Free Thai language learning resources
I’ve been learning Thai for the past 20 months. This list is by no means complete or comprehensive, what works for me doesn’t have to work for you, etc etc. That said: I’ve used most of these and found them useful, I thought you might, too. Have fun!
Youtube channels with free video lessons:
There are tons of wonderful teachers on youtube; this is by no means an exhaustive list. The three channels listed here are comprehensive, long-running, and updated regularly; if you have other favourites, please reblog and append!
Comprehensible Thai is a channel that teaches Thai in Thai, from zero, via the comprehensible input method. They have videos from total beginner through upper intermediate/lower advanced levels available.
Learn Thai with Mod – Mod runs a language school that offers good, structured group classes; she and her co-teachers often upload short videos about specific aspects of Thai. The channel has been around for a long time and they cover a lot of topics, including grammar points.
Thai Lessons by New (Learn Thai one Word one Sentence) – lots of good vocabulary and situational phrases
Advanced Thai with Kruu Momm – one of my favourites, Momm’s a star. Not included in the upper list only because this is definitely more of an intermediate-advanced resource.
Thai with Grace – I knew of Grace via her polyglot channel and travel vlogs before I realised she also teaches Thai. Fun stuff.
Kat talks Thai – I believe Kat is more active on instagram (@kattalksthai), but these are still really neat.
Perth Nakhun’s Basic Thai playlist
Honourable mentions because they’re interesting and can be nice supplements (yes, the video titles on these channels tend to be clickbaity, the content is useful, though):
Stu Jay Raj: Stu is a polyglot based in Thailand. His channel is a bit of a mixed bag, but he has a very interesting approach to languages and sometimes does foreign accent reduction / accent analysis sessions on his channel (with consent and participation of those whose speech he dissects).
Thai Talk with Paddy: Paddy is an Australian who learned Thai when he was a volunteer in Thailand, he’s kept it up. Fun things about language learning and culture
I’m assuming many folks on here who are interested in Thai already watch some Thai shows (yes I’m stereotyping but also this is tumblr), which means you’re spending time listening to Thai.
Netflix, Youtube, WeTV, and Viki all have several Thai shows with English subtitles available. The Youtube channel of Thai broadcasting giant GMMTV has English subtitles on nearly all of their uploaded series, some series are also subtitled in languages other than English. one31 is another huge channel; they have English subtitles on some series and some series also have subtitles in Thai. There’s tons more – find a rec list and a Thai show that sounds like you’d enjoy it, chances are you’ll be able to watch it for free, legally, on youtube.
You can use the youtube controls (or the ones on netflix) to turn the speed down to 75% —this can make it a lot easier to catch what’s being said. 50% gets so draggy that I personally find it almost harder to understand, but ymmv—give it a shot!
https://lingopolo.org/thai/ has real-life recordings for listening practice; sign-up is required but it’s literally just an e-mail-address, user name and password. Using the site is free.
https://www.activethai.com/ has a section dedicated to learning the tones (under “Overview of Thai Tones”) including a self-test for listening that I found very useful.
I will always, always, ALWAYS recommend learning to read the Thai script. All available romanisations for Thai have drawbacks, and besides, you learned to read English with its “though through thorough tough thought”, you can damn well learn to read Thai. I promise it will help you improve your pronunciation (yes, really) and overall understanding of how the language works.
Learn-to-Read-Thai resources that seem comprehensive and like they should do everything in one:
Anki decks “Read Thai PHASE 1 - The Consonants“, “Read Thai PHASE 2 - Thai Vowels“, “Read Thai PHASE 3 - Consonant Classes” and “Read Thai PHASE 4 - Tone Rules” by Khruu Gaan (ครูกานต์). Anki is probably the most powerful spaced repetition software I have ever used. It’s free on all desktops and android. These decks have sound.
Memrise course “Read Thai: A Complete Guide to Reading Thai“
Other resources I used (In hindsight, I feel like I should’ve picked one resource to learn to read from and stuck with it; I think I was rushing and made things more complicated than need be for myself with my hodgepodge mix-and-match approach. But hey, I can read now.)
https://www.activethai.com/ – the site I started with. Teaches the consonants separated by class and with sound. The only reason this is no longer my top recommendation is that I ended up using this alongside a resource that helped me memorise what the words used to represent the letters actually mean because the site itself didn’t tell me, and I wanted that easy way to have 44 vocabulary words ready as soon as you’re done learning your consonants, and it gives you access to neat mnemonics such as ไก่จิกเด็กตาย(เฎ็กฏาย)บนปากโอ่ง.
The chart on Wikipedia’s English article on the Thai Script
the reference section of Thai-Language.com
In order to better learn to read Thai written in different fonts (modern and handwriting fonts can be tough at first), the Thai Script typographical styles overview on Thai-language.com was a huge help, as was throwing simple phrases things into gdocs and messing around to see how different fonts made them look. This chart from sanukmaak.com also helped.
Speaking and pronunciation
The hardest one for any new language for most folks. For me personally, finding someone who speaks the language and is willing to correct me was an absolute necessity, but I know that’s not always an option. If you’re going it on your own, make sure you check out the resources above for learning to hear the tones and those sounds and sound clusters not present in your own language correctly first.
Things to try on your own:
shadowing: Whenever someone on a show utters a sentence you think might be useful, or provide a useful pattern, or something just sounds cool, rewind and try to speak along as they say it, trying to make it sound as close to their pronunciation as you can.
try to record yourself and listen back – yes, it’s cringe af but it will HELP.
memorising short sentences and phrases: tying back to the section above, there’s a ton of youtube videos that is “phrases to use in [situation]” that are great for targeted learning if you’re up for it
self talk (cautiously! don’t want to cement bad pronunciation habits)
if you’re linguistically inclined: looking up descriptions on how to make a sound correctly sometimes helps, as does watching videos of folks who’ve successfully learned the language.
once you’ve learned to read: find sentences to read somewhere (twitter, a textbook, whatever) and read them into your phone’s dictation engine. See if the software understands you correctly. Adjust as needed until it does.
Websites and apps to find language partners or (paid) tutors
Like any other app where you ‘meet people’, please exercise caution on these.
italki (mainly for finding tutors and teachers, but you can find language partners on the forums)
Preply (web/app) (for finding tutors/teachers)
hellotalk (app only, iOS/android) for finding language partners – free to use basic features like messaging, voice rooms, etc; has annoying ads
tandem (app only, iOS/android) for finding language partners – free to use basic features, has ads
any other app or website that’ll let you meet people, like local facebook groups (yes really), instagram, etc
(note: Neither hellotalk nor tandem allow users to sign up without selecting a binary gender. it sucks. I’ve seen people who managed to circumvent this on Hellotalk by signing up via apple ID (? I think), but it’s hearsay and I have not managed to do so myself.)
Books (a book) that are (is) worth spending money on imo
Higbie & Thinsan: Thai Reference Grammar. The Structure of Spoken Thai. Orchid Press: Bangkok, 2002.
Yes, it’s ancient in textbook terms. It’s not perfect, but it’s still the best reference grammar for Thai I’ve come across so far, and I use it frequently.
Stu Jay Raj has two videos in particular that I, as a phonetics-and-phonology-loving person, loved and found extremely useful and wished I’d watched before I started to try and learn the script: Thai Vowels for Dummies in 5 Min v2 - A System Impossible to Forget and Thai Bites Extended Edition - Transliterating Thai using IPA. I realise these may be overwhelming and less helpful for people with no prior phonetics or phonology training, but they helped me so much it’d feel amiss not to include them.
Resources I recommend AGAINST using when starting out
drops/hello words – seems like their Thai courses have been created using machine translation that wasn’t sufficiently proofread. They will assign you nouns in places of the corresponding verb or false cognates, and that’s within the first 10 or so lessons. Might be useful once the level where a learner can tell “ah, yeah, that’s … not right” has been reached? idk.
transcription as generated by google translate: BURN IT WITH FIRE. it’s a transliteration, i.e. 1-to-1 representation of 1 Thai letter = 1 Latin letter (extended), it’s not phonemic, it’s not going to help ANYONE (and those who can make sense of it presumably already read Thai and would be better off with just Thai script). Just. Stop.
Google translate as a dictionary: still shitty but not AS bad as the transcription function. Still, for the love of all that you hold dear, please, save yourself the pain and confusion and just use thai2english or thai-language.com instead.
And that’s that from me, friends. Yeeting this into the void before I second-guess myself more. Please append additional resources!
Edited to fix a couple of typos and errors on 2023-06-15
