Catherine Wentworth 
The Loi Krathong song in Thai… My Thai teacher just loves to sing. And sometimes, right in the middle of a lesson, she will stand up and belt out a Thai song. Often, she will drag me up too. Then, swinging her arms like a conductor, we prance around my sofa. In unison. Singing loud. … Read more
A spicy way to order Thai food… I’ve been eating Thai food for like a gazillion years now and while I can order เผ็ดเผ็ด /pèt-pèt/ just fine, what arrives is almost never “up to me”. Tom Stephan has the same difficulties, only in a slightly different direction. Tom: I wish I knew how to say … Read more
I’m all for the easy way out… Learning how to read Thai is often a stumbling block for students of the Thai language. Some students have opted to forgo the pleasure. Others have stops and starts. Then there are those who soar through all with ease (and those, we admire through clinched teeth). I’m of … Read more
I spent hours collecting top verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, numbers, word phrases, past, present and future tenses, with help from my Thai teacher and Thai friends As you can imagine, it was a lot of work. With it partly complete, I decided to share my efforts here. For easy viewing, the pdf is designed in … Read more
The Double อยู่ construct is used to describe an unexpected or surprise action. Depending on how colorful you want to be, it’s interesting how this construct can be translated (or rather, interpreted) into English in so many ways. Pattern The Double อยู่ pattern is usually: อยู่ๆ … ก็ … อยู่ๆ: อยู่ อยู่. It’s a doubling … Read more
In this post, we will use the vocabulary from the High Frequency Thai Vocabulary List to work with Yes/No question patterns. Please note that there are many many Thai question patterns and as usual we are only going to give examples of a few of the more common ones here. Yes/No Thai and English Question … Read more
Please find below a list of the top 100 Thai words for beginners learning spoken Thai. This compilation is based on suggestions from Thai learners. We would greatly appreciate your input on any additional Thai words that should be included or any that may not be necessary at this stage. Please don’t hesitate to provide … Read more
To create the list, we started with a list of Thai vocabularies from our learn Thai resource. Combining choice lists in a spreadsheet, we handed it over to a programmer, Mark Hollow, who then collated 17,000++ words down to 6000 (give or take). After adding the vocabulary from many grammar books as a quality marker, … Read more
Adjectives are words that describe nouns. Thai and English treat adjectives a bit differently. The word order is different. English uses adjective + noun as in “big dog”, and “white rabbit”. The Thai word order is the opposite, noun + adjective, as in “หมาตัวใหญ่” and “กระต่ายสีขาว”. Thai adjectives also do not use the “be” verb … Read more
Learning how to read and write the Thai alphabet may seem like quite the challenge, especially if you’re a native English speaker. After all, Thai is filled with tonal rules that can change the meaning of similarly sounding words in an instant. This can be confusing when you’re first starting your language learning journey. That … Read more