Customer Reviews

Thai System of Writing

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

 

 

This is a technical book, detailing all the complex rules of writing Thai. For beginners who have not studied linguistics, the methodology used may be inaccessible. For those who already know some Thai, and would like to improve their ability to spell, and to determine tones of unknown words while reading, this is a very good resource. The book contains no exercises -- book refers to a Thai Reader which contains exercises -- I have not seen the Thai Reader.

I was looking for a book that would teach me how to write the Thai alphabet. Ms. Haas' book would be fine for a Thai language instructor or an upper division or graduate student. I was totally lost after page 2.

This book is short but well written. It will take you through all the seemingly endless curves and tricks of the written language and is excellent for those who are about to make a trip to Thailand, especially if you will not be in the "touristy" areas of the country. The only slight drawback is that some of the Thai text is very hard to read because it is blurry or too small, but is otherwise a very good learning tool. You will be reading in less than a month if you are determined.

This book has all the facts, but the text is very hard to make out, like a bad photocopy. I was hoping this book would shed light on some of the more obscure rules, like the character (ra rua) appearing twice in the same word without tone marks is the same as the short vowel (mai han-aa-gaat) but found none of that. This book also shows its age, having been written in 1955, stating that "satang" = "1/100th of a Tical" (the old currency of thailand). I found that the pages were packed with text, and this made it difficult to follow. I would reccomend the books by Benjawan Poomsan Becker over this title. While I am not a novice, I found trying to decipher the phonetic alphabet was annoying, I favor phonetic spelling but with a transliteration that you can actually read along with it, such as the system found in Robertsons Practical Thai-English Dictionary by AsiaBooks. In all, I would pass on this book if I had to do it again.

The Thai use a fairly complex writing system. The basic principle is one letter one sound and, unlike English, you can actually tell the pronounciation from the spelling. But there are lots of strange rules and many exceptions that you have to learn. Mary Haas untangles and explains them all. Every detail about the Thai system of writing can be found in this careful and systematic book. (My only criticism is the poor print.)

So should you buy this book? It depends. It will take you at least one month of hard work before you have mastered Thai writing. If you don't want to spend that much time, you are better off focusing on the spoken language. Also, the book is not written for complete beginners. You need to know basic phonetics terminology. If you don't know what say an "unsaspirated unvoiced stop" is, you need to study some phonetics before you can use this book.

But if you are serious about learning Thai and you know basic phonetics terminology, then this is the best book you can get about Thai writing.

The Thai writing system is not as complex as it appears at first glance, but can be somewhat frustrating for speakers of English. Mary Haas lays out the system very very well. As with all older texts, and as other reviewers have noted, this one would benefit from a reprinting with modern and more elegant laser fonts. As Derek Tonkin and Franklin Huffman set the standard for textbooks on the Khmer writing system, Mary Haas has done the same for Thai.

Like another reviewer mentioned, having a strong background in phonetic cognates will help you digest complex rules.

Many of the rules are only concrete in hindsight, you may skip this book as I did and teach yourself the alphabet. From there precede with Haas' Thai Reader and figure out the rules.

Either way, you are going to be going back to this book to see if you could do it better, and when that happens you will realize how smart Haas is. This book should be digested in bits and pieces over a long period of time. Concise yet enlightening.