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Saturday, January 26, 2008

To Thailand Soon ไป เมือง ไทย ใน ไม่ นาน

Working this out has taken a while. The American Jewish World Service (AJWS) had a spot for me at one NGO, but political issues ruled that out. So they worked out another one. I'm not sure how much I can blog about specifics, but I will keep blogging in general. If all works out I'll be in Chieng Mai for about 2 1/2 months. Will be helping with management activities. English level is low to non-existent I'm told, so I have to get my Thai back up to speed. Actually it was pretty serviceable last spring when we were there and I have been listening to the audio for "Thai for Advanced Readers." I need to start practicing writing again. My spelling's terrible.

Here's a page from the reader. This story is about Thais in the US.



Here's the title with a little help.



Two of the words in the title are in the title of this post. (The 'h' after the K and the T means you blow air out of your mouth when you say them. So Th is like a T sound, but T alone is the same sound but without the air coming out. A little like a D, but Thais have two different sounds. KH is like a K, K without the h is a K without the puff of air, or like the G in 'go'. So, that's why Thai, has an h, but isn't pronounced thigh.)

I was trying to find a website with the Thai alphabet. But then I found this one which looks like a great source for studying Thai.

As I keep looking for a simple Thai alphabet page with the English sounds I'm finding a lot of neat resources for learning Thai. Here's a page that shows how to write the first few consonants in the Thai alphabet.

OK, after much time exploring Thai sites, many with interesting stuff, I finally found a reasonably simple Thai alphabet with English phonetics. It has more than you need, but it's good.
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2 comments:

  1. Tea N. CrumpetSaturday, January 26, 2008 at 9:26:00 PM AKST

    That is a fun site-- the writing is lovely. I feel like I am sharing something with people from thousands of years ago when I look at it. When they developed it, how could they have envisioned their country? What did they foresee? The scholars from so long ago working on that-- it's exciting, isn't it?

    ReplyDelete
  2. SteveSunday, January 27, 2008 at 12:34:00 AM AKST

    Sorry to burst your bubble there, but the Thai alphabet is a pretty recent invention. Around 1200. King Ramkamhaeng checked out various alphabets. It's basically got Sanskrit roots.

    ReplyDelete

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