Teach Yourself Thai Book/CD Pack (Teach Yourself Language Complete Courses)

A great book to get you started in learning Thai. It is quite gentle in progressing the ideas that every serious learner needs to cope with and has a strong method of familiarity with Thai letters.
I agree with other reviews that the pronounciation of u in words like nung is quite confusing because to all intents and purposes it should be pronounced nang, but there is a lot of enthusiasm in this book.
Will really get you moving along!!

Excellent study aid to go from beginner to intermediate level (14/14 people found this helpful)

I have to say that this is the first and only book that I have been using to study Thai so far and I have been extremely pleased with my progress using it.
It has 14 chapters and although starting using relatively basic conversation structures gradually builds into more complex situations. It also gives you a good base of the Thai language so that you have the ability to ask Thai's the meaning of any words you do not understand etc. and also gives you the key components of most conversations ie: why? when? how? who? yes/no can I?, could you? etc.
I think the teaching of the Thai alphabet and reading of script is done in an excellent manner and I am now able to competently read Thai script passages relatively quickly. I would certainly recommend that anybody wanting to learn the language also learn to read and write because I have found that this has helped me greatly when trying to pronounce a word that I have not seen before correctly instead of relying on romanized translations which do vary considerably.
I have been to Thailand twice since I started using this book and as a previous reviewer said, Thais could clearly understand passages and situations I have learned in the book and this helped my confidence immeasurably.
I would highly recommend this to anybody looking to start learning Thai, I think it represents real value for money and I could not have been happier with what I have gained from it.

Could do better... (48/58 people found this helpful)

I have a degree in oriental languages and am an avid collector of language study books (I've got at least 30 TY ones) and this is not the best of them - but it's not the worst either.

I'm aware that the author is the leading lecturer of Thai in the UK, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's the best writer of a Teach Yourself book (He should perhaps have looked as his colleague Dana Healy's TY Vietnamese for an example of a better TY book). That's not to say there isn't good stuff in it - there's just not enough vocab and perhaps even grammar - and I don't see the point in having a short one-way dictionary in the back - all the new content should be given in each chapter so you don't have to go scouring around for it (but then you should get a separate dictionary anyway).
It's probably best to get the tape, but the actors on it are rubbish and speak with no emotion, so it's a bit of a drag.
One bug bear I have about the transliteration is that it's written for "southerners" (as in the home counties of England).
Now I don't pronounce the letter "u" like an "a" like southerners do, so when I first read out the words like "yung-ngai" or "nung" as a northerner it didn't make sense to the Thais - that's we have the IPA isn't it?!, but I do like the way he writes "gk" and "bp" for those inbetween consonants.

The main disappointment with this book is the lack of content. I've seen the Colloquial Thai one (which is worse than this one), and that has much more in it: but is not presented well; doesn't develop enough in the early chapters; and doesn't contain the script much.
This TY book does have plenty of script and it's in a nice font and conveniently written on one side of the romanised text, so you can cover one side and challenge yourself.

I actually first tried to learn Thai with a Lonely Planet and Rough Guide phrasebooks (which have better romanisation) out in the sticks with no dictionary, and I think this TY book could benefit with some of that phrasebook structure giving you a few real-world useful sentences and phrases to get started with.

I've taken this book with me to Thailand, and inflicted it upon my Siamese family, and it's OK, but frankly it's only a little more useful than the Rough Guide phrasebook - which is written by the same author! Hence the title "Could do better" - because he obviously can (My Siamese family also preferred the Rough Guide book, because they could use it a bit too!)!

In general, In terms of content TY books could do with being a bit more like phrasebooks and being in ring-bound format because the pages nearly always start to come out after a while, and you need a large pair of bulldog clips; and they could also do with having the nice paper quality of the 90's editions - the new yellow ones hide their horrid thin and rough yellowy paper behind pretty photos - a return to the nasty blue ones of the '80s. (I suppose they'll end up being 100% software things anyway eventually, but if they're going to make paper books they could at least improve the quality).

Not an easy language (29/31 people found this helpful)

I struggled to learn almost any Thai language prior to obtaining this book/CD set although I visit Thailand on business regularly and had other teaching aids, nothing seemed to "gel". The teach yourself book really starts the learner off at the most basic level and encourages simple dialogues from the word go. The phrasing is clear and is built up as you progress though the various chapters. New words, syntax and dialogues are reinforced with simple listen and repeat excercises and pronunciation guides in English. Reading and writing is also handled but can be ignored without hindering progress on the spoken word and really only starts to be necessary at a relatively advanced level. The most important aspect of this course for me is that Thais actually understood me when I used the language featured in this book within the situations illustrated which is great for your confidence. I would thoroughly recommend any serious student of the language to start with this course. I still use mine even though my competence in the langauge is now quite advanced. If you really want to learn Thai this course book would be cheap at twice the price.

Teach Yourself Thai Book/CD Pack (Teach Yourself Language Complete Courses)

David Smyth, Smyth David

Reader Reviews:

This is the one to start with!!! (4/4 people found this helpful)

Excellent study aid to go from beginner to intermediate level (14/14 people found this helpful)

Could do better... (48/58 people found this helpful)

Not an easy language (29/31 people found this helpful)

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