Essential Thai Language Resources

Internet Resources

Thai-Language.com

A comprehensive site, offering an online Thai-to-English and English-to-Thai dictionary and many useful articles on Thai language and grammar. It also offers a comprehensive list of self-study resources and reference materials.

My only complaint about the site is the dictionary look-up returns every listing containing the search term (even if imbedded as a syllable in another word), which can produce dozens of pages of irrelevant material when searching for a common term.

Thai2English.com

An excellent site for translations. In addition to English-to-Thai and Thai-to-English dictionary translations, it translates blocks of text and web pages, but only from Thai to English. The site also allows the user to choose from several English transliteration schemes.

The site has two limitations. First, the dictionary is not nearly as extensive as Thai-Language.com. Second, the text translation sometimes translates syllables instead of words.

Self-Study Resources

Pimsleur Conversational Thai

Pimsleur is great for learning basic conversational phrases while commuting. The basic course has sixteen half-hour lessons which build a basic vocabulary of a couple hundred words.

I like Pimsleur for low-intensity drills while driving. I've used their courses for Thai, Mandarin, Italian and Tagalog. However, there are several limitations. Especially with Thai, there are no advanced materials. The materials are audio-only, with no text, which limits one's ability to build upon the lessons. I've also found my pronunciation of words I learn in Pimsleur can be a little lazy, as I may not distinguish between similar sounds.

Thai for Beginners et al. by Becker

Becker has possibly the most extensive collection of self-study materials, including beginning and intermediate textbooks with accompanying audio CDs and various other books, dictionaries and CDs of contemporary colloquial Thai. The materials are reasonably priced and probably have the broadest retail distribution.

Unfortunately, there are a number of limitations with Becker materials. The beginning book and CD were produced in the 1970s on audio tapes with limited production values, then transferred to CDs, with an annoying level of noise. The books are inexpensively printed with small type fonts that often make it difficult to distinguish between vowels and tone marks. There are quite a few errors. The dictionary is incomplete and only lists English and transliterations, with no Thai characters. To find the Thai, you need to look up the word in the vocabulary list for the chapter in which it was introduced. A number of lessons begin with instrumental interludes that sound as if they were played by somebody's modestly talented niece or nephew. These may have been helpful in finding chapters in the era of cassette tapes, but grow wearisome after repeating the lesson several times. Female speakers read some sentences intended for males, which can be confusing. The vocabulary lists can include over a hundred words, which is too many for a single list, especially for a commute. And some of the pronunciations can get a little funky. For example, the sentence บ้านคุณมีสัตว์เลี้ยงไหม is pronounced as บ้าน คุณ มีสัตว์ เลี้ยง ไหม instead of  บ้าน คุณ มี สัตว์เลี้ยง ไหม, which is confusing to a beginning student.

Courage Software Thai Interactive

A nifty software package that is great for drills to learn consonants and vowels and such.  I haven't used it extensively in part because it doesn't come with a manual and in part because it only runs on a PC and I haven't found time to set up my PowerBook for Windows. (Actually, I did with Parallels desktop, but had nothing but trouble and uninstalled it.) This would be a great little application for an iPhone.

Bookstores

Dokya Bookstore

Dokya offers an extensive selection of Thai books, music CDs, movie VCDs and magazines.

Thaitown (Los Angeles) Dokya Bookstore Los Angeles 5321 Hollywood Boulevard Los Angeles, California 90027 (323) 464-7178

Chinatown (Los Angele) Thai Books & Music Dokya 1100 North Main Street, Suite A Los Angeles, California 90012 (323) 432-9982

Personal Instruction

Thai Buddhist temples and cultural centers in Los Angeles, Chicago and presumably elsewhere offer Thai language instruction for children and adults. In Los Angeles, Dara Sutthisuwan offers instruction at Wat Thai in North Hollywood. Dara has developed an extensive study guide and other course materials. Dara can be contacted through Project Thailand.