Shall we learn Thai?
This question is one of the most frequently asked questions when people are interested in learning a language in the Southeast Asia. Shall we invest in the language only spoken in one country? Do we have enough time to memorize the alphabet set with 44 letters? Can we learn only conversation? Goodness me, there are tones in the language. How can we scale them correctly? Some people tell that Thai people often laugh at those speaking Thai not correctly.
All of these are the answer of themselves!
Tones characterises some languages in Southeast Asia, that is, Lao and Vietnamese also have tones. Not only tones but also sentence structures are shared among Thai, lao, Khmer and Vietnamese. It can be claimed that you can think Thai and speak Lao, Khmer and Vietnamese.
Don’t be afraid of the alphabet system. It is not only used in Thai but shared with Lao and Khmer.
The alphabet system will reveal how much people in Southeast Asia have been influenced by the Hindi culture and linguistically by the Pali-Sanskrit language. A story to tell, many years ago, I had some students from Myanmar. They were military officers from different regions in Myanmar. Apart from basic English, I found that Pali-Sanskrit was very helpful because a lot of Pali-Sanskrit words are used both in Thai and Burmese. The same story happens with the Khmer language.
The Handbook of Thai Language is like a sum of my experience of teaching Thai to foreigners for 20 years at the Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University. It is also my honour to work with the Southeast Asian Program, Graduate School, Chulalongkorn University. In this book, you will get to know the Thai language from scratch! That is, it starts with the sound system, both consonant and vowel. Then it leads you to the script or alphabet system, words and sentences. To write this book, it is intended to use the simplified English because I want to relax my readers when they grasp academic stuff.
Champagne
June 26, 2021
Comments