Thai Language

As much as you might like Thailand there remains one significant problem, the language. For us Westerns it can be quite a job to master this. The Thai language is a tonal language, this means that the meaning of a word depends on the tone that you produce while pronouncing the word. There are 5 different tones:

• Normal tone: Your average voice sound
• High tone: The entire word is pronounced at a high tone
• Low tone: The entire word is pronounced at a low tone
• Rising tone: Start the word at a low tone and rise towards a high tone
• Falling tone: Start at a high tone and end at a low tone

Now you have the great possibility of using one word in 5 ways. Yes that's gonna drive you crazy when you try to master the tones but after a while you start recognizing them. For example the word "Kaao" has 4 different meanings: fishy, news, rice and white. When you finally think you mastered this word you realize there is another word "Kao" that has another 4 meanings: knee, to enter, he/she or animal horn.
In practice you are usually understood depending on the context, if you ask for "kaao" in a restaurant for example the waiter will assume you want rice and not serve you with a newspaper. Somehow the Thais managed to make some words really really confusing though, the word "Glai" pronounced on a mid tone means far. The same word pronounced on a falling tone however means near! This makes asking the question: "Is it far?" rather complicated.

To study Thai yourself I recommend the book "Thai for Beginners" by Benjawan Poomsan Becker. It comes with cd's or tapes and teaches you also the basics of writing, essential because it helps you recognizing tones.

Here are some words and small sentences, with these ones you should not have a problem with the tones since they are basic language and people will understand them, just try. Remember to put "Krap" behind them to make it polite. Note that the spelling is not official but just how I think the words are pronounced and Thai people have difficulties with pronouncing the letter R, they pronounce it as an L.

And now a guide how to pick up the girls in Thai:

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