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Learn Thai

Learn Thai reading, Thai writing and Thai speaking with these free words and sentences about greetings, saying Hello and common phrases. All words and sentences are spoken by real Thai natives and this helps you in learning the correct pronunciation.

Our ten Thai lessons teach you some of the most important Thai words and phrases. We will try to make your learning Thai as easy as possible and give you a lot of resources about Thai.

If you like the lessons, you can subscribe to our free seven days email course which will give you Thai grammar notes, top 1000 Thai words and much more!

Lesson 1: Introduction

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สวัสดี คะ

sà-wàt-di khá

Hello


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คุณ สบาย ดี หรือ ครับ

khun sà-bai di rŭe khráp

How are you?


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ดิฉัน สบาย ดี คะ ขอบคุณ

dì-chăn sà-bai di khá khòp khun

I'm fine, thank you.


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ดิฉัน ชื่อ ธันย่า คะ

dì-chăn chûe than yâ khá

My name is Tanja.


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ยินดี ที่ ได้ รู้จัก ครับ

yin-di thî dâi rú chàk khráp

Nice to meet you.


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ลาก่อน คะ

la kòn khá

Goodbye


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คุณ พูด ภาษา อังกฤษ ได้ ไหม คะ

khun phût pha-să ang-krìt dâi măi khá

Do you speak English?


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ครับ ผม พูด ภาษา อังกฤษ ได้ ครับ

khráp phŏm phût pha-să ang-krìt dâi khráp

Yes, I speak English.


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ไม่ ผม พูด ภาษา อังกฤษ ไม่ ได้ ครับ

mâi phŏm phût pha-să ang-krìt mâi dâi khráp

No, I don't speak English.


→ Continue learning Thai with L-Lingo, which has pictures!

How to learn Thai?

  1. Get a Thai Phrasebook and write simple phrases and words on Flashcards and memorize them
  2. Study the Thai fundamentals, e.g. how to construct questions, pronunciation etc.
  3. Try and find a good Thai teacher or other person to talk with you or enroll in a Thai language class or visit Thailand for more immersion
  4. Use Phonetic Language or learn the most common Thai Letters so that you can read basic words
  5. Use a spaced repetition vocabulary builder to learn words and phrases
  6. Focus on learning the five tones correctly early on as the wrong tones can change the meaning of words completely

Check out our comprehensive Thai learning App L-Lingo which contains 105 lessons with grammar notes, thousands of words and high quality audio.

Thai Grammar

When compared to other Languages, on a fundamental level the Thai grammar is actually very simple. Each word normally stays the same; thus, there are no declinations, no conjugations, no plural forms, no genders and no articles. Whereas the English word to go might have different forms like goes, went, going etc., the equivalent Thai word pai always stays the same, regardless of the context.

However, there are also elements in the Thai language that we do not have in many Western Languages.

No Blanks between Thai Words

One thing that learners find quite difficult is that there are no spaces between the words. As this is very tough, especially for Thai learners, we have put spaces in between the words in these lessons and notes.

Thai Phonetic Tones

One of the most difficult element for the learner of the Thai language is the correct pronunciation of the five phonemic tones: middle, low, falling, high and rising because the concept of Tones is not existing in many European Languages including English.

Word Order

In Thai, the word order is Subject-Verb-Object. This is the same as the word order in English (e.g. Tom goes home).

Formal Tone - Krab and Ka

In spoken Thai language, at the end of most sentences, the particle Krab (ครับ) for a man, and Ka (ค่ะ) for a woman are added indicating respect. These words can also be used to indicate an affirmative, but the ค่ะ (falling tone) is changed to a คะ (high tone).

Thai Nouns

Nouns are pretty simple in the Thai language. They do not have articles nor genders, and there is no distinction between singular or plural. As it is easy to go without articles and genders, it is important to convey singular or plural.

Thai Verbs

Verbs are also pretty straight forward in Thai! They do not change with person, tense, number and there are no particles. Additional information (e.g. tenses, plural etc.) is conveyed by adding additional words (e.g. tense makers).

Verb Tenses in Thai

Present Tense

To learn the present tense we will use the basic form. To emphasize the present tense, the word กําลัง (gam-lang) is sometimes put in front of the verb.

Tผู้หญิง กําลัง ยืน อยู่
Tphû yĭng gam-lang yuen yù
The woman is standing.

Past tense

in the Thai Language past tense is indicated by แล้ว (láeo - already) which is placed after the verb.

ม้าได้ กระโดด ไป แล้ว
má dâi krà-dòt pai láeo
The horse jumped.

There is also an alternative way to make past tense with ได้ (dâi).

Have a look at this example:

ผู้ชาย ได้ ไป ปีน ภูเขา
phû chai dâi pai bin phu khăo
The man has climbed the mountain.

Since ได้ (dâi) means can, it implies that something has been achieved and thus happened in the past.

Future Tense

Future tense in Thai is indicated by จะ (chà - will) which is placed in front of the verb.

ม้า กําลัง จะ กระโดด má gam-lang chà krà-dòt The horse is going to jump.

There is one interesting case in future tense, that we did not yet look into.

Have a look at this sentence:

ทีม สีแดง กําลัง จะ ชนะ
thim sĭ daeng kam-lang chà chá-ná
The red team is going to win.

Use of กําลัง (kam-lang)

Isn't it strange that we use กําลัง (kam-lang) in this sentence?

The reason is that in the above sentence, the race is already ongoing and that the red team is already leading (present tense) and we make a prediction on the outcome (future tense).

This is just a short introduction to Thai. If you like to get a free comprehensive Thai Grammar, subscribe to our Seven Day Email Course which includes a 20 page Grammar Book!


You love these Free Lessons – so check out the Free Trial of Online Learning App L-Lingo Thai – with Full-Featured Audi-Visual Goodness and Progress Quizzes!

L-Lingo follows a similar approach like the L-Ceps Personaltrainer but is a full online web application - it just runs in your browser! Give it a try and head over to Language Learning Software L-Lingo Thai for some free lessons.



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