So here we are, for the first step of this journey together.
This should be the only post I’ll write with the task entirely completed but, hopefully, the notes I took along the way should help me give you an honest account of what it was like.
Beware though, my handwriting is damn awful and my notes are never pretty. Whenever I try to make them pretty, I end up giving up taking notes.
If you’re like me, accept you don’t have to make a piece of art.
Finding fitting resources
My memories of struggles learning the Thai script 10 years ago are still well ingrained in me.
I remember asking myself why someone would make such a complicated writing system—completely overlooking I had already learned thousands of Chinese characters with multiple pronunciations for Japanese by then.
Still, I felt I needed to be careful with what resource I’d use for learning the script. I had used a simple table I had printed, that showed the character followed with its pronunciation.
For example, I’d see ก followed by its pronunciation “ko kai.” I thought every time I’d see ก, I’d have to pronounce “ko kai.” I found it crazy.
And it was indeed crazy because that’s not how the Thai alphabet works!
I only learned how wrong I was years later.
It turns out letters in Thai have a name that includes their sound. That’s it.
This time around, I thought I’d get better explanations and turned to YouTube. I watched the beginning of a few videos before settling on the video below, from ThaiPod101.
Explanations were simple yet clear. The speaker, Prathana, didn’t fly over any letter yet didn’t spend hours on them either. I loved it.
I learned later I had been duped since only about 2 thirds of the alphabet had been introduced by the end of the video. Luckily, I saw I could subscribe to ThaiPod101.com for $1 and get access for a month, along with their Bootcamp Thai course. It took it. 💸
That was all I needed to learn the alphabet. Combined with my notebook and three color pens, I was off.
Thai basics and first surprises
Thai is a tonal language. It’s got five tones: high, mid, low, rising, falling. I knew that coming in. What I didn’t know was that consonants could be high class, middle class, or low class.
The class of the consonant impacts the tone to use for the syllable. A surprise, sure, but not a shocking one.
In the video above, Prathana divided the consonants by class and used a different color for each class. That helped me color-coding the characters in my head.
It helped connect blue to low class consonants. Red? High class consonant of course. Green? Easy, middle class it is.
I learned each new letter as in the below picture. I wrote the letter, its “name,” the meaning of its name, the pronunciation, and its class. Most times, I also wrote it 5-6 extra times to get my hand used to it.
When Prathana began teaching tones, I used red to make it easy to find later.
That’s where a new concept arose: endings.
The Thai language has what they call “live endings” and “dead endings.” A dead ending is a sound that stops suddenly, like a T, P, K, or a short vowel. You can’t keep making the sound. On the contrary, live endings are long vowels and the N consonant.
Oh! There comes another intricacy of the Thai language.
Most of its vowels exist in two forms: a short one and a long one. They work just as you’d expect. The short one should be pronounced and cut while the long ones can be elongated.
Ok, so, where were we? How many surprises so far?
3 classes for consonants
Live and dead endings
Short and long vowels written differently
Numerous tone rules
Quite a good start to scare a newbie off, right?
For some reason, however, the video explained everything well enough to understand so I kept learning, accepting the added difficulty of having some letters resemble each other, like ด and ค, ผ and พ, or ข and ช.
The scary shocks
About a week in learning the script, I was still loving it. It was starting to click and I was beginning to remember letters. I was happy.
I was spending about 30-40 minutes learning 5-6 new letters along with some random new rules. It wasn’t easy but it sure wasn’t the beast my memory had come to make it.
And then, everything went to shambles.
Disappearing letters
It all started when I discovered the vowel เ-ะ (which is pronounced like the “e” in “grey” but shorter) would be written as เ-็ whenever there was a final consonant.
For example, เช็ด (pronounced and meaning “check” like in English) and เฟะ (pronounced “fe” and meaning “rotten”) have the same “e” sound but are written differently.
The same day, I learned the short vowel “o,” written as โ-ะ simply disappeared when there was a final consonant in that syllable.
Yes, you read right.
It disappears.
บน only has two consonants. A “b” and an “n”. But it’s pronounced “bon” (and means “above/on.”
But it’s not over yet!
The short vowel “a” (-ะ) can also be unwritten. So how do you know which one it is?
It seems -ะ can only be unwritten if there’s more than one syllable in the word but I’m not even sure.
As far as I know, experience is the best solution here. 🤯
Then, there’s the fun fact that putting two โ in a row acts as a special way to write the short vowel “a” (usually written as -ะ). And to make things worse, that double letter is pronounced “an” if there’s no final consonant.
There are a few more changes like this but you get my point.
If you’re lost, it’s okay. I was too.
Hell, I still am.
Tone games
If only it had stayed that way, it'd have been alright but it got worse.
It turns out there are about 7 or 8 basic tonal rules. At least as far as I know.
I won't bore you with the details but, in short, it goes something like this:
Depending on which class the initial consonant is and whether the ending is dead or live, the tone you should use change.
In theory, simple once you know the rules.
Meet the consonant ห (“h”).
You can add it in front of any low class consonant to turn it into a high class one. Oh, and ห becomes silent of course!
If only, oh my god, if only that was it!
There are four “tone marks” (-่, -้, -็, -๋) changing the tone of the syllable. Their impact changes depending on the initial consonant.
ก is a middle class consonant but when you add -้, the tone of the syllable automatically becomes a falling tone.
It gets messy.
I won't lie, I still can't remember all the tone rules clearly. I decided to review them in the wild, as I encounter each.
As for the tone marks, I still don’t get them completely but plan on doing a focused session on this later, maybe with an italki tutor when I’ll get one in February or March.
In practice
Alright, so now you know how messy it got.
I have to admit there were times I thought about quitting. The first was when I discovered not one but two vowels could be unwritten. I thought that had to be a joke.
I'm a stubborn dude though. And despite the hardships, it also felt like getting clues to understanding a 10,000-piece puzzle.
I actually enjoyed most of this struggle.
How?
By learning to handwrite and type the language on my computer.
You’ve seen it already in the pictures above. I wrote a lot down in my notebook.
It took 15 pages of notes to go through the entire alphabet.
Learning sounds
Every language pronounces letters in its own ways.
An “a” in French or English won't be pronounced the same way. Neither will an “a” in “bad” and in “trade.”
That’s why a special alphabet was created years ago. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) includes every single potential way to make a sound. It unifies all languages.
The “a” as in “father” is written as “ɑ.” In “trade,” however, it's “eɪ.”
The Wiktionary is filled with entries for most languages along with their IPA versions. And luckily I studied that alphabet in 2020.
I had forgotten bits but by writing the IPA letter for each Thai letter, I learned it again. That helped me practice the sounds without relying on strange transliterations varying from resource to resource.
Learning to type
A new language means a new keyboard to learn.
If you want to learn a new language to exchange with native speakers, it’s a step you’ll have to go through.
The website Branah shows where each letter is so you can type words without even having the keyboard installed on your computer.
Since I needed to type each example word to get its IPA version, I used Branah and then copied the text to Wiktionary.
It was slow. Extremely slow.
I was sometimes looking for a single letter for minutes. Today, about 2 months later, I can type without looking at that virtual keyboard.
I make mistakes often but my fingers are capable of moving to certain letters without hesitation.
How to learn a new script
That’s the process I used.
It’s a bit messy but here’s what I learned and how you could learn a new script. I know this experience will only make me learn the next one with more ease.
Get one or two resources teaching the script.
The Xpod101 (changing X with your target language) series on YouTube often have a long video for that.
Learn the IPA alphabet as you write each new letter so you have a better understanding of the language’s sounds
Here’s one good video showing the sounds
Here’s the IPA chart with sounds
And the Wikipedia page filled with everything else you could need
Side note: Learn the IPA through new words in your target language and not on its own.
Write every new letter a few times by hand, along with one example word.
Type every example words on your computer. Looking for the letter on a virtual keyboard will make it stick even more.
Don’t try to cram it into one or two sessions. Take your time.
Watch videos in your target language with subtitles in your target language while you learn the alphabet so you can get more exposure to the new letters.
Use the LanguageReactor extension for YouTube and Netflix
After you’ve covered the script, refer to your notes whenever you see a new word to try to find its pronunciation on your own.
Don’t see learning the script as an end goal but as a stepping stone.
“The difference between a stumbling block and a stepping stone is how high you raise your foot.”—Benny Lewis
What I’d do differently next time
I won’t lie. I’m pretty satisfied with the way I learned the Thai script.
I wouldn’t change much but here are a few tweaks I’d probably make:
Find words I want to use with each new letter I learn, so I can already begin learning what I need
Write examples by hand multiple times instead of doing it for the new letter alone
Use more colors to indicate classes and tones.
The next steps
There we go.
Don’t get me wrong, I still misread many words. I confuse ผ and พ whenever I want to type a word using one of the two.
But I’m getting better. Now I don’t see these letters as drawings I need to remember. I can see most as actual letters. They make sense to me.
Just like I don’t need to think for a second when I read 안녕 or 昨日, I can read words like ผม (I, for males) or ไป (to go), or even อะไร (what).
It’s a process of exposure.
Take your time. Have fun with the new exotic script you choose to learn.
Because, if all goes well, right now is the last time you’ll find it exotic.
Enjoy!
Next time
After learning the script, I took a break during the month of December and mostly exposed myself to the language as often as possible through the radio and podcasts.
I started again about 10 days ago, after I recovered from Covid.
The next post will be about the process of learning the very basics of the language.
It’ll be live on February 3rd so look out for it!
In the meantime, let me know if you have any questions or feedback on the content or format!