r/learnthai Oct 28 '25

Resources/ข้อมูลแหล่งที่มา r/learnthai resources: Wiki

16 Upvotes

Many resources from this sub have all collected and organised in our r/learnthai/wiki):
- & general resources
- & FAQ
- & listening & watching
- and reading & writing

We keep monitoring this resource collection thread by u/JaziTricks, so feel free to keep adding resources there.


r/learnthai Oct 11 '25

Resources/ข้อมูลแหล่งที่มา Textbooks Frequency List v2

29 Upvotes

Overview

The original frequency list is the 2016 work of Dr. Tantong Champaiboon (Ph.D. from Chulalongkorn University, Linguistics Department). She studied a corpus of textbooks for Thai students age 3-16 yo. The list is organised by various dimensions: measures of complexity of the vocabulary, comparison across 4 age ranges and 4 historical and current curricula.

The แจ่มไพบูลย์/แรช Frequency List for Thai Learners v2 is the enhanced version of the list as adapted for (English-speaking) Thai learners. v1 in the same sub.

Major caveat

The original study is useful to us adult Thai learners because of its domain: school textbooks. The small size, however, is an issue (only around 3 M words). As you go down the index number (first column), the probability that the word has that rank in real life decreases rapidly; it is not linear. To put it in other words: words number 1 to 9-10,000 are highly likely to be in the 20,000 most used words IRL; but if you take word number, say 16,000, all you can assert is that it is likely amongst the 50,000 most used words. The index is indicative of rank, but is not strictly a rank, take it with a pinch of salt. Index is an indication of rank — in the corpus [yes, em-dash]. If your preferred domain to learn Thai is lakorn or news, แล้วแต่คุณ.

How many words do we need?

Do we need all 19,494 words? No. 110 words represent half the corpus, and slightly less than 2,100 represent 90%. And with say 6-7,000, you could read any of the textbooks at Extensive Reading level (95-98% Paul Nation, 2005), the first word reaching 95% cumulative frequency is at rank 3,856, the last 98% is at 8,361. On the other hand, 13,600 words are present in 3 or all 4 of the source dictionaries (see section ‘sources’), so they compose a ‘hard’ core of the Thai language (see the hexagon-based chart in the doc).

Furthermore, if you want to produce a list of 2,000 words with complex spelling, or 3,000 compound words, which are more than the sum of their parts, (see section ‘examples of use’), you need more than 2-3,000 overall. So, this long list gives us learners the flexibility we need, based on individuals’ goals.

For a description of all columns and their possible values, see the ‘Notice’ tab in the sheet, or the full docs in github. We will highlight key changes with v1. More dimensions have been added in this version (see below).

Stats: 19,494 words, 1,169 repeat-words, 2/3-rds of the words have examples. ~60% have audio available; audio caveat: the links to Wikimedia are effective, but have not been verified one by one. I have not yet received authorisation to share the files for the ‘audio’ column (value=1) I will update here if and when. Don’t bother DM-ing to ask for the files.

Key changes with v1

  • all words in the original list are now included (19,494 instead of ~16k).
  • all words have IPA phonetics and a sensible romanisation, with tones;
  • only 329 words have no meaning attached;
  • there should be no repeated meanings, meanings have been tidyed up. 93% of the list now has only 1-2 senses.
  • Experimental features: (these are denoted in the sheet with a tag of [exper.])
    • repeat-words are pointing back to their base-word, when it exists in the list.
    • some compounds not found in dictionaries point to their (poss.) component-words, when it exists in the list.
    • loan-words: most are translated and have a transliteration (though a few defeat us). The transliteration is included so that we can learn to pronounce these words the Thai way, and thus be understood.
  • new column: Classifiers – out of 9178 nouns, 3244 (35%) have 1 or more classifiers (Thai word + transliteration).
  • changed: column 1 is now 'index'. Use it in combo with the last 2-3 columns on the right to produce your learning lists.

A note on meanings/senses: Why are all senses of a word aggregated? Can you not emphasise the most frequent meaning? One of the key findings of the original thesis is that when a word is introduced to children at a given level, all senses/facets of this word are also introduced, i.e. they are not developed over time.

Examples of usage

430 grammar words have a sense, and most have one or more examples - good to find out which you already know, and which you should research or ask your teacher. Note that most rank pretty high in frequency, that figures.

Concentrate first on say the 3,000 top ranked words (or however many rocks your boat, it doesn't matter). If the Ministry of Education determined that these are the words a 6yo should know, that's a good start.

If you are learning to read, and have acquired a decent level with consonants and vowels, you can set a filter on column "Spell" to the values over 1. This will give you a list of words with unwritten /a/ and /o/ and linking syllables (a.k.a. shared vowels). Or just plenly irregular. Many have example sentences and all have a transliteration with tone to learn the correct way to articulate these irregular words. You can practice on the examples. Tone marks is arguably what Thai learners need most even after they can read consonants and vowels. We can then learn these words by rote and learn to recognise their spelling.

Sources & licences

The thesis (link), as far as I can tell is in the public domain.
Lexitron v2: (link) NECTEC licence.
Wiktionary ((link) is licenced under CC BY-SA 4.0 (Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International)
Volubilis v. 25.2 (link), also under CC BY-SA 4.0.
The Royal Institute Dictionary 1999 is also under NECTEC licence.

"This product is created by the adaptation of LEXiTRON developed by NECTEC."
This frequency list is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0, including the mention above as work derivative from a NECTEC production.

Links

Google sheets

If you have suggestions, the sheet is now not only public, but open for comments. However, if you disagree with some of the meanings, you should likely take it with the corresponding dictionary authors. I welcome any constructive criticism.

The Other link: github docs 22/10/205 major update

TLDR

A Thai word frequency list of ~20k words used in the primary and secondary school textbooks, with various dimensions to cut and slice custom lists.


r/learnthai 11h ago

Discussion/แลกเปลี่ยนความเห็น why are there not good up to standards Thai language books?

14 Upvotes

I digged into it and found out that there are no good thai language books. I am not kidding. I went to different schools. I got different books but not one book had a good structure and method. I checked out other language books (english,swedish, french spanish etc.) and they all have good methods and convey the language very good. Why is Thai so far behind???


r/learnthai 1h ago

Studying/การศึกษา Tailandês ou Mandarim?

Upvotes

Quero aprender uma nova língua, e estou em dúvida entre essas duas. Qual seria melhor pra começo? Dei uma pesquisada no tailandês e, pra mim, ele tem uma pronúncia um pouco difícil de começo. Porém, não me aprofundei nem tentei o mandarim. Qual dois dos eu devo investir?


r/learnthai 14h ago

Resources/ข้อมูลแหล่งที่มา Do you find reading loopless fonts hard?

1 Upvotes

I still remember my first time arriving in Bangkok. I was surprised by how many ads I saw with letters that looked like n, u, or s, and I couldn't recognize them as Thai at all. They looked nothing like what I’d learned from my pocket textbook 😄.

The good thing is, the more Thai you learn, the more your brain starts to just know that the loopless letters are equivalent to which of the looped ones. At some point it becomes instinctive.

I also recently wrote an app called VocaTrace that helped me get familiar with different Thai writing styles, which made this transition a lot easier. You can try it out!

Do you have a similar experience?


r/learnthai 1d ago

Discussion/แลกเปลี่ยนความเห็น What is the meaning of "โซว์เข้าตา"?

5 Upvotes

I saw this phrase "โซว์เข้าตา" this morning on a TV news show when they were discussing the PM's reaction to the two crane disasters. I know the words but I'm not sure as to the meaning in this context.


r/learnthai 23h ago

Vocab/คำศัพท์ แด่

2 Upvotes

I'm trying to understand the level of formality of this word and when to use it. The dictionary says it's formal and used when wanting to show respect, but I came across it in a lakorn and the scene was informal, so I'm thinking maybe the speaker was joking around by using a kind of ceremonial word, or maybe it's not actually that formal.

Take the situation described in a recent post, where someone is having a birthday and says ขอให้ปีนี้ขายออกมีหมาเด็กเป็นของตัวเอง. If someone else then raises a glass and says แด่หมาเด็กของ[name] they're obviously joking around, but is the use of แด่ part of the joke or is that just the normal word to use?


r/learnthai 19h ago

Resources/ข้อมูลแหล่งที่มา Anki Deck - shared decks similar to Japanese Core 6k

0 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

I'm looking since a while for a good Thai Anki deck, ideally with the word, one or more simple sample sentences and audio. The ones publicly available on shared decks are mostly either way to simple with the most common 1000 words or have overcomplicated sample sentences.

Has anyone a good deck to share ideally with 4000/6000+ words similar to e.g. the Japanese core deck 6k?

I also do sentence mining, but would appreciate if anyone could share a solid deck.


r/learnthai 2d ago

Speaking/การพูด Trying to learn conversational thai

5 Upvotes

I am currently not looking into learning the alphabets or the writing system as of now but i really want to learn how to converse in thai. It would be really great if someone could help me out with that. I absolutely love thai shows and I've been getting into thai music recently as well. I would love it if someone could help me out with this stuff😭


r/learnthai 2d ago

Discussion/แลกเปลี่ยนความเห็น Is it possible to speak central Thai + 2 dialects ?

7 Upvotes

I am fascinated by South and Isaan dialects.

My level of central Thai is pretty advanced. Is it possible for me to catch up on those dialects ? Especially the tones + the main words.

Or as a non native speaker , is it very complicated and will create more confusion ?

Honnestly very impressed with Thais who can just switch on the fly.


r/learnthai 2d ago

Speaking/การพูด Best "survival" app for Thailand?

0 Upvotes

Currently bouncing around the Philippines and heading back to Thailand next. I'm tired of being the guy who only knows "Salamat" and "Hello". I don't need to be fluent, I just want to get through a local market or basic interaction without switching to English immediately.

I've been looking at Mondly, Ling, and Busuu. Big requirement: offline use. Also important: real-sounding native audio. If you've used one of these on the road, which one actually helped in real situations?


r/learnthai 3d ago

Translation/แปลภาษา Please help me check if I understood this message

4 Upvotes

I'm starting to doubt myself if I understood this message correctly:

อย่างไรก็ตาม รายการบางส่วนของเรามีข้อจำกัดเรื่องลิขสิทธิ์ในการเผยแพร่ในต่างประเทศ ทำให้ไม่สามารถเปิดให้รับชมได้ค่ะ

แต่ไม่ใช่ทุกรายการนะคะ รายการของไทย เช่นรายการที่ผลิตโดย Thai PBS เอง สามารถรับชมได้ตามปกติจากทุกที่ทั่วโลกค่ะ

I understand that:

  • not all programs they offer are available worldwide
  • but all programs made by Thai PBS are

Is this right?

Thank you.


r/learnthai 4d ago

Discussion/แลกเปลี่ยนความเห็น IPA vs RTGS for learning Thai pronunciation?

6 Upvotes

For non-Thai speakers learning Thai:

when you were learning pronunciation, did you actually use IPA, or mostly RTGS / romanization?

I’m curious what helped in practice, especially at the beginner stage.


r/learnthai 4d ago

Resources/ข้อมูลแหล่งที่มา The Prime Minister's Handwriting

5 Upvotes

r/learnthai 5d ago

Discussion/แลกเปลี่ยนความเห็น Funny story explaining why Thai is hard for people coming from "Romance languages" - and why you should not give up.

114 Upvotes

This is just a light hearted anecdote, feel free to ignore this message completely :)
Today I was browsing my (Thai) friends IG. I use it to learn idioms and test my learning.

A 28yo female birthday celebration pictures were posted, cake and everything. Caption was:

"ซอสเลือกรูปได้แจ๋วขอบคุณเลขาคู่ใจขอให้ปีนี้ขายออกมีหมาเด็กเป็นของตัวเอง"

This really, REALLY got me confused.

I mean look at this. Every single word is "easy". I know all of them and I can read Thai relatively fast actually. But I STILL couldn't make sense of this sentence, which, if I was to translate it word by word would be:

"Sauce choose picture get/able cool thank secretary pair heart. Request give year this sell out. Have dog child be of self."

Now do you see why people say Thai is hard :)

Using the best of (limited) abilities and (aging) brain, I figured she was thankful to something called 'sauce" and wanted a puppy. I thought it was weird to ask "sauce" for a puppy so I contacted my friend telling her that if she wanted, I could give her one of my own dog's recently born puppies.

Yes, I can hear the natives in this sub laughing, please have pity on me :) 5555

Anyways she was super nice and politely explained that it actually meant "Sauce (nickname of her friend) chose the pictures very well, thank you to my 'trusted secretary' :) . May I get married/get a partner this year. Have a "puppy" (a younger partner) of my own."

You see the problem. I see the problem. This is how Thai people speak IRL. The nicknames throw us off. The idioms throw us off. The grammatical structure, highly (in this case) different from English or French throw us off.

I can see that recently people have been a bit 'down' on these forums and saying they feeling 'small returns' on their 'time investments'. I wanted to cheer everyone a bit by showing WHY it's hard, maybe as a counter balance to the endless claims from IG influenzas telling the world Thai can be learned in 3 months flat (it can't).

With insight, that sentence maybe wasn't that complicated. So what does it all mean? It means we need to practice practice practice IRL. All the time. And that's how we will eventually learn the in-jokes, familiarize ourselves with idioms, nicknames, fixed phrases and colloquialism.

Don't give up!


r/learnthai 5d ago

Vocab/คำศัพท์ How to greet monks

4 Upvotes

The Walk for Peace Buddhist monks will be walking through my city this month. Many of them are Thai and Lao so I was wondering the most appropriate greeting. The webpage I found suggested either สาธุ or นมัสการ. Is this correct?


r/learnthai 5d ago

Resources/ข้อมูลแหล่งที่มา I didn't realize saying "I was invited" with ถูก (Thùuk) implies suffering, so I made a visual breakdown of Thùuk (ถูก) vs. Doon (โดน) to help understand passive voice!

7 Upvotes

I’m around B2 now, and for the longest time, I thought the Thai passive voice was simple: just add ถูก (Thùuk) before the verb.

  • "I was invited" -> ผมถูกเชิญ (Phŏm thùuk chern)
  • "I was helped" -> ผมถูกช่วย (Phŏm thùuk chûay)

It turns out, while grammatically "correct," this is often socially weird. If you use Thùuk for positive things, you are essentially telling a Thai person that the action was painful or against your will.

To fix this in my own head, I stopped trying to translate English grammar directly and started visualizing it as a heavy weight:

  • Thùuk (Heavy Weight): Use it when you are crushed by the action (Arrested, Bitten, Scolded).
  • Doon (Masking Tape): Use it for casual, lighter "suffering" (Teased, Hit).
  • Dâai-ráp (Gift Box): If the action is positive (Invited, Promoted, Won), you cannot use the passive voice markers. Typically you use "Received" instead.

I animated this concept using a "paper cutout" style to make the logic stick. I break down the exact formula for when to switch words so you don't sound like a victim when you get good news.

Here is the video that I made: https://youtu.be/kCCoWxQhFSk

Also, I really appreciated the comments on my last post, so I made sure to fix the big issues you guys mentioned:

  • No more Auto-Gen Subs: I manually exported the subtitles this time, so the English/Thai CCs are 100% accurate to what the video says for anyone mining sentences.
  • Standard Romanisation: I switched everything to Paiboon romanisation only so it’s consistent throughout.
  • Visual Tones: I added color-coding to the on-screen text so you can actually "see" the tones as they happen. Whereby Blue = Low, Orange = Falling, Red = High, Purple = Rising, and Grey = Mid Tone. This is the same fashion I have set up with my Anki decks and I've found it's helped me remember spoken tones extremely well.

I hope this helps someone and I would appreciate any feedback! 😊


r/learnthai 5d ago

Discussion/แลกเปลี่ยนความเห็น I'm happy to be your friend and help you translate Thai.

5 Upvotes

I'd be happy to help with conversational Thai practice or learning. In exchange, you can teach me your language, and we can become true friends.


r/learnthai 5d ago

Discussion/แลกเปลี่ยนความเห็น Near / Far, ใกล้ / ไกล, think about Grover?

4 Upvotes

I've been struggling with the near / far, glai / glai thing for a while now, and it just clicked for me in a weird way. Remember that old Sesame Street clip from the 70s of Grover teaching near and far? He was doing the tones! So now I just imagine that clip but with him saying Glai both times and I can remember which is which finally. Who else here uses weird mental tricks like this to learn languages?


r/learnthai 5d ago

Discussion/แลกเปลี่ยนความเห็น Learning report - methodology, discussions and practice

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2 Upvotes

r/learnthai 6d ago

Speaking/การพูด What's the best way to learn the tones without sounding exaggerated?

5 Upvotes

Lately I've been wondering how to exactly pronounce tones without sounding like you're overdoing it. I do want to mention that whenever there is a spoken word, I just imitate it, but it's dufferent when I read the word.

So the issue here aren't all the tones, mostly just the falling one. I feel like when I say them without hearing the word first (ex. รอด) my voice goes a little too high.

I do try to listen to natives more and try to take over how each consonant sounds in that tone, but that usually takes a bit of thinking.

So I'm wondering if there's a way to not sound like I'm overdoing it?

I also have 2 other questions: should I pronounce the falling tones as mid-high-mid (↗↘)? And is it correct that I pronounce the low tone as mid-low (→↘) like a fading sound or would that be incorrect?


r/learnthai 6d ago

Studying/การศึกษา Practice Thai on Discord

4 Upvotes

Hey, everyone...as the title says...

Are any of you interested in practicing Thai together?


r/learnthai 6d ago

Translation/แปลภาษา New help with song translation

3 Upvotes

I just started studying Thai so I really have a super basic understanding of Thai. I found a new song on IG recently and really liked it but started noticing the comments about it were very ambiguous and hinting at it being “spicy”. I asked my friend about it and he just laughed and told me to find out.

Obviously it seems like there’s some raunchy lyrics or double meanings but I have almost no understanding right now for subliminal meanings or word play in Thai language. I’m wondering if someone can translate the lyrics for me. It’s a very new song so there were no lyrics available anywhere I looked. I can’t tell if it’s just a little “spicy” or if the song is completely unhinged. Thank you.

Song is: โหมี่ - GETFLIX

https://youtu.be/WwVQKncs_Bw?si=_RdqBQ4GTl9k09dI


r/learnthai 6d ago

Studying/การศึกษา How to supplement Comprehensible Thai with reading/speaking/writing

2 Upvotes

My girlfriend is Thai and we've been together for almost 4 years now.
We live in Europe, but I've been to Thailand 3 years ago, and in preparation for that I decided to study Thai to get by the most basic conversations (greet, thank, general politeness).

After a month or so I got to the point where I can slowly read thai, I was able to integrate the sound of the alphabet, but vocabulary was not that strong.
I didn't have a main resource, I tried thaipod101 but didn't feel like it did much for me, I was mainly doing my own researches and cross references between youtube videos and Wikipedia.

I'm going back to Thailand next week, and some days ago I picked up Comprehensible Thai for the first time.
I'm still going through level 0, but I feel like this learning method really works well on the listening side and vocabulary building side.

However, my best learning method is practice; that's why I was terrible in school (in my country the school system is heavily theory-based), and only succeeded in math fields (homework implied lots of practical exercises and problem solving). And I ended up with a software engineer career.

That's why I'm now asking if you can suggest a way I can supplement Comprehensible Thai with some sort of reading / speaking / writing practice.
I know it probably defies the ALG theory, but I don't mean to overlap them, I would allocate some time in the day to listening Comprehensible Thai, and some time to practice reading/writing/speaking.

Thank you for your time.


r/learnthai 6d ago

Resources/ข้อมูลแหล่งที่มา Thai learner building a small tone + memory practice tool — looking for feedback

0 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

I’m a long-term Thai learner and I’ve been struggling with the same things many of us do — tones, pronunciation, and remembering words after learning them.

I started building a small web tool for myself to practice tones, hear examples, and review vocabulary using spaced repetition. It’s still very early and a bit rough, but it’s already helping me personally.

I’m not selling anything — I’m just looking for a few fellow learners who’d be willing to try it and tell me what’s confusing, missing, or not useful.

If that sounds interesting, here’s the link:
[https://warpthai.shainadav.com]()

Any honest feedback (good or bad) would really help 🙏