Women Learning Thai… and some men too ;-)

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A trusted native speaker is essential….
You may have noticed by now that learning Thai takes real effort and discipline. No two ways about it. Expect to put in long hours tweaking your pronunciation, expanding your vocabulary, solidifying your grasp on the grammar.
One of the best — and most necessary — language resources you have is [...]

Bumper stickers are us…
Bumper stickers in Thai land make for an interesting language lesson and a good way to pass time when you’re caught in traffic.
Apart from the typical เมา ไม่ ขับ (mao mai khap) “Don’t Drink and Drive” and เรา รัก ในห ลวง (rao rak nai luang) “We Love the King” stickers, one [...]

A farang by any other name…
Any white foreigner who spends even a few days in Thailand will learn at least one Thai word: ฝรั่ง (farang). It’s being used by Thais to refer to them – whether they’re aware of it or not.
Farang is one of the first words that will stand out from the [...]

Titles are here there and everywhere…
What’s in a title? That which we call a Ms. by any other title would smell as sweet.
Apologies to Shakespeare. I read an interesting Thai law the other day on the topic of titles for women.
As you may know, the basic titles for women in Thailand are นาง [...]

Two of the most common words of all…
In any language, a tiny handful of words make up a disproportionate percentage of the sentences you write or speak. It’s a mathematical law, actually.
In the British National Corpus, a collection of 100 million words of written and spoken English, more than 6% is taken up by [...]

Let’s get down to it…
English and Thai take rather different approaches to personal pronouns. In English, there’s a small set of words we use in most situations: I, we, you, he, she, they, it. In the object case there are a few that change: me, us, him, her.
Unless you’re reading Shakespeare or the Bible, [...]

Language thinking gets you everywhere…
When speaking a new language, it’s tough to kick the impulse to translate what you want to say from your mother tongue.
When you’re first learning, you’re thinking of each sentence in English first. This can result in some pretty tortured Thai.
As you continue to improve, your speech patterns should start [...]

The Thais have nicknames too…
This week I’ll give you a break from my normal spiel on the linguistic nuts and bolts of the Thai language and do something a bit lighter. If you’ve spent any amount of time in Thailand, you’re bound to have noticed that Thais have very colorful nicknames. Common Thai nicknames include [...]

Every, many and more…
Let’s look at the difference between ทั้ง (tháng) and ทุก (thúk), remembering that “th” is pronounced as a “T” while breathing out. In rough translation, ทั้ง corresponds to “all” and ทุก to “every”. You use ทั้ง for all of one thing and ทุก for all of many things.
As with typical Thai [...]

Long or short really does matter…
When it comes to Thai vowels, length really does matter. I remember in grade school that the teacher taught about “long” and “short” vowels in English, where the i in “bite” is long, but the i in “bit” is short. Or something like that.
This terminology has been around a [...]