Thai FAQs

A list of frequently asked questions concerning Thai and learning Thai. If you don't find the answer to your question, please get in touch, we're happy to help!

Where is Thai spoken?

The Thai language is the national language and the official language of Thailand.

Apart from Thailand, it is spoken all over the world in countries including Northern Malaysia, Cambodia, Canada, Myanmar, Laos, the U.S., France, the Midway Islands, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, and England.

How many people speak Thai?

The Thai language is spoken by more than 60 million people worldwide: over 20 million native speakers in Thailand and over 40 million people who are learning it as a second language.

What makes Thai difficult to learn?

The Thai language and its inner logic are very different from Indo-European languages, such as English, French, German, or Russian. Thai does not have articles, verb conjugation or the concept of singular and plural. Similarly, there are concepts in Thai that do not exist in many other languages.

Thai is also a tonal language. Words are broken into syllables and each syllable is pronounced with one of five tones. Each vowel has a short and a long version. Modifying the vowel length or the tone changes the syllable completely, to the extent that if you mispronounce a single vowel or tone, a Thai person hears a different word to the one you meant to say.

There are also several degrees of politeness that can be hard to master.

On the other hand, Thai has a very simple grammar (some go as far as to say it has ‘no grammar at all’) and is also phonetic, with words written just as they sound.

Is Thai a tonal language?

The Thai language is a tonal language. Tones are essential for the language, as important as any vowel or any consonant. Tones distinguish the meaning of one word from another.

Each syllable is pronounced with one of five distinct tones - middle, low, falling, high, or rising. Each vowel has a short and a long version. Modifying the vowel length or the tone changes the syllable completely, to the extent that if you mispronounce a single vowel or tone, a Thai person hears a different word to the one you meant to say.


Thai Vocabulary Books

Learn Thai - Quick / Easy / Efficient

Learn Thai - Quick / Easy / Efficient

This vocabulary book is a curated Thai word frequency list with 2000 of the most common Thai words and phrases. Following the Pareto principle (80/20 rule), this book is built to streamline the learning process by concentrating on the core words and sentence structures. The result is a unique book ideal for driven learners and language hackers.
Thai Vocabulary Book

Thai Vocabulary Book

This Thai vocabulary book contains more than 3000 words and phrases and is organized by topic to make it easier for you to pick what to learn first. It is well suited for learners of all levels who are looking for an extensive resource to improve their vocabulary or are interested in learning vocabularies in one particular area of interest.


Thai Flashcards

Flashcardo

Thai Flashcards Online

On our partner platform Flashcardo you can find Thai flashcards to practice online for free ordered by topics and frequency of use, similar to our two vocabulary books above.
English-Thai-Flashcardo

Printable Thai Flashcards

With this downloadable product you get all Thai flashcards available on Flashcardo.com in various formats for you to use. In detail you get 1 EPUB ebook, 2 PDF vocabulary lists and 8 printable flashcard PDFs.

Free Learning Resources