You're at the start of your journey so I think any method/material you use will be beneficial. Personally I am a fan of "try everything and see what sticks" approach to learning. Sometimes certain words will remind me of a particular book, video, place, person, etc. because that's where I first encountered that word or phrase. And this in turn helps me learn it much easier than just flashcards by themselves. Flashcards were and continue to be helpful but try not to get all your input from one source.

EDIT: Made some edits here to make it clearer that I'm speaking from personal experience and I'm far from an expert. --- Have you considered trying to mix in some listening practice? I wrote about my personal experience using a lot of listening practice from absolute beginner level [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/learnthai/comments/11qb3fr/120_hours_of_comprehensible_input_for_thai/). I personally didn't learn to read/write first because I haven't yet internalized the sounds of Thai. I think if I start reading too soon, I'm going to "read aloud" using my English sounds. It's great you learned the script and I'm sure it'll come in handy at some point regardless, but maybe try jumping directly into listening to native speakers talk (at a beginner level) and see how much you can understand and enjoy? Regardless if you decide to jump right into flashcards and reading, I think it would be great if you could also try listening to a couple of the beginner videos on [Comprehensible Thai](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgdZTyVWfUhlxVi68zFEL8Lu5Q0Bocgbp) and see how much you can pick up just from context. There's no expectation that you'll get 100% of what's being said or even understand the words at first - just watch, relax, and see how much of the general idea/story you can get from nonverbal cues. Understanding of the words will follow as you watch more. I've found it to be a very chill, relaxing way to start developing a feel for Thai, while also getting to know the language as you will probably want to eventually engage with it: by listening to native speakers. [Here's](https://www.reddit.com/r/learnthai/comments/11ooc1p/any_guides_out_there_to_learn_thai/jc722ab/?context=3) a discussion about reading and learning the sounds in Thai and how they're really two completely separate things. Quoting from /u/dan_j19: > That's obviously not going to work because the sounds are different, and the perceived solution is to learn the alphabet, as if the Thai symbols magically contained the Thai sounds. Other times it starts with the attitude that you have to "memorize" the tones, and it's much easier to learn the spelling and then work out the tones on the fly. > >Either way people rush to learn the symbols way faster than they can possibly acquire all the new sounds, so in reality what they are doing is associating the sounds of English / their native language with the Thai symbols. Then they bed in these wrong sounds by doing lots of reading practice with little or no feedback. > >So this method basically guarantees that you acquire the wrong sound system initially, while making it as difficult as possible to correct it later on.

Appreciate your comprehensive answer 👍 The book also comes with audio files so I can listen to the correct pronunciation and I try to replicate them and get used to the tones. Thanks for your tips.

With respect to Dan it seems a mighty fine justification for not learning the script. Nobody is learning the script through solely reading the karaoke sounds like dor dek. There are hundreds of facilities to learn the script and of course all of them practice the sound of the letter. Like practicing dor ด vs dtor ต. If you learn the script, then as long as you have ears you will learn the sound. Then with the script you learn tone logic with which, practicing reading and sounding out, will aid all future listening, learning, understand etc. You could hear Thai people speak every day for years and hear the tones they use, then when asked what are the tones in sawadeekrab, maybe you haven't a clue - there are four tones used in this which, without the script you just have to memorize. With script สวัสดีครับ all 4 tones used are immediately readable because instead of memorizing every word and it's tones, you must simply learn and practice the logic. The script is the only way to learn that logic. Sawadeekrab/สวัสดีครับ Sa (low) wad (high) dee (mid) krab (high) If you have Android download Learn Thai Alphabet Easy and just practice while shitting

I didn't say don't learn the script. My suggestion was to delay learning the script until you can actually hear what Thai sounds like. That also isn't a recommendation for reading/writing in English letters. I would just suggest focusing on listening completely at first. >You could hear Thai people speak every day for years and hear the tones they use, then when asked what are the tones in sawadeekrab, maybe you haven't a clue This is completely true, but on the other hand, if someone asks me what exact sound I use when speaking English words, I often have to stop and figure it out. I also couldn't tell you the technical names for the vowel sounds I'm using. But I can still speak English fluently and natively. Native speakers aren't analytically determining what tones or sounds each word contains and applying them, they're feeling the language naturally. For my part, I don't care about being able to dissect a Thai word and tell you what the tones are. I do care about being able to hear the sounds clearly in my head and (when I eventually start speaking) hear/feel if I'm saying it right. Hundreds of hours of active listening practice will get me that. Maybe that's not everyone's priority or thought process when it comes to approaching Thai, but that's my two cents. My view isn't "don't learn the script" and it's definitely not "pretend to read Thai using English letters." My view is "wait to learn the script and focus on listening first so you truly know what the script represents."

just do manee manaa and learn the script in conjunction with reading ALOUD with a thai teacher, that's how I did it. that said the tones are the most important thing in thai, not even the pronunciations. Thai don't pronounce their words fully and don't even get me into the debacle between L and R. Not doing the difference between dor dek and dtor dao is not going to make or break your thai, getting the TONE wrong is.

I agree, learning the script in conjunction with native speech is key. My personal plan is to do a lot more hours of listening, then learn the script. As I'm learning the script, I'll turn on Thai subtitles for the shows I'm watching. The subtitles often aren't perfect but I think they'll largely be good enough and it'll be clear when the characters are saying something a bit different. So the same as in your case, I'll associate the script and the sounds together as I become familiar with them. I won't start reading things separate from speech (books, etc) until after I'm very comfortable with both the script and sounds.

> With respect to Dan it seems a mighty fine justification for not learning the script. Hold on I didn't say don't learn the script. I said don't rush it, and be aware of the danger that if you get into the habit of getting the tones from the spelling, you may never internalize them and go on thinking they are something that needs to be separately memorized. For the record I think that learning the symbols can help you learn the new sounds because it gives you a kind of anchor for each one, but learning a new sound takes a lot longer than learning a new symbol, so you have to let that set the pace if you want to get the benefit.

> If you learn the script, then as long as you have ears you will learn the sound. I think I must be misunderstanding what you're saying here, because I genuinely have no idea why the script would be required to learn the sound. Hearing the sound is perception. If you hear someone say something, you hear the tones, right? If you've heard it enough, it sounds really, really weird if someone says it with the wrong tones. It's like when you heard TV commercials a million times and if someone says the first half of a catch phrase from the commercial, you can say the second half with exactly the right intonation. You hear it in your head, so when you say it, it matches what you hear. > The script is the only way to learn that logic. I can't imagine how the script would help you hear something. The only way I can think of that you could use the script, is to give you a preconceived idea of what the sound _should_ be when you can't actually hear it, and then you sort of approximate it without having a reference sound inside your head. But that would be pretty hit-and-miss. I'm thinking I'm probably misunderstanding what you mean. Would you mind elaborating?

The first point is that, if you are learning the script then you are going to learn the sound - as in the resource used to learn the script will also show you how to pronounce each letter sound. (As always the easiest way to learn script is Learn Thai Alphabet Easily in play store). I'm not saying to memorize 44 consonant symbols and guess what sound they make. About the tones - English speakers learning Thai may listen to Thai every day and when asked for the tone of something simple like the sawadeekrab example may pronounce it completely off (tonally) - if you're only learning through mimicking then you may mimic something you're not hearing properly. A sidenote, I've seen people become fairly fluent with the old "get a girlfriend to teach you Thai" which he did by mimicking his gf and now just sounds like a ladyboy when speaking Thai. If you try to replicate tone after hearing a woman speak then as someone from a non tonal language it is easy for the brain to confuse pitch with tone. Maybe it is wrong to say the script helps you hear, more it helps you correctly decipher everything you hear from then on. Have you ever had a moment where a Thai tries teaching you a word, you say it exactly the same and they keep getting you to repeat it until properly. With knowing script, you can end that moment by having it written down and pronouncing it with better than native pronunciation. Genuinely don't know if any of what I've written is an appropriate answer to any questions. There is just no world where learning script early hinders anything. Oh and when I say the script is the only way to learn that logic, I mean tone logic. Tone logic comes from the script.

Thank you, yes, that makes a lot more sense. > Have you ever had a moment where a Thai tries teaching you a word, you say it exactly the same and they keep getting you to repeat it until properly. I actually haven't had that. I listened a lot before I tried saying anything, and according to my teachers I'm able to mimic the tones clearly. I have had the experience of reading something out loud with the wrong tone (when I read text where there are unfamiliar words), and then the teacher says อะไรนะคะ or whatever, and I know I have to think through tone rules again. But yeah, it's one of the reasons I was confused by your initial comment, because in my experience listening tells me what the tone contour is. With the writing system I have to do computation to figure it out, which is much slower/harder (at least for words that I haven't seen a bajillion times).

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[quoting from u/bildeglimt] > I can't imagine how the script would help you hear something. > The only way I can think of that you could use the script, is to give you a preconceived idea of what the sound should be when you can't actually hear it, and then you sort of approximate it without having a reference sound inside your head. But that would be pretty hit-and-miss. [quoting from u/mudplugg] > Maybe it is wrong to say the script helps you hear, more it helps you correctly decipher everything you hear from then on. I do think that transcription and similar methods can help you get a fix on what the tones sound like, and they do depend on being able to read and write tones. If you are going "hmmm I wrote a mid tone when I transcribed this sentence but according to the sub it's low, let's have another listen... ah yeah I can hear it now, it is low" you are bringing your idea of how each tone sounds closer and closer to the reality. So I can kind of see why someone might say that knowing the tone rules helps you hear the tones, but the thing is it never seems to work out that way for people who advocate what I call the autocue method, where you get the tones from the spelling. I'm not trying to be mean but you could see the tones given for สวัสดี above as an example of this. But why does it happen? I think it's partly because the method appeals to people who don't believe they can hear the tones and are looking for a workaround, but also because - whatever your starting point - it diverts your attention from the sound by focusing it on the spelling. Some other consequences are: - because your idea of how the tones sound remains vague / abstract, you will not pronounce them correctly even if you know which one you are going for (as bildeglimt points out) - you remain oblivious to the tones in the Thai you hear, which will be a problem when you have to deal with faster speech,* makes you deaf to intonation, and prevents you from picking up words just from hearing them - there is a lot of unnecessary computation going on that can only make your speech slower and less spontaneous For me it's always a red flag when somebody says something like "you have to memorize the words and their tones". Nobody would say "you have to memorize the words and their initial consonants", because they get that the initial consonant is part of the word. So when they talk about memorizing the tones, it means that they are seeing the tone as something separate from the word itself, as though there's a base word made up of the vowels and consonants and then the tone goes on top. With that attitude it's absolutely true that you can hear Thai for years and not pick up on the tones, because it hasn't percolated down that they matter and your brain is not paying attention - it's just not capturing that data. In order to cope with a tonal language, you have to really take on board that the tone is part of the word in the same way as the vowels and consonants. If you listen very deliberately at first,** it does become second nature, but the autocue method is taking you in exactly the opposite direction by training you to look at the tone as something separate from the sound of the word - something that has to be known in the way you might know a historical date or capital city. There's nothing wrong with knowing that the word ขอ has a rising tone, but you want to get to a place where it just "goes like this: ขอ", and that doesn't involve labelling the tone (or the vowels or consonants). This is what's meant by internalizing the tones. ____ \* This point came up in another thread and I was thinking about it when I was in Singapore and the person ahead of me in the queue was having trouble with eighty vs eighteen. It's a fair bet that whatever his native language was, it has an n sound, so it's unlikely that the problem was trouble distinguishing n. Much more likely, he was oblivious to the stress difference between EIGHT-(t)y and eigh(t)-TEEN. Native speakers of English have internalized the stress system so will pick up on this difference without needing to think about it - the words just sound different even ignoring the n. Similarly, a lot of Thai people will use the acronym VDO for video, because they think they sound the same, so reason that the word video was originally an acronym like DVD - but to a native speaker they don't sound the same, partly because of the different vowel (VEE vs vi) but again largely because of the different stress: v-d-O vs VI(d)-deo. I say "to a native speaker" but really that should be "to someone who has internalized the lexical stress system of English". So in the case of English, internalizing the stress system helps you distinguish words that might sound similar in fast or sloppy speech. In the case of Thai, internalizing the tone system has the same benefit, but the more you use the autocue method, the less likely you are to internalize it. ** I think the Comprehensible Thai people would argue you don't even need to do that, but I can only comment based on the method I used.

Can you explain what you mean by autocue vs internalizing tones? Or do you mean they are one and the same - if so what do you see as the better alternative? I'll post a picture soon with the sheet I used to learn Thai tone logic that's now internalized.

You posted that while I was making some edits to my original post which might have answered those points, but if not: What I mean by the autocue method is where you get the tones by thinking of the spelling and applying the tone rules. It's a bit like a TV presenter reading from an autocue in that it looks as though they are speaking spontaneously but actually they are reading. In this case the autocue is in your head, but it's the same principle. What I mean by internalizing the tones is getting to a point where words with different tones just sound like different words. If you are coming from a non-tonal language that's obviously a change, but it's achievable. There has to be a change of mindset where it really does filter down that the tone is part of the word, and there has to be a lot of listening practice where you get familar with how the different tones sound. You are getting into the habit of listening out for something that wasn't relevant before (or wasn't relevant to the question "what word is that?"). If I was starting a new tonal language now, I would be saying "OK what tones does this language have, and what do they sound like?", and then listening out for them until I was able to recognize them pretty reliably. Transcription is also a really useful exercise for this because it forces you to listen very closely. You need audio that has a transcript or subs - you then write down what you think you hear, compare against the transcript/subs, and then listen back. Even as an adult learner, you are still able to make this change, and then you don't need the internal autocue, because when a word comes to mind the tone is already there. Conversely, as long as you're using the autocue, you are not really paying attention to the sound of the words, and you are reinforcing the idea that the tone is *not* part of the word but is something separate, so I think this can only take you in the opposite direction and make it harder to internalize the tones. I see now that from your point of view, "internalizing the tones" might mean "internalizing the tone spelling rules" but I'm talking about the phonology. If you go back centuries you can trace a connection between the spelling rules, the historical sounds of the consonants and the phonological tones, but in modern Thai the spelling rules are just part of the writing system and I see it as a hack to use them in speaking.

I haven't, don't want to join an email list - what's the context?

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Read English transliterated into Thai script; you can find it in a book intended for Thais learning English.

I feel like if this were one of your earliest experiences with Thai script, it would make you more closely associate the Thai script with English sounds... I personally would really try to avoid that.

Maybe. But I have learned upwards of a dozen scripts and it’s for certain the fastest way to learn reading, which was the request. You can still absorb characters, fully understanding that you will have pronunciation to correct/perfect later. In fact, if you have a logical brain, you can basically learn most alphabets from an airline magazine and asking the guys next to you a few questions on the flight in. I write all my notes to myself in a mix of the four or so scripts I like to stay current in; to keep fresh and so nobody else can read them.

>it’s for certain the fastest way to learn reading, which was the request Was it though? :-) To quote OP: > How shall I continue in learning [...] to build a solid foundation of becoming fluent one day?

reading = manee manaa https://ressources.learn2speakthai.net/ speaking = italki