Practise Thai with a native speaker, and give them English conversation practice in return. Roughly 70 million people speak Thai natively, so partners are easy to find; the useful discipline is showing up on time.
Endonym
ภาษาไทย
Script
Thai script - 44 consonants and tone marks, written without spaces between words
Spoken in
Thailand, the United States, Laos
First thing to learn
สวัสดี — "Hello"
US Foreign Service Institute estimate for an English speaker starting from zero
~44 weeks
Furthest from English
Thai is written without spaces between words, so reading means working out where each word stops before you can look anything up. Five tones carry meaning, and the polite particle at the end of a sentence changes depending on the speaker’s gender - details English has no equivalent for.
Knowing this in advance changes what you do with a partner. Grammar drills on Thaiwill not fix a habit your first language gave you — only producing the sentence out loud and being corrected will. That is the specific thing an exchange gives you and an app does not.
A language exchange dies when nobody has anything to talk about. Take these into the call and you will fill the first half without silences.
Say สวัสดี (sa-wat-DEE) as your first line, then ask your partner when they would use it and when they would choose something more formal.
Ask your partner to write your own name in ภาษาไทย, then explain which sounds in your name do not exist in Thai.
Talk for two minutes about what you imagine daily life is like in Thailand. Have your partner correct the parts you got wrong - in Thai first, then again in English.
Talk for two minutes about what you imagine daily life is like in the United States. Have your partner correct the parts you got wrong - in Thai first, then again in English.
Ask your partner for one sentence that exposes the hard part: Thai is written without spaces between words, so reading means working out where each word stops before you can look anything up.
Switch to English and ask your partner to explain their own language's hardest feature to you. This is the half where you pay for the practice, so take it as seriously as your own turn.
You are not here to improve your English — you already have it. Practise Thai with someone who speaks it natively, and pay for it by answering their English questions properly. Fluent English speakers are the scarcest resource on an exchange, which is why you will match quickly.
Thailand has both a large tourism sector and many long-term English-speaking residents, which makes it unusually easy to find a swap partner on both sides of the exchange.
44 weeks of full-time study to working proficiency, on the US Foreign Service Institute scale - furthest from english. Thai is written without spaces between words, so reading means working out where each word stops before you can look anything up. Five tones carry meaning, and the polite particle at the end of a sentence changes depending on the speaker’s gender - details English has no equivalent for.
Around 70 million native speakers, concentrated in Thailand, the United States, Laos. English has already borrowed muay thai, pad thai, tom yum from it, so you are not starting from nothing.
Thai script - 44 consonants and tone marks, written without spaces between words. Because the script is not the one you read in now, reading and speaking improve at different rates and are worth practising separately rather than hoping conversation covers both.
สวัสดี (sa-wat-DEE) - "Hello". สวัสดี takes a politeness particle: men end it with ครับ (khrap) and women with ค่ะ (kha). Without the particle the greeting sounds abrupt rather than rude, but it is the first thing Thai speakers notice.
muay thai, pad thai and tom yum all reached English from Thai - 3 words you can use on day one.
Free matching, free voice calls, free video calls. One twenty-minute call is enough to know whether it works for you.
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