping to move to Thailand to teach English next year (that is assuming Americans are allowed anywhere ever again) and I have experience studying Spanish in a classroom setting, Mandarin Chinese in a classroom setting, and Korean almost entirely on my own. I knew that Thai was a tonal language before I began studying it and hoped my experience with Mandarin would help me.
Firstly, Thai is written with an alphabet and it does not use characters like Chinese does. Thai has 44 consonants that make 21 distinct sounds, and 32 vowels. The vowels are easier, though, because most vowels have a long and a short version. There are some consonants and vowels that are rarely used now but they still are used in common words so you have to know them. I spent several weeks watching ThaiPod101 videos to learn the entire alphabet (these videos are awesome, by the way) and then decided to just dive into studying content for learners with words/phrases/complete sentences and taking lessons with a tutor on iTalki for more exposure to the language and to learn how to read.
Now, I already have experience with learning a tonal language but in the brief time I’ve been learning Thai I can confidently say that at this point, learning Thai tones seems impossible. Why? Because the tone of a syllable depends on the class of the initial consonant (high, mid, or low), the length of the vowel (long or short), if the ending sound (consonant or vowel) is live or dead, and if there’s a diacritical mark then the rules change again. There’s also a letter (ห) that when placed in front of a certain class of consonants makes it act like a different class, and then different rules apply. I honestly don’t know how I’m going to remember all of these rules. All I can do now is just study and hope for the best. Actually using the tones while speaking isn’t very difficult but I don’t really have an ear for tones (I struggled with tones while studying Mandarin as well) so I have to put forth a lot more effort to listen for them and replicate them.
Thai is fairly easy for me to pronounce despite there being a few sounds that aren’t found in English. Some of these sounds like ป (bp) and อือ (uue) are found in Korean, which I have studied, so they weren’t completely new to me! I don’t know why, but when I’m reading a text with my teacher I have a tendency to pitch my voice very high and I sound really awkward and almost whiny. It isn’t until after I hear my teacher read a sentence that I’m able to say things at a normal pitch with correct-ish tones.
So far the grammar is pretty straight forward, but I haven’t started forming long enough sentences to justify using counter words (these are used in Mandarin and Korean as well, so I’m not worried about them). The grammar seems similar to Mandarin in that verbs don’t inflect and time words are used to indicate if something happened in the past or will happen in the future. I tend to learn grammar pretty quickly so I’m okay with whatever Thai will throw my way.
My favorite part of learning Thai is writing it! I think the script is very beautiful and hopefully one day my writing will improve because I think it looks very juvenile right now, haha.
Overall, even though Thai is difficult to learn it’s also very rewarding. Native speakers are very patient and helpful. I’ve been enjoying speaking with people from Thailand on HelloTalk and I always look forward to lessons with my teacher! I hope that all my studying will pay off and that I’ll be able to go to Thailand and have meaningful conversations with people.
I have a lesson in an hour that I need to prepare for but I’d love to chat with people about Thai and maybe expand upon any points I made in this post if anyone is interested. :)
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