I relied on that exclusively for two months, because I had not yet arrived in Thailand, and my teacher forbid even thinking about learning the Thai script, because the main goal was basic conversational ability, and he considered the script was a distraction. This was during a two-month intensive crash course.

Once I arrived in Thailand, though, I never entered another classroom, and I moved away from the romanization within about 6 weeks of arriving. I taught myself to read starting right away, and contrary to what my teacher had led me to believe, I found that learning the script not only opened up Thailand in a huge way, but it actually did help my pronunciation. I had already ensconced some bad pronunciation habits that reading forced me to correct. “Oh, that’s a ป, I’ve been saying that as บ. Whoops, better stop that.” And so forth.

The chances that I would ever pick up my original text books again were slim, so without reading it may have taken years, instead of days or weeks, to realize my mistakes.

I think for a short introductory period, romanization can be good. But the second it starts to feel like a burden or like it’s detracting from your progress, kick it out the door. Start with the Thai script as soon as you feel comfortable with.

It’s even okay to learn them together, if that happens to help you. Each person learns differently, but I think that those who discount the Thai script (and I realize that you’re not, Aaron, but many do) are cutting themselves off from real progress with the language.

For me, the tone rules only took a few weeks to internalize, because the written word surrounded me. It was on signs, and since much of the time I knew which tone word X was *supposed* to be pronounced with, it was all the easier to reinforce those spelling and pronunciation rules in my head.

The implicit vowels, the irregular tone rules, the tones carried over to the next syllable.. all that comes with practice. You will puzzle over a word the first several times you see it. You will have to look twice at it before recognizing it after several more times. And before long, you begin to recognize it as a unit, instead of something you have to sound out.

That’s the key to fluid reading, after all, since Thai is not written with spaces between words. Recognizing the words as units. The spelling becomes second nature. And your pronunciation of it becomes rock solid. That’s how it worked for me, anyhow.

The overwhelming majority of foreigners who learn to speak Thai, do so with transliteration, not with Thai script.

I do think it’s useful to learn Thai script, but if one learns to speak with only Thai script, they must learn the tone rules (16 by some counts) and must know the sound of inherent, unwritten vowels, and some consonants that don’t sound like they look (ทร sounds like ‘s’ not like ‘t’ and ‘r’). This is a pretty tall order, particularly when there is no immediate ‘speech reward’. Very few people are willing to put in the time and effort. It could take months or even years. For many, it may be impossible. It’s so much easier and faster to start with transliteration.

For those who are “going Thai only,” if it works for you, by all means, carry on!

Btw – your interview on the TV method will go live after next week. Apologies for it taking so long, I got sidetracked!