Almost every Thai news story about a Cabinet (ครม.) or committee decision uses the same formula:

ที่ประชุม / ครม. + มีมติ + เห็นชอบ / อนุมัติ + (matter) + ตามที่ + (agency) + เสนอ
"X resolved to approve ..., as proposed by Y"

คณะรัฐมนตรีมีมติเห็นชอบแนวทางการจัดทำงบประมาณ ตามที่สำนักงบประมาณเสนอ
The Cabinet resolved to approve the budget guidelines, as proposed by the Bureau of the Budget.

ที่ประชุมมีมติให้ปิดโรงเรียนชั่วคราว
The meeting resolved to close schools temporarily.

ครม. มีมติอนุมัติงบกลางช่วยผู้ประสบภัย ตามที่กระทรวงมหาดไทยเสนอ
The Cabinet approved central funds for victims, as proposed by the Interior Ministry.

Watch out: เห็นชอบ = agree in principle / approve guidelines; อนุมัติ = authorise spending or a project. อนุมัติ is the one used for money and permits.

Once you spot this formula, you can read the first line of most policy news in seconds. Have you seen other set phrases like this in Thai news?

I just had a thought: surely if “น่า” means “-able” (obviously among other uses in different contexts) like in “น่ากิน” - meaning delicious and you want to eat it, a more accurate translation of “น่ารัก” would be “loveable” not “cute”. I know direct translations can rarely be relied on, especially when the language is from a culture so different from your own, but this really is more proof that translations when lacking depper understanding sacrifices the depth of beautiful words such as this!

Hi all,

What is the best system/school/book for learning Thai without a teacher?

A quick preface:

I'm new to language learning in general.

I've done around 30 hours of lessons with a teacher where we just practice speaking, and he would give me vocabulary.

I was using Anki to memorise that vocab, and it went well.

I live in Thailand, so I've been able to practice speaking a lot. The taxi drivers loved it haha.

Then, I had a 4 month gap...

Fast forward to today.

I've now committed to learning reading and writing (I kept hearing this is a must) and I'm using the Read Thai in 10 Days book. This has been awesome. And, I'm almost done with it.

It's so cool to be able to read road signs. And now I know how to pronounce things correctly lol.

What's generally the best next step?

I've heard that getting Thai children's books is a great approach, and just following the system school kids use.

But then I see these expensive courses from BananaThai.

1-on-1 tutors are good, but again, I'm not sure it's necessary.

Should I just learn the most common 1,000-2,000 words ASAP next? With an Anki deck?

Or what?

It's a bit of a minefield for me, and I'd appreciate any pointers you have!

PS: Please don't promote your apps here! Everyone can build them with AI these days, and I'm really looking for the tried and tested path/system here.

Hi everyone,

I recently made a website that covers all the practical Thai grammar points. They’re organized by usage, and each one is labeled with its difficulty level.

I should mention that the content was generated with the help of AI. However, I’ve checked it all myself (I’m a native Thai speaker), and about 99.9% of it is currently correct. Some example sentences, such as those for TG141 จวน/จวนจะ, still sound a bit unnatural, but I’ll fix them soon. I hope this website helps you learn Thai!

I’ll keep making incremental improvements to both the content and the site structure so that every example sentence is 100% correct and natural. The site is currently hosted on my own computer (through Cloudflare), so I’m not sure how stable it will be.

Any feedback is welcome!

Link: https://learnthai.itsmenutchanonj.cc/

I’m a native Thai but I grew up abroad which unfortunately never made me connect with my Thai heritage, language, and culture. I want to learn Thai so that I can live in Thailand and not only connect with my home country but also professionally work and live. Any ideas on how I can achieve such level of Thai efficiently?

So, I was struggling finding a good way to start learning Thai, so I figured I would start building my own app. It was made with the use of AI and it is far from perfect yet but I would love your feedback to make it as good as possible so it can help out people who were in the same boat as me.

I tried adding as many different ways as possible to learn so it has something for everyone, so here are some examples:

1. A main course with 540+ lessons. They all come with a range of different ways of asking questions including pictures and audio (some of which still needs to be improved).
   
2. A Learn section which has: -Thai script, with all consonants, vowels and tone marks and a character tracer to help you write. -Tone trainer, Listening and Reading drills. -Grammar (19 topics) and a sentence structure course for building real sentences. -Classifiers, Numbers & Money, Time, Days & Months. -Thai Keyboard and typing practice. -Some other things like: An AI buddy you can ask general questions or roleplay a situation with, a library of short Thai stories with recall quizzes, Phrases, Flashcards & Thai Sayings.
3. Some games to help you learn: - Sabai Defense: a tower defense game that quizzes you inbetween rounds (in progress) -A where is waldo type game on where to find certain objects given in Thai -Tone tap and Tone boss for drilling tones.
4. It has some useful tools for everyday life in Thailand like a currency converter, weather and time and essential Thai phrases.
5. Lastly, there is a section called "My Thailand" which gives you information on actually living in Thailand, dealing with things such as Visas, bank accounts, insurance, tips on where to live, home utilities and some culture tips all with official links to the government websites.

I tried making it as visually appealing as possible with different themes, some mascots and images.

The post has become a bit longer than I meant it to be haha, but it's called Sabai Thai on Google play store. Link: Sabai Thai. Currently it comes with 20 free lessons and then 1 free lesson every day.

Please leave some feedback on things you don't like, what can be improved etc. Anything is welcome :)

Recently started to learn Thai I wanted to know more about popular and trad music doesnt matter the genre or artist, help will be appreciated :D

Hi everyone!
I’m a fellow Thai language learner, and like many of you, I really struggled with memorizing the tones. So, I decided to turn it into a game and built an app called "Thai Tones".

Here is what the app offers:

• 4-Choice Quizzes: The difficulty gradually increases, helping you master the tones naturally without feeling overwhelmed.
• Cute Design: I used pastel colors and Thai elephants (Chang) as the main motif.
• Sense of Progression: Every time you clear a stage, the cute elephants stack up in the background! You also have a visual rank so you can aim for a perfect score.

I’m a solo developer and worked really hard on this. Levels 0 to 2 are completely free to play, so I’d love for you to just try it out! If you could give me any feedback—like "I want this feature" or "This part is hard to use"—it would be a huge support for my future development.
(Full disclosure to respect the subreddit rules: Levels 0 to 2 serve as the introduction to the learning journey and are completely free, while Levels 3 to 10 require a one-time purchase. While it's not a fully free app, I believe this free introductory part still offers solid value for beginners practicing their tones!)

I hope this helps your Thai learning journey! 🐘

Download Links:
🍎 iOS (App Store): https://apps.apple.com/app/id6504148313
🤖 Android (Google Play): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.glabo.thaitone

If you read Thai news or prepare for CU-TFL, you've probably hit sentences where you can't tell where the subject ends and the main verb begins. Formal Thai often marks it for you with นั้น.

When the subject is long (usually a noun + a ที่/ซึ่ง clause), writers put นั้น at the end of it. The next verb after นั้น is the main verb of the sentence.

Pattern: noun + ที่/ซึ่ง + modifier + นั้น + main verb

Example from a recent Thai PBS health story:

ระบบเฝ้าระวังโรคที่ประเทศไทยมีอยู่แล้วนั้นมีประสิทธิภาพเพียงพอ

→ Subject: ระบบเฝ้าระวังโรคที่ประเทศไทยมีอยู่แล้ว (the disease surveillance system that Thailand already has)

→ นั้น closes it

→ Main verb: มีประสิทธิภาพเพียงพอ (is sufficiently effective)

Two more:

ข้อเสนอที่ฝ่ายค้านยื่นต่อสภาเมื่อวานนี้นั้นไม่ได้รับการอนุมัติ

"The proposal the opposition submitted to parliament yesterday was not approved."

การเรียนภาษาให้เก่งนั้นต้องอาศัยความอดทน

"Becoming good at a language takes patience."

Bonus pattern from the same article: ...แต่อย่างใด at the end of a negative sentence = "not ... at all" (formal, firm, neutral tone).

องค์การอนามัยโลกยังไม่ได้ประกาศจำกัดการเดินทางแต่อย่างใด

"The WHO has not announced any travel restrictions at all."

It only works after a negative. In speech you'd say ไม่...เลย instead.

Native speakers: does นั้น in these sentences feel natural to you in writing, or more typical of news style? Curious how formal it reads.

Hi, 

I would like to learn to speak thai. I have been self studying for a month or so, and have started to learn how to read and write 10 days ago.

My problem is that I'm lacking a sense of direction or structure when learning to speak and it's making me super sad, demotivated and doubtful if the many hours that I put in when I can't respond to what a small child is telling me.

Ever since I started learning to read and write, the progress on learning those 2 have been a steady growth where everyday I do get better and be able to recognize and be able to read/write consonants or vowels faster and faster. For speaking however, I do feel stuck, and the abundance of resources isn't helping too much, it just demotivates me and I get being told "there are thousands of videos on YouTube how can't you learn?" When almost every video is just talking about the same 10 verbs and it's even just transliteration without any information about how to use any beyond the support limited scenario demonstrated by the video.

I do understand these are super helpful for a 1 week trip, but most probably not for my case. Currently, I watch a few YouTubers (Thai with Mod, Thai with Grace, and a bunch of vloggers) and thb I don't enjoy the content I just want to learn and I do tend to understand a lot more than how much I can speak, and I use Lingopolo a lot and I do like it, I just feel it's a little inefficient for my case where I do have 8-10 hours a day to study, but I would like to reach a decent level at daily conversational level (since I work in retail and I would love to speak to every Thai customer) as soon as possible.

I would love to enroll in a class or get a tutor but I can't afford any of these options.

Thank you so much for reading and I appreciate any sort of help that I can get here.

AI says this describes a very dark colour but I think it may mean there is no light to see by. Can anyone confirm?

Thanks

Hii everyone 🥹💕
Watching Thai BL dramas has made me fall in love with the Thai language, and now I really want to learn it! 🩷 I’m still a beginner, so could you please recommend some good apps, YouTube channels, or free resources to help me get started?
I’d be so grateful for any little tips or suggestions. Thank you so much for helping me on this journey! 🫶🏻🇹🇭✨

• พ่อชื่อปู ลูกชื่อปลา แม่ก็น้ำเต้าสิ
• น้ำเต้าแม่มึงน่ะสิ

I don't get it. Can anyone explain?

Hello! My home is Malaysia, but my boyf is Thai. He and his family speak Thai pretty much only at home, so it’s nice to be surrounded by it but I want any and all tips for learning the language best I can because we are planning to get married and probably live in Thailand. But I want to be able to get by before we move out there.

For the record I only have experience with mandarin, English, Malay and a little Tamil but none of them are actually like Thai, as I’m sure you guys would know.

Thanks for reading!!

Does anyone have experience using the Thaipod101.com app? I'm planning to pay the Premium plan that is $5.50 /month. Are there any other Thai learning apps you recommend for beginners?

Hello guys, I kinda wanna try online tutors like Preply and italki to practice conversation and guide me in Thai language. For the trial class, how did you guys decide if the tutor is okay for you ( based on your guys experiences) ? Like is there any common question or any aspect or things that need to be looked out for in the trial class? Never had an online tutor before and in school we don't really get to decide who our teacher is, appreciate your guidance, thank you 😁

I would appreciate any recommendations for teachers if you've had success on either platform. I'm a beginner looking to learn conversational skills. I've learned simple words & phrases, numbers, and on the written side all the consonants, a few but not all verbs, a lot of little things. But I'm getting the sense now that while I should continue the written things, for conversation it's better to start learning common sentences and responses. Has a remote one-on-one instructor worked for you to become fluent enough in Thai to hold a general conversation? I would love to hear your experience and please suggest a teacher if you liked them.

If you do have a recommendation, would you please also let me know how many minutes per week, how many days a week, you took classes and how long your journey was? And if you can give a sense of how much conversation you could do after a few months, a year, or whatever it would help me to get an idea of what progress I should expect over time.

I speak thai at a very beginner level. I know a lot of words but it takes time for me to put sentences together which makes it hard to have conversations. If there are any Thai speakers who are looking to partner up or do a language exchange DM me!

Im looking for a thai language tutor or school. Does anyone have any information that can help? I know about many of rhe online/apps, but I learn best through personal interactions. Thanks.

I was told that ภาษาพาที ป.1–ป.6 is the series of Thai textbooks used by Thai schoolchildren, so I decided to check it out. Turns out you can find ebook online, and there are also YouTube channels that read the books aloud if you just Google them.

Honestly, I wish I’d found these books when I first started learning to read Thai. They’re an absolute gem for practising consonants, vowels, tone marks, and reading actual words, sentences and stories.

I’ve been learning Thai for about 5 months, and one thing that frustrates me about some learning resources is that they teach you phrases like sawasdee kha using transliteration without explaining how the words are actually constructed. I want to understand which consonants and vowels are used and why words are pronounced the way they are, rather than just memorising phrases. I keep rereading Phasa Phathi as a kind of drill, and I find it really helpful.

The downside is that everything is in Thai (of course!), with no English explanations or translations, so you have to look up words and figure out the stories yourself. But if you enjoy learning from the ground up, I think these books are a gem. Just wanted to share in case anyone else finds them useful.

New approach. They left the old version to another app Glossika Legacy.

It's freemium. 14 days free, then 700thb / month.

First impression was ok with various learning options. And it looks like this can do some learning without paying. Not just a tiny bit

Edit: free users can do 20 phrases per day, and can only look back to recent 30 phrases. Also ads