Thai: An Essential Grammar (Essential Grammars) [Paperback]

David Smyth (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415226147 | ISBN-13: 978-0415226141 | Publication Date: October 13, 2002

Concise and user-friendly, Thai: An Essential Grammar is the ideal guide to the basic structures of the language for both students on taught courses and independent learners. Grammatical forms are explained in clear, jargon-free style and illustrated by examples, given in both Thai script and romanization. As well as grammar, it includes guidance on pronunciation, speech conventions and the beautiful Thai writing system.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

David Smyth is Lecturer in Thai at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (October 13, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415226147
• ISBN-13: 978-0415226141
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #681,887 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Invaluable guide, November 25, 2002

By 

"greg_from_melbourne" (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Thai: An Essential Grammar (Essential Grammars) (Paperback)

I recently picked up this book in Bangkok and found I could put it to immediate use. Such an example would be the use of serial verbs where in English we would need a number of conjunctions. This enabled me to break out of stilted, one sentence at a time, conversation with my Thai friends.

This is not a dry academic treatise but a ready-to-use guide that is clearly explained in lay terms.

The author also wrote the Teach Yourself Thai book which I found very helpful when first visiting Thailand.

I strongly recommend this book, particularly for those people like myself wanting to "break out" of beginner's Thai. It is an invaluable reference that will need to be supplemented with a text book and good tape set, if you do not already have those.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Beware of the Kindle edition!, January 7, 2010

By 

Torben Brams "Torben Brams" (Copenhagen, Denmark) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Thai: An Essential Grammar (Essential Grammars) (Kindle Edition)

First of all let me stress that I have this book in hardcopy as well - and I absolutely love it!

This was also the reason that I picked this eBook as one of the first I purchased for my new Kindle 2. I did not check the preview before purchasing... that was a big mistake.

The eBook edition is just not done right. All Thai letters are included as bitmap images. (If you look carefully in the "Product Detail" above, you will see it weights in with a whopping 20070 KB)

Although it must have taken forever to do this way, it just does not work for the reader. The quality of the graphic characters is really terrible and besides it makes this otherwise slender book take a HUGE chunk of your Kindle memory.

Am I missing something here? I thought the Kindle would be able to display Unicode characters...

Can I return an eBook?

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best Thai grammar book I've found, May 21, 2006

By 

M. Willey (Phatthaya, Thailand) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Thai: An Essential Grammar (Essential Grammars) (Paperback)

Living in Thailand, I've found that speaking Thai is invaluable, even though many here can speak some degree of English. Since the logic behind Thai is so different than English, a good grammar book is a must if one wishes to seriously learn the language. This is by far the best grammar companion I have found.

My only gripes are with the transliteration. There are some inconsistancies romanizing the Thai letter "Ro Reua (ร)", in some examples, they use an "r", and others, they use an "l", which could be confusing to some readers.

Another gripe about the romanization is how they use "c" for "Jor Jan", which is a j/ch sound, and a funny "n" with a hook for the "ng" sound. Since a "c" never makes a "j" sound in English, and the "n with a hook" doesn't exist, it took me a while to get used to seeing them. I suppose that it's better to ignore the romanization all together and focus on the actual Thai alphabet, which is more important, which is what I did.

Those gripes aside, I would recommend this title to anyone who wants to give learning Thai a serious go.