|
A friend of mine here in Bangkok, Gary Orman, has a company called Rapid Language Learning. He has designed an innovative way of learning to read Thai using strange looking cartoon characters to represent the Thai letters. His ebook uses a completely non-linguistic approach to learning the sounds and tones. Instead of complicated classes and tone levels, each letter has a gender - boy, girl or ladyboy. The tones can then be derived from the personality characteristics of each letter. There is nothing politically correct about this ebook. Boys and girls are fit and sporty, but girls are vain and emotional, and ladyboys are exhibitionistic drama queens, sickly, clumsy and sexually depraved! The idea is that the weirder and more bizarre and more shocking the picture is in your head, the more it will stick. And this helps to remember the shapes and sounds and tones of the letters. In fact, the entire approach is based on visual thinking and imagination. We can remember pictures and stories almost without effort. But trying to memorize words through repetition and rote learning is boring, tiring and very inefficient. The system is so inventive and easy to understand! Here is a sample page of the book:
So long as you can see the figure of a person Carrying a Cactus over his (her?) head when you look at the Thai letter -- then you will be able to read. It's that simple. Gary says that if you spend one whole day with his book (two 4-hour sessions, ideally a week apart), you will be able to read Thai. You won't understand the vocabulary (you can use Speak Easy Thai for that) but you will recognize the Thai letters and will be able to sound out the words with the proper tone. If you can't spend a full day doing this, he has some suggestions on how to get the best use out of the book. And if you are not in Thailand, he has a lot of photos of Thai signs on his web site which you can use to practice your new Thai reading skills. The new version of the ebook also incorporates a story method to learn the 300-word vocabulary used in the book. (There are another 300 Thai words that you will learn in passing, all derived from English, like "bra"). By the end of the course, and in conjunction with Speak Easy Thai, you will be able to read Thai signs and notices -- and understand a fair proportion of what you read. It's the quickest and most fun way to get a head start in learning Thai. The next step would be to get a decent introduction to the language (like Everyday Thai for Beginners by Wiworn Kesavatana-Dohrs) from Bookazine/Amazon and to start reading simple texts such as Winnie the Pooh or Noddy. These have been translated into Thai with the original English text on the same page. And when you feel more adventurous, buy the Thai version of a Roald Dahl story or Harry Potter and read it with the original English copy side by side. You can download the entire ebook, which is an 11MB file that only runs on Windows PCs; it will probably run on a Mac with BootCamp or another Windows emulator, such as Parallels. In either case, you must have Thai fonts installed. If you don't, there are links on his web site (in the FAQ section) to the required fonts. The book is protected with a passcode. Part of the book is unprotected, so that you can understand how this system works. The rest of the book can be unlocked by purchasing the passcode. Compared to the cost of taking a 50-hour reading/writing course at a Thai language school in Bangkok, this is much cheaper. Oh, and there's a 30-day money-back guarantee, so if it doesn't work for you then you lose nothing except a few hours of your time. Download at no charge here; you should enter your e-mail address: there will be future updates. No e-mail, no updates. Use Speak Easy Thai to learn vocabulary quickly; use Read Thai in a Day to learn to read. |
