Fundamentals of the Thai Language

632 Pages·2016·4.4 MB·English

by  Campbell S.

1

Contents
Preface to the first edition
Preface to the second edition
Preface to the third edition
Preface to the fourth edition
The Thai alphabet and system of transliteration
Summarized Tone Rules

Lesson 1. The Tones

Grammar notes

The alphabet and reading

Consonants ก, ข, ค, ฆ, ง, จ, ฉ, ช

Vowels -ะ, -◌ั, -า, -◌,ํา -◌ิ, -◌ ี

Oral spelling (i)

Lesson 2. Grammar notes

Formal, polite and common words

Consonants ซ, ฌ, ญ, ฎ, ฏ, ฐ, ฑ, ฒ, ณ, ด

Vowels -◌ึ, -◌ื, -◌ุ, -◌ู

Special signs ๆ, ฯ, ฯลฯ

Lesson 3. Numbers

Consonants ต, ถ, ท, ธ, น

Vowels เ-, แ-

Shortening of vowel sounds (i)

Oral spelling (ii)

Lesson 4. Forms of address

Consonants บ, ป, ผ, ฝ

Vowels โ-, ใ-, ไ-

Inherent vowels “a” and “o”

Pronunciation of predisposed vowels
2

Lesson 5. Time

Consonants พ, ฟ, ภ, ม

Vowels -ว, -◌ัว, -วย, -อ, -อย

Silent consonants and vowels

Oral spelling (iii)

Lesson 6. Time (Continued)

Money

Consonants ย, ร, ล, ว

Vowels -◌ัย, -าย, -าว, -◌ิว, -◌ุย

Spelling peculiarities (i)

Lesson 7. The Past Tense ( ได้ ) and ( เป็น )

Consonants ศ, ษ, ส, ห

Vowels เ-ย, เ-ว, เ-อ, เ-า

Spelling peculiarities (ii)

Lesson 8. Question words

Consonants ฬ, อ, ฮ

Vowels เ-◌ิ, เ-◌ีย, เ-◌ียว, เ-◌ือ

Inherent vowel “or”

Shortening of vowel sounds (ii)

Lesson 9. The Past and Perfect Tenses (แลว้) and (มา)

Obsolete consonants ฃ, ฅ

Vowels เ-◌ือย, แ-ว, โ-ย, ไ-ย

Combined consonants and vowels ฤ, ฤๅ, ฦ, ฦๅ

Lesson 10. Classifiers

Introduction to tones
Oral spelling with tone markers
Lesson 11. Gender
3

Comparison of adjectives
Tone rules. High Class consonants
Lesson 12. Personal pronouns
Tone exercises. High Class consonants
Lesson 13. Continuous Tense
The use of WAH (ว่า)

Tone rules. Middle Class consonants

Lesson 14. Colours

Flora and Fauna

Tone exercises. Middle Class consonants

Lesson 15. Yes and No

Tone exercises. High and Middle Class consonants

Lesson 16. The use of HY (ให้)

Tone rules. Low Class consonants

Lesson 17. Personification of nouns and verbs

Nationalities

Tone exercises. Low Class consonants

Lesson 18. Verbal nouns GAHN (การ) and KWAHM (ความ)

Anomalous tones

Lesson 19. Passive Voice

Tone exercise. All tones

Lesson 20. Double verbs

Written Thai

Lesson 21. Forms of request

Written Thai

Lesson 22. Compound words

Written Thai
4

Lesson 23. GUP (กบั ) and GUN (กนั )

Written Thai

Lesson 24. The use of GOR (ก)็ and GAHN TEE (การที�)

Written Thai

Lesson 25. Prefix and suffix words

Written Thai

Lesson 26. Fractions and decimals

Duplicated words

Written Thai

Appendix 1. Classifiers

Appendix 2. Thai Calendar. Years and months

Appendix 3. Family relationships

Appendix 4. Titles and Ranks

Appendix 5. Government Officials, Ministries, Departments etc.

Appendix 6. Weights and measures

Appendix 7. Thai cooking terms and foods

Appendix 8. How to use a Thai dictionary

Appendix 9. Idioms

Appendix 10. Extended English - Thai vocabulary

Appendix 11. Extended Thai - English vocabulary by transliteration
5

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

This book is an attempt to introduce the Thai language from an English speaking
foreigner’s point of view; to provide a useful vocabulary; to illustrate the various
constructions used in simple sentences and to deal completely with the Thai alphabet
and the system of indicating the Tonal Values of the words; both of which latter aspects
are fundamental to the learning of the language.
The excellent books of Cartwright and Eagling are both long since out of print and the
only other book available at the present time, “Spoken Thai” by Haas and Subhanka, is
designed more for classwork under an experienced teacher than for individual study and
makes no attempt to deal with the Thai written word or the tone rules. Apart from these
there are a number of conversation and phrase books written by Thai which though
useful to those who already know the fundamentals of the language are of little help to
the beginner who wants to know how to make up his own sentences rather than to learn
stock phrases which are seldom exactly what he wants to say.
The books available for those who want to learn to read consist almost entirely of the
elementary readers used in Thai schools which are unsatisfactory for a foreigner in
every way and for anyone requiring more additional reading matter we would
recommend one of the Thai monthly magazines such as “The English Language” or
“Progress”. Both of these are well set up and clearly printed and contain a large amount
of not too difficult reading printed in both Thai and English.
In the earlier books on Thai for foreigners, as well as in the Ministry of Education
elementary books for use in Thai schools, the tones are dealt with from the beginning
but we have departed from precedent in this respect because we feel that it is only
confusing the issue to try and deal with the tones until you have acquired something of a
vocabulary and can string the words together into simple sentences.
The usual drill of repeating over and over again in different tones words whose meaning
you do not understand and words which in many cases you will never use is
monotonous in the extreme and tends to make the lessons dull and unattractive for an
adult.
In a letter discussing a proposed system of Romanising the Thai alphabet, written to the
Siam Society in 1912, His Majesty King Rama VI wrote:
“I propose that the tone value of the Siamese consonants might be ignored altogether ...
since the context would always make clear the meaning.”
and later:
“For similar reasons given above I think it would be best to ignore all Siamese tone
accents.”
Although we do not go all the way with His Majesty in these sentiments, we do think
that a study of the tones should be secondary to the acquisition of a vocabulary, a
6

knowledge of the Thai alphabet and of the fundamental constructions of the language
and hence a discussion of the tones has been left until about a third of the way through
the book. In only relatively few cases will a wrong tone cause you to be misunderstood
and if this book is used as intended, with the help of a native born Thai teacher or friend
you will find that in the early stage at least you will acquire the correct tone far more
easily by imitation than you could possibly do by trying to remember the tone rules
which are all dependant on familiarity with the Thai alphabet.
Since we realise that many people will not want to bother with more than a superficial
study of the language, the book has been arranged so that both the Thai spelling and the
tone rules are separate sections of each lesson and can be omitted entirely by those who
only wish to acquire a vocabulary and learn the construction of simple sentences enough
to be able to talk with their servants and do their marketing.
Nevertheless we strongly advise anyone who thinks it worth while learning the
language at all to work through the complete lessons since we believe that no foreigners
can learn to speak Thai even reasonably well unless they also master the Thai alphabet
and have at least a working knowledge of the tone rules.
You may not aspire to be able to read a Thai newspaper; and if you do you will have to
go a long way further than this book will take you; but it is not difficult to learn enough
to be able to read street names, public notices, company names etc. and to be able to
work out the pronunciation of a new Thai word from its spelling. Being able to do this
will give you an added interest in the language.
In most languages there are several ways of expressing the same idea and the one
adopted depends to a large extent on the speaker’s education, experience and social
environment; so if your teacher tells you to say something differently from what we
have put down here, make a note of it and follow him. Similarly when working through
the exercises, if you find your way of rendering an English sentence in Thai is not the
same as that given in the book, it does not follow that you are wrong. Check with your
teacher and see if your version is acceptable or not, and if not, why not. If it is you will
gain confidence; if it is not you will have learned something new about the finer points
of Thai constructions and the meaning of Thai words.
As far as possible a colloquial style has been adopted throughout the exercises both in
English and Thai versions, even in some cases at the expense of strict academic
accuracy, since the aim of this book is to teach you to speak Thai rather than to become
a Thai scholar. Such lapses as there are from formal accuracy however are all common
usage and are readily acceptable anywhere but in Court circles.
The system of transliteration from Thai into English is an unorthodox one which is
certain to be criticised by professional linguists but it has been carefully worked out, is
consistent and, we believe, is suitable for the purposes of this book and appropriate to
the class of people we expect to use it.
The lessons are intended to cover a six months course taking one lesson per week and
doing it thoroughly. Experience has shown that one lesson can easily be mastered in a
week although if time is available it may be advantageous to treat the discussion on
tones and the tone exercises in Part B as separate lessons.
7

No attempt has been made to deal with specific activities such as “Going to the Post
Office”, “Seeing a Doctor” etc. as in Bangkok today none of these activities require a
knowledge of Thai at all and even in the country, until you are comparatively fluent in
the language you will probably do far better to stick to English and speak it slowly. If a
Thai can speak English at all he is generally better at it than you will be at Thai for quite
a while.
The Extended Vocabulary at the end of book contains all the words from the various
sectional vocabularies with a number of additional ones making about 1200 in all
which, if you know them all, will get you along fairly well under most circumstances.
There are many Thai and foreigners in Bangkok who are far more qualified to write a
book such as this than we are. The need is there; but as none of them have shown any
sign of doing so, we make no apologies for stepping into the field.
Stuart Campbell
Chuan Shaweevongs
Bangkok,
December 1956.
8

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
As a result of the experience gained with the first edition, this book has been completely
re-written and enlarged to include many more examples and explanations of the
particular usage of a large number of additional Thai words.
All the examples are given in Thai script as well as in the Romanised approximation
and we hope in this way to encourage our readers to get interested in the Thai written
language and used to the lack of separation between Thai words which at first presents a
most formidable barrier to reading.
We have introduced a large number of idiomatic forms both in the text and in examples,
some new and we hope useful appendices and have increased the vocabulary to over
2,500 words.
The reading exercises given in Parts B of lessons 20 to 26 are an innovation which we
hope will be useful in introducing the reader to some of the idiomatic forms of the Thai
written language and bringing to notice some of the peculiarities of construction.
The unorthodox system of transliteration used in the first edition has been adhered to
with slight modifications and though it is neither scholarly nor elegant, experience over
the last five years has shown that “it works” and is generally appreciated by, and
acceptable to, the large group of commercial, military and foreign service personnel
who have used the first edition and who generally have had little if any linguistic
training and no knowledge of the phonetic alphabet. It is for such people that this book
has been written. We have however included the phonetic alphabet inside the front
cover of the book for those who are familiar with it and wish to use it and we do not
anticipate that such people will have any difficulty in making the appropriate
substitutions.
We do agree however that it is almost impossible to reproduce the exact sound of many
Thai words in any form of transliteration without going into fairly complicated
typography and we strongly recommend users of this book to start as soon as possible
and learn the Thai alphabet which is by no means as hard as it looks at first. Once
having done this, the intermediate step of transliteration can be dispensed with entirely
or used merely as an aid, since all words in the text are given in their Thai spelling from
the beginning so that the proper pronunciation can be determined directly.
Without knowing the Thai alphabet you will be unable to look up any new word in the
dictionary and your vocabulary will be limited to the words given in this text. More
importantly still, it is only by knowing the alphabet that you will be able to determine
the tone of a Thai word for certain since many Thai though they can pronounce the
words correctly are not always sure of the tone they are using.
As we have mentioned before, study of this book alone will not enable you to speak
Thai and you should get yourself a proper Thai teacher as soon as possible. Don’t fall
into the common error of thinking you can learn the language “by book and by cook”.
Servants in any country are not usually very well educated and this is particularly so in
Thailand. Your servants can certainly help you with your pronunciation and then with a
9

few words and a lot of gestures you will probably be able to get along alright in the
market, but it will be very poor Thai.
A proper teacher is essential not only to help you in the pronunciation but also to
explain the syntax and the vast number of idiomatic expressions and constructions used
by educated Thai in everyday conversation and writing, many of which cannot even be
worked out with the help of a dictionary. Correct Thai is good enough for the market,
but market Thai will leave a bad impression in educated circles.
With the general high social status accorded to Europeans in Thailand it is far better, if
you want to speak with anyone other than your servants and market people, to talk
“good English” rather than “market Thai”.
Don’t be misled if someone says “Oh poot Thai geng” meaning “Oh you speak Thai
very well”; the Thai are very polite people and will usually say this if you utter three
words in Thai that they can understand even though they may think you speak like a
coolie.
We owe a considerable debt to numerous interested users of the first edition who have
come along with helpful suggestions for alterations and additions. practically all of
which we have been able to incorporate in this book. Nevertheless we realise that it is
still far from perfect and any criticisms or suggestions for the future would be most
welcome.
Finally we must express our appreciations of the work of our printers, “The Siva Phorn
Press” who have carried out this extremely complicated typesetting job with such
marked success, and have made every possible effort to ensure that the final product is
one they can be proud of.
Bangkok,
January 1962.

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
We thank the many interested readers who have sent us suggestions for improvements
to this book.
We have considered them all but although most have considerable merit we felt that to
have incorporated them all would have meant getting away too far from the original
concept of a book on “fundamentals” and this we hesitate to do.
We have re-arranged the examples to show English and Thai together and added some
new examples and some new words in the extended vocabulary at the end. We have also
included a new appendix containing a selection of useful and common idioms.
Otherwise the book remains substantially the same as before.
Bangkok,
October 1964.