Book Review:
60 Minutes to Learn the Thai Alphabet
by Doug Anderson
 This
seems incredible. Only 60 minutes!? To beginners, the Thai alphabet
seems to be horrendously complicated and arbitrary, especially
when it comes to the letter classes and tones. And the vowels
don't follow a regular left-to-right order (or even right-to-left).
And there are no spaces between words…
Yet it is possible to learn to recognize and sound out the
words relatively quickly, tones and all. I think for most people,
the most effective approach is to associate the shape of the
letter with an image of some kind that gives you a clue to the
sound of the letter. This is because we learn visually.
 Here
is the CH letter and it kind of looks like a chariot. In "60
Minutes", this is called a "Chariot
Traveler", the idea
being that the sound of the letter is "CH" at the beginning
or middle of a word, but "T" at the end of the word.
So far so good. If you can see the picture of a chariot in your
mind's eye then you will have no trouble remembering the sound
of the letter.
In addition, the background of the image reminds you whether
the letter is a low, middle, or high class letter. This is important
to know when working out the correct tone of the word.
"60 Minutes" now includes a way to remember the
Thai numbers as well as an intriguing visual story method to
remember the tone rules.
However, there are some fundamental problems with "60
Minutes". Firstly, although many consonants have different
endings when transliterated using the official scheme, it is
wrong! There are only four letters that are pronounced differently
at the ends of words. The "R" and "L" letters
and one of the "Y" letters become "N" at
the end of a word. For example, "Mahidol" is pronounced
MA-HEE-DOHN. For all other letters, the sound remains the same.
What many foreigners (and it appears the Thai government also)
don't seem to realize is that Thai people don't actually enunciate
the final consonants as in English or other European languages.
We say a "pack..uh of cigarettesssss". Thais simply
shape the final letters, but don't actually sound it out at all:
"pa(k) o(p) sigare(t)". So if you could hear the final
"CH" then it might sound almost like a "T",
but it is still really shaped as if you are about to say "CH".
And, actually, so far as I can tell, there aren't any words in
Thai that end in  anyway.
The other fundamental problem is to do with the tones. In
order to understand how the tones work, you need to devise a
completely non-Thai mnemonic system, because the Thai rules are
nightmarishly complex. When I first started learning Thai, I
knew it was a tonal language and didn't worry much about it because
I knew there were tone marks that would tell me the correct tone.
Wrong! That would be simple and easy, but this is Thailand.
In "Read Thai in a Day" (reviewed elsewhere), a
much better system is used than in "60 Minutes", based
on a kind of gender method, where the letters are either boy,
girl, or ladyboy! The tones are derived from the archetypal
differences in personality between the sexes.
And, except for a few of the images, I don't feel the visual
associations work. The picture in the letter should leap out
at you. The example above is kind of obvious, but many of the
others are simply too obscure, especially as there are so many
similar-looking letters in the Thai alphabet. One needs to identify
the salient features that distinguish one similar-looking letter
from another.
Saying that, 60 Minutes is a complete system for learning
the Thai writing system, including numbers. And, once you have
correctly associated each consonant with its background (i.e.
class), there is a way to work out the tone rules based on visual
stories, for the tone marks, and memory tricks, for when there
are no tone marks.
Finally, it's not sufficient just being able to recognize
the letters of the alphabet in order to be able to read Thai
texts. One still has to understand how the letters are put together
to make words and sentences. And one has to practice reading
by working through graded exercises. "60 Minutes" doesn't
address these issues satisfactorily (if at all).
Nevertheless, it is currently only $20 (reduced from $60),
so if all you want is a cheap,quick and dirty way to remember
many (but not all) of the Thai letters then it might be sufficient
to get you started.
"Read Thai in a Day" on the other hand is more expensive
(£35 or $57) and takes longer (about two weeks in real
time). But for this you get a comprehensive interactive, self-study
program, with audio, practice exercises, a remarkable approach
to understanding the tones (and some of the curiously complex
exceptions). And it also includes bizarre story associations
to help you to memorize the 400-word Thai vocabulary used for
the reading exercises.
Click
here for more information on 60 Minutes to Learn the Thai Alphabet.(Opens
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Click
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