This is a great place to learn Thai!

Sawasdee krab!  Welcome to the Learning Thai Wiki.  Use this site as a supplement to your Thai language course as a learner or an instructor, or use it to learn the basics of the Thai language. Take a look at the calendar below to check on class schedules, upcoming events at Wat Buddhanusorn, and other important dates.

Keep scrolling down for some information on what this site is all about, and to get started!  If you haven't visited it yet, click here to visit the launch website for more helpful information about navigating and editing this wiki.

This 30Boxes calendar plugin will be phased out on June 30, click here to learn more.

The Thai language, or pahsa Thai, is very different from English and other Western languages.  First of all, it is a tonal language, using the pitch of the vowel sounds to convey part of the meaning of words.  Unlike English, a word that is spoken with a rising tone (think of the rise in tone that you use at the end of a question) can have a completely different meaning than a word with the same sounds spoken with a falling tone.  To Thai speakers, the tonal qualities of the language are as second nature as emphasising a sylable of a word is to Western language speakers.  For Western speakers however, it adds an entirely new dimension to speaking.

The Thai written language uses an alphabet that is completely different from any Western language alphabet. There are a total of 42 consonants and more than nine vowels in Thai. To complicate the written language language further, it must convey the spoken language's tonal information just as vowels and consonants convey sound information.  It does this in several different ways.  Some examples include:

• Using different consonants that make the same sound to give clues to the tones used by surrounding vowels.

• Using tone marks to indicate changes in tone.

• Using combinations of silent consonants to change the tone of a vowel.

This site gives you tools to learn how to write the letters of the Thai alphabet, how they sound, how to tell which tone to use, and how to form them into words.  It also contains a vocabulary list that is growing daily, and some ideas of how to use this site in a Thai language program.  Because this site is a wiki, it is ever-changing and growing to keep up with the needs of learners and instructors like you!

To get started, use the Navigator panel along the right side of the screen to select a topic.  The Navigator panel is arrange like the branches of a tree, with major topics listed first (the tree's limbs).  Clicking a major topic will reveal a list of subtopics, and those subtopics till take you to individual wiki pages.  We'd suggest that you check out the Instructors or Students page under "Using this Wiki" section first, as it contains several helpful hints and tips on using this Wiki from an instructor's and a student's point of view.

If you would like to expand the Navigator panel to see all of the folders at once (or make it smaller to save space), hover your mouse cursor over the small black bar at the bottom of the panel, click and hold, and drag your mouse up or down to resize it.

Feel free to browse and pick out topics that interest you, or fit your learning needs.  The first few sections cover the basics of how the letters are written, how they fit together into "classes", or tone families, and the Thai numbers.  The following sections introduce vocabulary words and exercise ideas, as well as a "playground" where you can create exercises for your students or fellow learners and some more advanced aspects of the language in the "Exceptions" section.