Speak Easy Thai
is FUN,
not boring!

Several ways to learn!
No need to spend 2 hours at a session, 10 minutes is enough.

Better than flash cards!

The Problem with Thai

The main problem with learning Thai is that the basis of the language is not European-based. English and the other Euro languages have Latin, Greek, Viking, etc., roots; Thai does not, so you have to memorise hundreds, if not thousands, of strange sounds. This is difficult, unless you use some sort of memory trigger. Speak Easy Thai helps solve this problem by presenting a picture and a sound file; all words are spoken by a native Thai speaker, so you hear the correct tone.

There are more than 5,000 images and 5,000 sound files on the CD, and more than 39,000 words in total. Compare that to other methods of learning Thai: cassettes and audio CDs have no pictures, and are typically limited to a few hundred words.

In many cases, the pictures used are funny or strange in some way, to help you remember the word. For example, the word for "car tire" (or "tyre", if you're a British English speaker) has two pictures, shown at right. Both are memorable, not boring, and it is this simple trick that helps you remember the Thai word. Your brain makes an association between the sound of the Thai word (yang rot, in this case) and the picture. Seeing the Thai word without an image is a much harder way to learn.

There are several ways of learning vocabulary; you can also test yourself on what you reviewed. The tests have a couple of options to make the review easier or harder.

10 Minutes or 2 Hours?

You don't have to spend a lot of time learning, either. You can start the program, review a few words of some subject, say 10 words about the body, then test yourself on just those 10, then close the program and do something else.

When you choose a subject, the program selects words randomly from the list of available words for that subject. So you probably won't get the same words if you run the program again tomorrow and choose the same subject. Or you can learn the words for just one of the 16 situations, like renting a car. Or you can practice tones with an exercise listening to 200 pairs of similar-sounding words.

Already Learning with a Teacher?

This is the main menu; the picture changes each time you run the program.

The chilis to the left of the buttons represent the level of difficulty.

There is a language button in the main menu that allows you to specify a European language as your preferred language. At the moment, menus and messages stay in English, but Speak Easy Thai will show the Thai dictionary word translated into your language, if that dictionary is present on your system, and if the word is in the dictionary; if not, it reverts to English.

By pressing the Subjects button on the main screen, you are presented with a screen that allows you to select words by subject (animals, automobile, military, travel, etc.). Many words in the dictionary are categorised by subject; there are more than 30 subjects at present.

When you change the selection, a different image is presented, related to that subject. Here, Medical words are selected.

When you have made your selection, words are chosen from the dictionary randomly, according to your selection criteria, and then displayed on the Review screen as shown at the right.

If the word has a picture, it is displayed in the picture frame.

If the word has a sound file, you will hear the word spoken.

By pressing the blue button, the word will be spelled in Thai.

By pressing the speaker button, the word will be spoken again.

The subject area is shown in a small image above the buttons.

When you have reviewed a number of words, you can then test yourself.

The Drill screen is a simple test. Each word that you reviewed is presented, one by one, either in Thai or in English. A timer ticks down in one second intervals. You must click in the other box (English or Thai) and type the word within the time limit.

Short Thai words (10 characters or less) must be entered in 15 seconds or less; longer words must be entered in 30 seconds.

Initially, you will likely prefer to display the picture and hear the word spoken, but as you become more proficient, you can turn off those things to make the test a bit harder.

To increase the tension (everyone needs a little excitement in their lives!), you can play a rhythmic background beat, but if you find that annoying, you can simply untick it and turn it off.

By pressing the Scenarios button on the main screen, you are presented with a screen that allows you to select one of several common scenarios or situations.

This allows you to learn words in that particular area.

Each scenario is a cartoon showing things that are all related.

As you move the cursor around, the Thai word of the object under the cursor is displayed, along with the approximate phonetics and English meaning.

In this screen capture, the cursor is over the hairspray. By clicking, you will hear the word spoken in Thai.

OK, so you've mastered the alphabet, and you've learned some basic vocabulary, now it's time to move on to something more sophisticated.

Like many Asian languages, Thai builds words by using "root words", which are basically building blocks upon which modifiers are hung to make a new word.

For example, "rong" means "place". "Rong rot" means "place motor"; we would say "garage". "Rong ree-yan" means "place learn"; we would say "school". "Rong pay-a-ban" means "place nurse"; can you say "hospital"?

Here, we've selected the root word "bird", and you can see that there are 91 words in the dictionary that start with "bird". Ready to learn them all now?

South East Asian languages are tonal. In this exercise, you are presented with a pair of words that sound alike (homonyms), but have different tones and different meanings.

Each pair of words is spoken carefully by a native speaker, so you can hear the difference. Didn't quite get it? Press the speaker button and hear it again.

From the main menu, you can also invoke the Thai grammar book, Fundamentals of the Thai Language. This is a complete reference in HTML format which can be read in your browser.

Children learn a language by imitating adults, but we big people like to know the rules. Here they are.

Updates

Speak Easy Thai is part of the Multi-Language Dictionary project; this means there are frequent updates to the software, dictionaries, images, and sound files. These updates are free; just connect to the Internet, run Web Update (included in the package), and download the updates.
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Feedback

PROOF!

Two quick questions to see if you were paying attention:

Answers:

(hold a small mirror against the screen)

You saw the pictures, heard the words in Thai, and you remembered, right?

This technique works. Your brain has now made links between the pictures and Thai sounds. When you hear the Thai word in your brain (such as meu), I'll bet you now hear the Thai woman speaking that word.

Now read this word: yang rot. You heard her speak that too, didn't you? These two words are now firmly embedded in your thick skull and it will take a hammer and chisel to get them out. You have permanently learned two Thai words with no effort, because there was a memorable picture and a correctly spoken sound.

This is why Speak Easy Thai works!

Note that Vista requires Service Pack 1 to be installed!

(US$39 per copy)
300 MB total, in 4 files of 50-100MB each.

Includes:

• Speak Easy Thai learning program
• more than 5000 images
• more than 5000 Thai sound files
• 350 page Thai grammar ebook
• Thai and English dictionaries (about 39,000 words)
• Web Update program
• dictionary maintenance programs

Other dictionaries may be downloaded later separately.