Jason & April Ruggles

Learning Thai

Posted on 10. Jan, 2009 by Jason in Thai Culture, Thailand

As part of our preparation, we are studying the language.  It will be much easier to learn once we’re living around it, but anything we can learn before then will give us a head start.  I’d especially like to be able to read it before we get there.  So, I’ve been spending some time in the book, Thai for Beginners, copying down the swirly letters, practicing the many vowel sounds, and repeating the tone variations from the cd.

I enjoy learning languages, so it’s been fun.  However, I am quite certain this is the most complicated language I’ve studied.
One reason is that Thai is a tonal language.  It has 5 tones: middle, high, low, rising and falling.  Words have different meanings depending on the tone.  “Mai” said monotone is a different word than “mai” said with a rise at the end.  This is totally different from English.  We’re used to changing the way we say a word for inflection.  If you do that in Thai, you end up saying something completely different!

This is just one aspect of the language.  There is more to come!  But, if I’ve made you curious, you can learn more about Thai at LearningThai.com

Here’s a cute video of a Thai guy teaching numbers 1-10 in Thai:

Counting to Ten in Thai

Enjoy!

April

Tags: language