The original purpose of the spelling test program was to help me learn Thai words, and explore its sounds and grammar constructions. The spelling test program was designed to make this relatively easy. I later updated the program to support any language, in theory.

Creating a spelling test program for the Thai language is a challenge. Many people will not even want to learn to write the language but just want to learn to speak it. But even that is difficult because the sounds you have produce are so alien to normal western speakers.

There are several aspects of the Thai language which make it more difficult to learn (for western speakers) than other European languages.

1) The alphabet uses completely unfamiliar characters

2) The actual sounds you have to produce are sometimes different from those in western languages, and cannot even be written down precisely with English characters.

3) The vowels are grouped into two classes, called long vowels and short vowels. You need to be able to clearly say the two groups of sounds, which are otherwise identical.

4) Each word is spoken with one of five possible tones. If you say a word with a different tone then you change the meaning completely. The tones are classified as low tone, mid tone, high tone, rising tone and falling tone but these definitions are quite loose. For example, rising does not mean rising in a straight line, but is actually rising and then falling slightly.

Like all language learning, you cannot substitute hard learning for some quick fix options; however you can take actions which will make your learning experience easier.

Action 1

You need to get a basic grasp of the Thai alphabet, in order to transcribe all the written examples in your text books into your own pronunciation guide. However you definitely do not need to be even remotely fluent in Thai writing to do this. There are multiple web resources for learning the Thai alphabet. In particular, the excellent http://www.slice-of-thai.com/language/ and http://www.thai-language.com/.

Action 2

Only use text books which include:

1) The Thai script

2) The pronunciation. It does not really matter which system is used, so long as it has a complete and unambiguous presentation of sounds. If you know one system then the rest are fairly easy to learn. You will be converting all their examples into your own chosen system in any case, using this program.

3) The vowel lengths

4) The five tones

If the book does not have these elements then you will not be able to progress in your learning. Get another text book in this case.

Action 3

Use a web site which provides plenty of recorded examples of the pronunciation of all the possible sounds. This is absolutely crucial. If you start off reading and saying the sounds incorrectly it will set you back months.

Action 4

Choose a transliteration system that you can read easily. Your goal must be to find a system which allows you to look at the transcribed word and accurately and easily pronounce it without much effort. There are two flavours of system.

1) A system that uses non-standard characters to represent unusual Thai sounds e.g. เดิน is represented in some systems as dəən.

2) The system uses English characters only, e.g. deern

A good description of different Thai transliteration systems is found here.

http://slice-of-thai.com/pronunciation-guides/#paiboonplus

Action 5

The general assumption by most books is that you will memorise the transcribed Thai words. However a system that is easy to read (in order to correctly pronounce the word) may actually be extremely difficult to remember (depending very much on how your mind works). The principle problem, in these books, is that the Thai tonal system is applied in a brute force way, which makes remembering the words correctly extremely hard work for some people (e.g. me).

If you read up a little on the structure of the language, it is possible to greatly reduce the amount of word data you need to remember.

The next web page explains this in more detail. It is up to you if you want to utilise the information or not.

Learning the Thai Tonal System