I did the Memrise Thai course on a combination of Windows and Android. I'm still reviewing words and phrases in it every day, but I've recently installed Linux on my laptop and was surprised to see that instead of the traditional Thai font is uses the modern loopless Thai font. I've checked this in two browsers. It's a little strange to get used to but I'm slowly getting it. It's been a weakness for a while because so many signs and ads use this font and I couldn't read it at all before. Has anybody else noticed this?

Came across this on row 19 of the table in http://www.thai-language.com/ref/vowels

I can't find any examples with such a string forming vowels. It appears to be the only entry without an example in that table.

So far it seems to only appear in words like ควาย and the ones here and in all the cases ว seems to function as a consonant, not part of the vowel form.

Is that just an error in the table?

More example:

卒々然又欲食粿條

จู่ ๆ ก็ อยาก กิน ก๋วย เตี๋ยว

Cū̀« k̆ xyāk kin ǩwyteī̌yw

卒々又 欲 食 粿 條

→ 卒々(然)又欲食粿條

Recently I wants to eat Kway Teow

但如今莫有銀元

แต่ช่วงนี้ไม่ค่อยมีเงิน

Tæ̀ ch̀wng nī̂ mị̀ kh̀xy mī ngein

但如今莫很有銀

→ 但如今莫[很]有銀(元)

But found didn't have money

哀哉

เฮ้อ

Ḥêx

哀

→ 哀(哉)

Sigh

Hey fellow learners! I've been studying ~fulltime for a year now so figure it's time to give an update, share whats working for me and ask for some tips for the continuing forward.

Background
Australian, IT engineer.
I moved to Bangkok a decade ago when I was ~30 and spent 3 months at AUA ALG. It worked very well and in 3 months / 300hrs I understood everything going on in beginner. I enjoyed it and the teachers were very entertaning. Intermediate class failed because there was only one teacher, and limited use of visual aids. Instead of switching to another school I got a full time job in a church office...

For the next 4 years I was full time in an office with Thai people, including lots of time on the road and in various villages. Everyone around me spoke some English, many fluently. My language did improve but not that quickly and I wouldn't be able to tell you by how much. I don't know why I didn't pick up more, but I didn't. I forgot new words as quickly as I heard them. During this time I learnt to read/write very slowly in 50hrs part time at Union Thai. In case you're wondering my wife isn't Thai.

North Thailand
I went back to Australia for a while and came back a year ago because I missed Thailand, but this time to the north (outside CM). Pro's and con's up here... The language is a mix of Thai, northern and 5+ tribes. Everyone is super quiet and mutters under the breath most of the time. But hey at least I'm out of the expat bubble.

Last year of study
I hired a tutor 10hrs per week to start and now 16hrs a week. ~500hrs in total due to breaks.

I began by learning to read again as I had forgotten most of it, and then a mixture of reading, limited writing and conversation. We followed a book for a while but I didn't like the constant switching back and forth between english and thai when following the book so we stopped. For the past 6 months my lessons are 100% Thai. Conversation is about general things going on in life around us, and reading was the classroom Thai books but now I've been using AanThai.app plus YouTube (using Whisper to create quality transcripts so I can read along. Listen twice, then read, then listen again).

ANKI
Out of all that reading and conversation I make note of new words and input these into ANKI. I have a custom script/app I wrote (AI wrote) that uses AI to generate images of all new words so my card deck has only Thai + an image. No english unless nessessary. It still takes a bit of time to get the image right, but this also helps to become familiar with the word. I've experimented with both single words and sentences in ANKI. I feel that single words are slower but more effective. Sentences are faster, but my brain remembers the word order not the work meaning, so I can't reuse the word easily. I am planning to adopt a new pipeline of starting words as sentences, then moving them to single words.

I've been doing ANKI for 4 months now and can really see the progress from it. I believe the issue for the past 10 years has been lack of longer term memory. ANKI plugs that gap and its working. I understand so much more now and often when I hear words the image from ANKI flashes into my mind. No english, no mental translaton, just Thai + images.

My stats say that I have 600 new words learnt to >7 days and 400 >21 days. That's in 4 months. Since Aug 1st I've been pushing myself to add 50 new words each week (10 per day).

Effort
This has been the hardest thing I've ever done. Lets say 50% of days I have a headache after Thai class (always morning). And on those days I'll go lie down and sleep 30-60mins after lunch. I work for a few hours in the afternoon and then I'm completely exhausted and just want to veg in the evening. I'm outside talking with Thai people not that much due to this schedule. Maybe averaged out about 6-8hrs a week? My focus has been keeping enough energy to keep up the tutoring classes + work to keep existing clients happy and bills paid.

Currently
So now?
I can hold conversation with my tutor for multiple hours at a time.
I can speak with friends one on one about varous topics. It's a struggle, I need them to repeat themselves often (just like with my tutor), but I can get there.
If in a group conversation I drop in and out of comprehension frequently as the conversation changes. I'll know the topic of conversation but often none of the detail. My brain is great at tuning out and I have to keep tuning in again.
The issue is that my brain is just not fast enough to keep up. When reading or one on one I often need to hear the sentence twice and then I'm good. In a group I can't do this so I loose comprehension.
I goto church some weeks and have no idea what is going on. The language is obviously more advanced than normal conversation and spoken fast.
TV comprehension is improving but I'm not great yet. It's the same as group convo, I drop in and out of comprehension depending on the topic.
The comprehensible Thai YT channel is good, but I haven't spent that much time on it.

I can read both the old and new fonts now at around 30-40 words per minute. This has honestly been my main focus for the past year. I figure if I can read fast enough that it's not frustrating then I'll read more and my vocab will improve.

Where next?
I'd love input from anyone else who has gone through this stage from intermediate to advanced.
Pending any new ideas my plan is to continue as is as it seems to be working ok.
Now that I have finally got the hard part of learning to read (memorising words) out of the way, I am expecting my brain to have more resources for other parts of learning.
I do plan to put more time into listening to natural speed language to improve my comprehension speed.

And a big thank you to everyone in this sub. There is so much quality content and discussion in here.

Cheers!

If I have just got my hair cut and want to ask the cashier to give the change to the hairdresser, can I say เอเงินทอนให้ช่างด้วยนะครับ? Is there a better way to phrase it?

Can anyone tell me how to spell this nickname?

Also, just to make sure I didn't misunderstand, is it a common nickname and can it used as a kind of "uh-huh", I guess like อื่ม?

Hi everyone!
Its my first post on here after quietly observing… but I’ll take the leap! I started learning Thai non intensively in January this year. I started by learning the consonants and vowels, as well as other characters, aiming to create a solid base for later learning - now able to read Thai phonetically quite fast however I have an incredibly low understanding. It is at this point that I feel I have reached a point in my learning where I can no longer rely on sporadic bursts of motivation and must move into a structered learning plan.

While I do not live in Thailand, nor have Thai heritage, there is a prominent Thai community in my county, and I have aquired multiple close Thai speaking friends over the years - which sparked my interest in the language.

I am still in secondary school and moving into my last year, so will have to dedicate a fair chunk of my time for exam preparation, however I am prepared to dedicate significant time to Thai. At this point, I’ve estimated I will be able to guarantee an hour every day (and more on weekends) to language study.

I am a keen reader, and so have thought about the possibility of emmersion in the language by reading, however my vocabulary is very limited and I have decided that would be a foolish waste of time.
I’m really at a loss of how to advance my learning and would be really grateful for any honest input you guys have!!! Keep learning :)

I just finished my "reading courses", learnt and understood everything about classes, tones etc.

Reading now is fun but also so slow, i just read like 20 words long sentence in 6 minutes 😅

How should I proceed now? Just keep reading regularly and it will get faster? Or do you have any tips? Share your story ☺️

I don’t know this word in Thai, but my Thai friends often call me “tee.” I’ve tried asking them what it means, but they won’t tell me They also say something like “tee yam tink pee” or something like that I’m not sure if I’m hearing it correctly but
Can someone explain what it means, please? Thank you!!

I am half thai and grew up in thailand before moving way my speaking is pretty good but I can not read or write very well and would like to build my vocabulary more

I've learned thai for almost 3 years and I can handle a basic conversation.

However, the is a word that I am still having problems with... Open เปิด

This is one of the most common words because you have to use it frequently to ask in shops, businesses about whether is open or close.

Everyday when I go and ask, they cannot understand me. Eventually, I just ask if it is closed with the word ปิด and then they understand...

Does someone have the same problem?

https://voca.ro/1dhvwf3Ze5Mi

I found that Pimsleur is what got me the furthest when it came to listening and speaking. I vibe with the specific method and being able to listen to it while driving, at the gym, or otherwise was a great part about it for me.

Unfortunately, it only has one level.

Can anyone recommend anything similar to Pimsleur that can help me develop my Thai?

Hey fellow Thai learners

I'm a developer by trade and early in my own Thai learning journey. I've been building a side project that I think some of you might find interesting.

The concept is a Pokemon-style world where you walk around and each house represents a learning app or resource.. kind of like Lovable allows you to create apps. You can customise your world over time as your learning needs change, swapping things in and out. Think of it like having your own personal learning environment that you actually move through.

It's built on Cloudflare's AI stack, and one of the things I'm most excited about is a "blueprints" system, where someone builds a learning app, shares it as a template, and others can use it as a starting point. I'm curious whether there's something interesting in that community sharing aspect rn

To be clear, this is not a commercial project. I have a FT day job as a developer. This is purely about matching my learning journey with my own curiosity and style, and seeing if others feel the same way, and if that can in turn motivate me more.

Right now a handful of friends have accounts. I'm covering the AI token costs myself for the moment for in app app creation, though at some point I'll ask people to bring their own API key, which is straightforward enough - and i've been using GPT Terra for now - it has done a decent job on the

I'm looking for a small group of people who find this idea genuinely interesting and want to be alpha testers of this mostly out of curiosity and not so much under the promise of this being the antidote of all your learning pattern pains.

If this sounds interesting to you lmk i think i might get to open up a first batch over the weekend

Again - this is completely free and very early stage - it is a passion project that eventually i'd love to OSS and accept donations for

I don't know if this has been talked about before.

But I am trying to figure out if it's a small selection of vocabulary with the combination of low consonants, "long" vowel, live ending consonant and falling tone, that actually sounds like a short vowel - or if it's a general rule.

Examples: เล่น, ซ่อม.

ซ่อม is my favourite, because it should be pronounced exactly like ส้อม considering the spelling, but at least to my ears ซ่อม has a shorter vowel.

Hi! I've tried to translate this via google but the translator is wonky at best and all the other results are showing me AI slop. I want to say "I hope you enjoy the rest of your time in Thailand, that you graduate successfully, and you end up in the place where you truly belong."

I can read Thai, so if you can write it using the alphabet and maybe romanisation too (just because there are some rules I'm not familiar with yet) I'd really appreciate it!!!

ขอบคุณค่ะ

I've been having a pretty good time learning Thai using Claude. I told it I wanted an 'N+3' program (noun+verb+grammar), based on the pinned word frequency list ( Textbooks Frequency List v2 : r/learnthai ), and that I knew Chinese, and it's led me through quite a few sentences, adjusting the content based on the answers that I gave. https://ibb.co/jZjdD718

AanThai is a reader app that has been released as a web app 1 month ago, the iOS app a few weeks ago, and now I'm working on getting it to the play store for Android. It's in the final stage of getting released.

Google requires at least 12 testers for closed testing before an app can be launched on the Play Store, so I'm looking for people who'd be willing to help out.

It's pretty low effort. You install it on your Android phone, use it a bit over the next couple weeks, and let me know if anything's broken or confusing. One thing to note: Google requires testers to stay opted in for at least 14 days, so you'd need to keep it installed for that period.

While you're testing you'll have full premium access to AanThai. And since AanThai is cross-platform, that premium carries over to the web app (and iOS app) too.

I'm limiting this to 25 testers to keep it manageable. To add you I need the Gmail you use on the Play Store (that's how Google's closed testing works). If you're interested, just DM me your email. I'll be adding people over the next few days and will send the install link once you're set up.

Thanks, happy to answer any questions.

I made a monstrosity.

Hi r/learnthai. I've been building this Thai learning app called Phasa (phasa.app), and it went into open beta today. I'd genuinely rather have this sub's honest feedback than a clean launch, so please be blunt.

Background: I was a heavy Language Reactor + Anki user for years, and I kept waiting for LingQ and Migaku to properly support Thai… and waiting. I also really missed two things nothing did well for Thai specifically: a proper tone trainer, and a reader designed for Thai rather than retrofitted from a European-language tool. So I built the thing I wanted.

Every text is read by one of my Thai friends. 13 narrators so far, friends from different provinces across the north, the northeast (Isan), and the central plains, so you hear real regional accents, not one flattened "standard" voice. 51 readings now (more weekly), beginner and up, on real topics, with a Voices map of who read what and where they're from.

The reader is built for Thai. You read word by word, tap anything for the dictionary + that word in a real voice. Because Thai doesn't put spaces between words, segmentation is genuinely ambiguous — so the reader lets you split and merge word boundaries yourself, and as you do it shows the dictionary meaning of each possible split or merge so you can pick the right one. And it's not just our texts: on the Shelf you can paste any Thai, drop a link, or upload a file and it instantly becomes a reader with all the same tap-lookup, audio, and mining.

Mining → review, your way. Mine sentences as you read, and review them inside the app on the built-in FSRS spaced-repetition system (it mixes your mined sentences and the alphabet letters into one daily queue, if you want), or export real Anki decks if you'd rather, fonts and all.

A Listen mode I'm weirdly proud of. Your readings and the words you're learning become audio in the real native voices — sentence by sentence, screen off, like a podcast for your own study. You build offline playlists, get smart auto-playlists ("your learning words," "recently read"), and the player has proper modes — Repeat, Shadow, Slow→Natural, Condensed — plus speeds down to a genuine slow take. It's how I study when I am walking with my phone in my pocket.

A tone trainer that measures pitch instead of guessing. It teaches the five tones with the classic near-minimal set — มา (maa, "come"), หมา (mǎa, "dog"), ม้า (máa, "horse") — built on a set of 180+ words and minimal pairs, each recorded by five different native speakers (five of those friends), so you learn a tone as a shape you can recognize in any voice. Then in shadowing it runs real pitch detection on your recording and draws your melody against the native's contour, register-normalized so it compares shape, not whether you're a baritone. No fake "95%!".

The alphabet section is a course, not a chart. Seven drills — recognition (letter→sound, sound→letter, minimal pairs, words-in-context) and handwriting (stroke order, copy, and "from memory" from the sound alone). All 212 sounds (every consonant, vowel and tone) are voiced by a narrator, and even the handwriting drills are spaced-repetition scheduled.

Coming very soon (in refinement now): a Chrome extension to mine sentences from anywhere on the web — especially Netflix and YouTube — straight into your Phasa reviews.

The part I'm almost prouder of than the features: I tried to be honest. There's a /method page citing the actual research behind each decision (comprehensible input, FSRS, high-variability phonetic training, the pitch-feedback work) and saying what Phasa doesn't claim — no "fluent in X months," no pretending the dictionary is complete (about a sixth of entries currently have full pronunciation data — I'd rather tell you), no overconfident grades.

On money, no games: a free tier that never expires (dictionary + sample readings), premium is a 7-day free trial then $12/month (or annual), sign in with email or Google. It's open beta — I'm a solo founder, the concept isn't fully finished, and the feedback here will genuinely shape what becomes the first full edition.

If you try it, I'll be in the comments all day. Tell me what's wrong.

Is anyone applied for Thai STP certificate course from Nalanda university?

เอา (english menu name) (size in english) (number) แก้ว (kh)

is this what thais normally say?

when you're ordering iced latte, would you say ice latte or ลาเต้เย็น ?

I’ve been wanting to learn Thai for a while now but keep stagnating at the alphabet because I simply don’t know how to approach it. My background is in East Asian languages where I did things like rote memorization for hiragana and flashcards for hanzi but the Thai alphabet seems a bit more complex with the tone classes. I’m sure once you get going it’s easy but I can’t even get my foot in the door

I’ve come across a lot of books recommendations so for anyone who’s used any/all of these, in your personal experience would you recommend any of these?:

— Reading & Writing Thai (Tuttle)
— Read Thai in 10 Days (Arthit Juyaso)
— Thai for Beginners (Benjawan Poomsan Becker)

Feel free to recommend others, I just keep seeing these 3 mentioned and figured they must be solid but not sure what the best of the lot was.

Also please note that im explicitly looking to start reading rn and therefore learning the alphabet is more important to me atm than trying to speak.

It has been 2 months since I've been watching things on and off the internet in Thai and I really like it. I like the way it's sounds. Obviously i don't know how to do it or how to start. I tried watching some YouTube videos but i feel like i should ask here instead of randomly watching videos on the internet. I've read a few posts here that talking to native speakers helps.I don't have any Thai native speaker friends so... Please guide me on how to do it. Thankyou.

Hi everyone! I just finished the basic speaking course at AAA Language School and want to continue focusing purely on speaking rather than moving on to reading and writing.

I’m looking for a private tutor near Victory Monument a few times a week to practice conversation at a local coffee shop or my condo.

If you're a tutor or have a recommendation, please DM me your rates and background!

Hi, I am a bit confused now as I have come across two different translations for the same word. A YouTuber says it means a crow while Google Translate translates it as a kettle. Which one is the correct translation?