| The language barrier rarely exists, and even if
it does, people will go out of their way to assist you, unlike many other
countries (France or Japan for example). In Bangkok you'll find English widely
understood and in some areas it is the major commercial language. Thai is a "tonal" language, unlike English
where we use tones to emphasis words of phrases, the Thai language uses tones to
alter the meaning of words. A good example of this is the Thai word for near and
far - it's the same, just spoken with either a rising or falling tone to reverse
the meaning.
Here is a small graphic that I made up to try and illustrate what I mean.
Another unusual feature of the
language is that you add a word at the end of a sentence etc. A man adds "KHRAP"
and a woman adds "KHA", whilst this is not required to make yourself
understood, it is the correct and polite way to speak Thai.
There is an audio book series
on learning the Thai language, it's called "Pimsleur Thai", if you search
on a peer to peer file sharing program such as
Emule or
WinMX for example, you'll find dozens of
people sharing the whole thing from lesson 1 to lesson 10.
Here is a good source of
information with on-line translation.
"Where are you
going?" or "Where have you been?" is the Thai equivalent to the Western "How are
you?", when you are asked this it is polite to give an answer, such as shopping
etc. "Where are you going?" is Bai Nai, and "Where have you been?"
is the same with the addition of "ma" on the end - Bai Nai Ma. Listen
on the examples page.
Possibly the most useful phrase to
learn is the Thai for No thank you "Mi-Ow (Khrap/Kha)", after you say this, 99% of vendors etc.
will politely leave you alone. The Thai language
examples have been moved to their own page, please note, this usually
takes a LONG time to display, so please be patient for at least 2
minutes on a slow connection.
Don't worry if it says "not responding", just be patient and it will
eventually be displayed correctly.
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Updates and suggestions? - Email me here
