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*DO* TAKE THIS TO THAILAND with you. It's for you if you (1) *WANT* to learn (the biggie)., (2) have a Walkman with a review button, and (3) are willing to repeat aloud. If you think you're pronouncing something correctly but all you get is blank stares, go listen to it on the tape again. One who could memorize and faithfully render all the phrases on these tapes without having been to Thailand would be a rare bird indeed, but most people will be able to get a few "faves" down pat. The sentences are printed in both English and Thai. This is not as good as Pimsleur, though. There are several series of similar consonants in a row: "ka, ka, ka, ka." --indistinguishable to a Western ear.
Pimsleur costs more but is worth it: Thai: Pimsleur Comprehensive, or the smaller version: Conversational Thai. (Forget software, by the way). Whatever you choose, you have some work to do. Those show you with arrows where to start and which way to draw.
It's a way to memorize a few useful Thai sentences: two cassettes and a booklet. I would have spent another forty seconds of tape on a full, proper recitation ("gaw-ooey gaw-gai, kaw-khai nai-lao," etc)., but there are disadvantages to that as well: what I cited in parenthesis is just for the first two consonants, so it would be hard for a beginner to know which syllable is the letter itself among all the extra sounds in their dainty and not-so-little alphabet chant. It's a trade-off.The booklet would fit in a letter envelope (sticks out of a shirt pocket) and I occasionally toted it along and pointed in it to communicate something important. There is also a phonetic notation for pronunciation (similar to what's in a dictionary), which can serve as a memory jogger but is utterly useless without the tape because this is a tonal language. A phrase is recited once in English then twice in Thai, so it isn't strictly necessary to have the booklet on hand. (The best intro, by the way, is some of the very inexpensive drawing books that Thai pre-schoolers use to learn their alphabet. (Meant to give it four stars but it won't let me change it now).It is not a way to learn Thai in isolation, but it's better than three other products I tried. Surprise.
You can't buy the practice.With this well-priced product and some practice, one can get the pronunciation down well enough to be understood. There are both male and female Thai speakers, which matters grammatically.A small nit to pick: The abbreviated recitation of the Thai consonants is useless. 8-[) And *that* is how I learned Thai.Contrary to another (phony) review, there is no introduction to Thai writing here. Hint: always make the loop first).
However, the organization of information assumes that you can keep interest listening to a bunch of discrete phrases repeated one after the other with no conversations or anything remotely natural. This set is a decent value. For your money, you get a fairly broad range of phrases and vocabulary. If you can, in fact, maintain interest while listening to these tapes repeatedly, then you'll do well with this set. If, on the other hand, you need something more dynamic, you might do well to look elsewhere.
It is totally dialoge. This course is not thorough in the least. It gives no description of sentence structure. I would recomend either the Teach Yourself or if you realy want to learn order Courage Softwares Thai interactive learning system. But dont get me wrong if you just want learn Thai for a brief vacation this course is OK.
This audio/book pack was good, except for the spoken part of the audio tape was very fast and sometimes difficult to understand, by the time I repeated the phrase-the speaker was on the next phrase to learn/repeat. I am still searching for a great thai/english teaching program. Any suggestions of yours to me are welcome.
This is the best reference for the beginner and intermediate thai language student. outstanding audio tape combined with superb paperback reference complete with the best concise introduction to Thia writing system, makes this a must resource for studying thai. Has it all -- Thai script and romanization - expansive practice in a concise format. And no compromises.
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