Customer Reviews

Thai Reference Grammar

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you are looking for a book on Thai grammar you will not do better than this one. It is clear and to the point. It lists many examples for each subject that it presents. I have been trying unsuccessfully to get Thai people to explain to me what I have found clearly laid out in this book.

I was both happy and disappointed when I discovered this book. Happy that my confusion is now over. Disappointed that Peace Corps did not distribute this to its volunteers in training.

These are the chapter listings of what this book has to offer:

1. Fundamentals; basic word order, to be, addressing people etc
2. Referring to things; it, possessive, number of things etc
3. Referring to people; Numbers, who, myself/yourself, etc
4. Questions; covers most questions
5. Expanded Sentences; I think that, Did you know, etc
6. Tenses; present, future, past
7. Using Verbs; long chapter dedicated to many verb uses
8. Using "Hai" / Requests; let/allow, cause, for me etc.
9. Conjunctions; And, also, because, but, except, if, etc
10. Using Gaw; various ways of using this word
11. Quantifiers; very, all, each, enough, some, etc
12. Comparisons; similar, different, equal, like, even, etc
13. Prepositions; about, around, between, by, far, etc
14. Particles and Interjections; Ka/krup, la, na, tee, sa, etc
15. Time Phrases; times of day, past and future time phrases,
16. Order Of events; Before, after, then, as soon as, etc
17. How Long?; period of time, spending time, etc
18. Frequency; Times/occasions, sometimes, usually, etc

I gave just a sampling of each chapter but there is a whole lot more than what I have listed. My only problem with this book is that it could list some of the instructions in Thai. That limits the book to being a self study book instead of a book a Thai instructor would be able to use to help teach with. That being said it is a truly wonderful tool. If you are planning on studying Thai seriously then you need to get this book.

PC Volunteers: This book is available in Bangkok for half the price listed here. You won't need it right away so you can cut down on your allowed baggage weight limit by getting it here.

A new book on the grammar of spoken Thai has been released, and it must be the best book on Thai I've seen. Thai Reference Grammar, by James Higbie and Snea Thinsan, is a reference book rather than something you're likely to polish off in one sitting. The authors analysed examples of spoken and colloquial Thai, then came up with their own examples to illustrate how sentences are built. It comes to more than 400 pages, and must represent thousands of hours of work.

The authors consulted Thai speakers interested in passing on the language, to find out what makes it tick. The transliteration system is good: it gives you the length of vowels as they exist in spoken Thai.

This can be different from their value in written Thai, and in fact the authors change the Thai spelling of some words, given in their examples, to show the way the words are pronounced (kao, for he, has a high tone in spoken Thai but rising tone in written Thai) in cases where this differs from the written version!

The book does not confine itself to spoken Thai, however; for any given word ('so', for example, in the sense of consequently or therefore) it will give you the six or seven Thai words in use, and show you how they are deployed; and will tell you which are in every-day use and which you're likely to encounter mainly in writing ie the formal ones you can avoid.

The authors seem to know exactly what trips up or holds back a learner. You'll find an entire chapter here devoted to the order of events (before, after, in three days time), another to tenses, another one again to the use of 'gor', and yet another to end-sentence particles.

This book is a serious and comprehensive study of Thai. I know of none better, and have read plenty. It is accessible, though will take you a while to get through: I spent three hours with it today, and covered less than half a chapter!

This is a fabulous book. It explains so many aspects of Thai grammar in a very clear and understandable way. It also gives specific examples that are extremely helpful. This book is probably not for someone who is just beginning to learn Thai, but if you already have a basic foundation in the language and want to improve your skills, this book is a must.

I have been studying Thai for close to 15 years off and on. I am half Thai and my mother never taught me Thai, so I took it upon myself to teach myself. I've reached this state of being "Advanced" without a teacher. Now it's getting increasingly difficult to learn proper Thai grammar as well as how to read and write. You get fantastic gems one line after another in this book, with very little examples inbetween. I'd give this book 5 stars if they had more examples of usage. I love the book however because there is a huge gaping hole where this level of Thai education is needed. If you're trying to teach yourself without a real Thai person to help you, this book will be extremely challenging. You must be very diligent to read through the book, because it is so dense with gems. I am very happy to have found it when I was in Thailand. I'm happy to see that it's now available on Amazon.com. If you're trying to improve your Thai in more advanced levels, this book is definitely for you!

A very well done, well put together book. Not for the person who just wants to know the basics or does not take learning Thai seriously.

Other reviews are accurate about the tone annotations being different and sometimes inconsistent, but the person learning and speaking Thai will love this book as it more comprehensive and accurate than most others.

Not for the beginner.

This books thinks forward and answers questions that the basic unlearned student would ask about Thai grammar. It is an excellent new learner's tool. I highly recommend this book for those who are beginners, intermediate and also advanced. There is something for all and a must have valuable library reference book for the serious Thai language student.

For the money it is an excellent reference book. The book has many examples, easy to understand and very useful to the more advance student. If their is a better Thai grammar book, then I've yet to find that book!

This book is literally packed with useful lessons for those who are serious about learning the language. It covers basically everything on the intermediate level. It is also the only learn Thai book in existence that goes beyond the beginner level (if any other book says advanced or expert, it really isn't).

It took me about two plus years to read it from front to back, mostly because there was so many concepts to absorb. And of course its a great reference manual too, having info on very confusing words such as 'hai'.

My only complaint is that the karaoke (english spelling of Thai words) is really bad in this book. The book usually has Thai spellings of each lesson which is what I prefer, but occasionally the author forgets. Sometimes when he only writes the karaoke, he even forgets to specify tones! Learning a tonal language without specifying tones is well . . . useless. Chapter 13 was the worst offender.

That being said, it's still the best book out there for the advanced learner.

Now what I am waiting for is someone to write an Expert level book . . . I am having to rely on books intended for Thai school children for now.

I'm sure this book is helpful for intermediate students, but it had come to me much more highly recommended than, on reading it, I thought it deserved to be. For me it didn't have anything new at all. I had many specific questions about more complex structures than it dealt with. I also don't think it's systematized in a very scientific way. And what especially put me off was that in the very first pages there is a misspelling of the third person "'''" as "''''" (substituting buffalo "kh" for egg "kh" and changing the inherent tone with a tone mark), a spelling I have only seen in teenage chat rooms on the internet, and which is repeated throughout the book.
Also, as a previous reviewer noted, the system of phonetic transcription is idiosyncratic and, to me, not very helpful. Why not use the Mary Haas system, which is easy to read, or the international phonetic alphabet?
Those points aside, the book is worth buying for the intermediate student because it does have some useful structures and sentences in it.