Thai: An Essential Grammar

by David Smyth

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.

Genres: Linguistics, Language, Reference

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly researched and well produced.

I consider this to be the best book available for learning Thai grammar.

- Aaron Handel

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, as much as you can read a language grammar from cover to cover, I have done it with this book. I love its cross between a grammar book with a stiff upper lip and a useable phrasebook. It basically taught me to read and write Thai and pull out a perfect phrase when the opportunity arose.

[Lidiya · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a good book with A LOT OF information! It's been really helpful for me. Still I have a few BUTs:
1. If you don't know Thai alphabet and some basics of thai grammar you will have many difficulties with learning by the book, especially all the Thai letters.
2. Why? WHY does the book have English transcriptions of Thai words BEFORE those Thai words?! English isn't my native language so most of the time I just haven't paid attention to the transcriptions and read in Thai /I read transcriptions when i wasn't sure how to pronounce words in Thai/. But don't you think that this "English transcription-Thai word" order will make harder for people to memorize Thai letters and words? People just can't read in Thai after that i think.
So in conclusion if you know Thai alphabet and basics of Thai grammar but you want to know more of grammatical constructions so that you can create different and complicated sentences this book is for you.

[San · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a good book for beginners, but I'd advise you to at least know how to read the thai alphabet before reading this.
To me it was a starting point to get the most common things before I tried other (a little more complex) thai grammars.
The biggest flaw in this book is using only phonetics to teach words in thai, like, this does not make any sense, man, I NEED to learn how to read it to so I can make the connection between phonemes and the corresponding written letters.
Some more specific aspects of thai language are also under-explained (and I've figured that out the hard way), but like I said, if you want to start learning thai then you must learn how to read the alphabet and then go and read this book it'll help for sure (I'd also suggest for you to write the written word were the book uses only the phonetic version, it'll help a lot)