Customer Reviews

Colloquial Thai; A Complete Language Course/With Two Audio CDs (Colloquial Series)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Overall, I thought the book was a good text for someone just attempting to learn Thai. What becomes evident later is that it in itself is insufficient to provide a complete guide. There are numerous spelling/grammatical errors that one can find as you progress through the course. In several instances when checking answers to the exercises provided, you'll find the answers do not completely match the question. What I discovered after a period of time is that this book will give you a good reference but you need an additional text or two that combines good transliteration with a cross referenced dictionary. I found that using this book with Mike Simpson's "The English Thai Dictionary" provided me with a better understanding. I think the fault for the errors is with the author/publisher but the greatest disadvantage to the up and coming learner is that there is no standard by which Thai is taught. Every book/author takes a different approach to the romanization of the language and the Thai scripting. Still, it is a good reference book that will give you the fundamental basics and start you on the way.

This course is certainly better than a phrase book. I like the dialogs and that they teach you the grammar.

However, they use their own way of transliterating Thai into the roman alphabet, which makes it utterly confusing when you try to look something up in a dictionary. "j" is written as "ch", "ch" is "sh", etc.

Furthermore, the transliteration is skimping on the tone marks. Tone marks appear in the glossary but not in the dialoges. Although each chapter has a section where they teach you Thai script, they don't show the Thai spelling of the words that are used in the dialoges.

In my opinion, "Teach yourself Thai" is a better course than this one.

I went traveling in Thailand and wanted to prepare by learning a little Thai.

This book was ok, but could have been much more useful if:

1) The dialogue excercises and examples had been more geared towards typical traveler conversation. Instead, the first dialogues present "in the office" conversations.

2) The roman letter pronunciation system followed a more standardized model. I found the system that this book uses to be far different from other pronunciation systems, and hence very confusing.

On the good side, the flow of the book and the CD match up pretty well, and the book has lessons in Thai script, though I wished that it showed the differnt fonts, or all the different ways of writing the same Thai letter. In Thailand, I was not able to recognize many letters that I thought I had learned, because they did not match the examples in the book.

I recently joined a company that has allowed me the luxury to travel and work in Thailand from time to time. I have observed that there are several errors throughout the book, but generally it is very well written by its British and Thai authors. The book has an easy layout, and each chapter builds upon the next. I would strongly advise that the CD, (or the cassette), is purchased with the book, because it's impossible to duplicate the tones of Thai language from the text alone. As an ex-schoolteacher I appreciated what the authors were trying to acheive with this language course; learning the language in a systematic 'learning-by-doing' method. However, it's definitely not the type of book to carry around with you as a tourist in Thailand, so I would suggest the excellent Lonely Planet's Thai phrasebook for that. (ISBN 0-86442-658-5) Nick D. Benson, Boulder, CO, 12/2000

As a long-term resident of Thailand I found this book to be the best intoduction to Thai for other expats and for business travel in Thailand. The conversation exercises are practical and easy to apply in everyday speech. I particuarly like the way new words are presented: some are quite challenging for a new speaker but really essential to quickly coming to grasp with real Thai. Ironically, some of the words and phrases normally associated with language books (for example, shopping and tourist related activities) are not dealt with until much later in the book. Exercises in Thai script are a bit sketchy and, for a proper understanding, students will need a more advanced book on writing/reading Thai. Cassette tapes clear.

I am part Thai and so am very committed to learning the language. I have tried several courses and taken lessons, but this book & the accompanying cds have been the greatest resource I have found. It integrates writing along with speaking and grammar so that you learn how to correctly pronounce the words, as well as write them. For those that complain of it not containing tonal information or of it spelling the words differently than others - EVERY thai book and dictionary will spell the words differently. What makes this book fantastic is that it gives you the thai letters which is the key to pronouncing the word correctly. If you can pronounce the letter in thai (which they teach you in the beginning) then you can use that thai letter as your key to pronouncing the words as you go through the course. I got very confused trying to sort through the different spellings in other resources, but I finally am getting the hang of pronouncing everything now that I know the thai letters and can relate them to the romanized spellings.

The good news first: this is one of the best courses available for someone with the goal of getting a quick start in speaking Thai. Vocabulary is well chosen, although people going to Thailand for travel will find that they have to wait a while before they get much that is useful for their purposes. I like the treatment of the grammar, which is not terribly complicated but would be totally unfamiliar for someone who had never studied an uninflected language before. The dialogues that accompany each lesson are interesting, useful and very oriented toward everyday life and are not difficult to follow on the CDs that come with the book. If that was all that was needed to advance to an intermediate level with a well rounded knowledge of entry-level Thai, I would definitely consider giving this book four or even five stars.

But what this book has to offer learners who want to read and write Thai (and why would any learner not want to?) is so skimpy and inadequate that one wonders why the authors even bothered to include it. Other courses, like 'Thai for Beginners' and 'Teach Yourself Thai' introduce the letters a few at a time (as this book does)but they also have a parallel text in Thai in addition to the transcription, with the goal of gradually weaning the student away from the dead end that is transcription. This book does not use the same system of transcription and does not even mark tones in the lessons, so that to learn the tone of a new word you have no other recourse but to look it up. To say that this makes the acquisition of new vocabulary unnecessarily slow and tedious is something of an understatement. and even having reached the end of the book you will not be able to cope with actual written Thai unless you have used another course in addition to this one. So overall I would have to say that there is a lot of room for improvement.

First of all, many of the criticisms of this product apply only to this edition, they were fixed in the new (November 2005) edition, which Amazon also has. My review applies to the new (2nd) edition.
I am a college student who went to Thailand for 10 days on a service trip. I only studied Thai for two months before I left. For one month, I used whatever online resources I could find, and for the second month, I used Colloquial Thai. I got up to about Chapter 12. I studied for a few (maybe 3) hours every day, and each chapter took me 2 or 3 days to get through. When I got to Thailand, I was able to say most things I wanted to say and I could understand a lot if they spoke slowly and simply. When the translators weren't around, I could chat with the villagers, order meals, satisfy my curiousity ("khun roojak the Beatles mai khrap?" - Do you know the Beatles?), and so on. I even made two speeches in Thai, on the spot, as a representative for my group. So, I am very grateful to this book.
Here are the pros and cons:
The transliteration system is easy to read, and the symbols marking tones are easy to get used to. The most annoying part is that they transliterate the sound we would call "g" as "k", and "k" as "kh." This is common in Thai transliteration systems, because the Thai "gaw gai" is slightly different than our "g", but it's a lot closer than our "k." Also, the way they transliterate Thai vowels makes sense, especially compared to Benjawan Poomsan Becker's system.
The goal of this book is to teach colloquial Thai, not written Thai. At the end of every chapter they teach you how to read and write some of the vocab from the chapter, but it's really not the focus of the book. You will be able to read signs (like "sukhaa") but you probably won't be able to write notes.
The vocab in each chapter is very useful. Every time I started a new chapter, I thought, "Ah, now they teach you the important stuff" -- but that's because they teach you lots of important stuff, and relatively little useless stuff.
The CDs are extremely valuable. Not only do they have all the sample conversations, but they have listening & speaking exercises. For example, they will play a conversation for you that's not in the book, then ask you questions about it, then tell you the answers. Or you will role-play the part in a conversation, "I'll give you the cues in English," says our friend John Moore.
The book itself contains a lot of useful exercises. It will ask you to talk about certain things, and then you can check to see if you spoke correctly in the back of the book.
Here's a complaint: all the conversations are between two adults of near-equal social status. When I went to Thailand, I was often speaking to children, who will call you "phee" (older brother/sister) and whom you should address as "nawng" (little brother/sister). I was very confused at first as to who this "phee" was, and they must have thought it funny that I called them "khun." Also, I tried to talk to a monk once and he sort of just ignored me, because I didn't realize that you have to address monks differently than ordinary people. So I never got to talk with the monks :(.
Anyways, this program is excellent, and if you want to learn Thai, get it.

The book only has very few tonal notations, a with there being five tones for the same word; they are extreamly important. I have ordered numerous Thai books - and this one is quite expensive and one of the worst. And since it comes with "free CD's" - one opened, you can't return. Too bad I would have.

The Moore and Rodchue COLLOQUIAL THAI and the accompanying 2 cassette tapes from Routledge are not all they are cracked up to be. Main gripe...one can not use the tapes without having the book in hand at the same time...so no use of tapes in the automobile. Also, neither the tapes nor the book are clear about where in the book the tape is referencing and vice versa. Also, no repetition on the tapes and u know how difficult it is to rewind a tape an inch to repeat a word or phrase. If a person learns Thai from this book/tape set, they really should go into the language business because the set presents very difficult usage challenges and is not educationally sound...that comes from a 30 year educator...me. Get a computer CD ROM set instead or get a native Thai to speak to your own cassette this way...1.Thai word three times, 2.English word twice, and again the same Thai word three times...then go to the next word. Sad product as it stands...