Thai Reference Grammar

by James Higbie

Written to meet the need of students and teachers of the Thai language for information on the more advanced sentence structure of the language. Each point is illustrated with characteristic sentences written in both Thai script and romanized Thai, with easy-to-read phonetics and tone symbols for improved pronunciation. The book will be welcomed by anyone learning the language past the beginning level and is an essential reference work for libraries and universities with an interest in Asia. Designed as a practical description of the spoken language, both the informal and formal varieties. Covers over 500 separate topics, providing some 2000 sample sentences, in typical idiomatic spoken Thai, for each topic.

Genres: Language

443 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

I was born in Michigan and earned a BA from Denison University in Granville Ohio and an MA from the University of Hawaii. I have been fortunate to meet two co-authors in very different places, and with their help produce books on two very different topics: Thai and Lao language and the Sierra Leone Civil War. In Thailand my co-author, Snea Thinsan, and I worked for five years analyzing the spoken Thai language and produced two works that are very popular for learners of Thai. In Sierra Leone my co-author, Bernard S. Moigula, and I interviewed people who were involved in or affected by the civil war and produced "Sierra Leone: Inside the War" which includes narratives from 50 people and a detailed history of the war. Besides the blog on the war I have a website on Thai and Lao language: www.thailao.net

Reviews

[Jon Kapp · Rating 5 out of 5]

After 15 years in the Kingdom, this remains, hands-down, the best grammar reference I've seen. It is an extremely useful companion for new (and old) speakers of Thai as a second language. Don't hesitate if you can find a copy!

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thai Reference Grammar - The Structure of Spoken Thai by James Higbie and Snea Thinsan is a must-have for any serious student of the Thai language. It is a very informative, dense book that is helpful to students ranging from beginner to highly-advanced. I would not recommend it to total beginners, however. In order to get the most from this book and to avoid being overwhelmed, I would suggest that a student have at least a basic understanding of the Thai written and spoken language.

Please keep in mind that this book is probably not something one would read like a traditional novel or story; it's a reference book, for the most part, and most readers will likely use it that way. So I will not attempt to review the book from beginning to end. The main reasons which I strongly recommend the Thai Reference Grammar are its thoroughness and wide-ranging topics covered, its focus on the modern, spoken language and its ease of use. The authors do an excellent job covering most topics of the modern Thai language, including nouns, verbs, prepositions, classifiers, tenses, syntax, etc in great detail. Likewise, the examples focus on the current spoken language and on vocabulary which is relevant to most students. It also has a table of contents and detailed index which make finding sections simple and the book relatively easy to use.

My complaints/concerns about the book are minimal, if any. For example, I would have liked more discussion of the different levels of politeness or formality in the language. Over the course of using the book, I have seen at least one discrepancy. I hestitate to call it a mistake as it doesn't seem to be an error, but it seems to be a difference or omission in between the translations of Thai, English and Thai in the Roman alphabet. Lastly, the fonts, especially for the Thai writing, are quite small. Students with weak vision might have some difficulty reading it.

Overall, it's a wonderful book and a great resource for people interested in the modern Thai language.

[Edwin Pietersma · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book really does it's trick, and is an amazing reference book for Thai grammar, unique in it's kind. The reason I only give it three stars was that besides the examples, all the words and grammar were written in English or transcription without the Thai writing system, at times making it unable to find the exact spelling of words. In addition, they were inconsistent with the discussion of grammar (not always telling the pattern of things), as well as quite a strange repetition at the end. I feel it is a vital book to have, but they could have made it more user-friendly.

[André · Rating 2 out of 5]

No, this book does not deserve the title "Reference Grammar", because it simply isn't. I'd rather describe it as a large collection of English collocations with their most common translations in colloquial Thai, exemplified by a large amount of realistic sentences. It's probably designed for students of Thai who already know a great deal of the language and want to improve their understanding, because of several reasons: The example sentences are abundant, but they are only written in Thai, pronunciation (a very idiosyncratic way which is hard to get used to; far from phonetic) and English translation. Problem is, there is no word-by-word glossing, so you have no way of knowing which word means what... unless you speak Thai, of course. An introduction to Thai sentence structures or word formation is missing completely, it just throws your right into translations of English collocations and sentence types, so it's not useful for linguists who want to look up a certain feature in Thai but do not speak the language themselves. Also, explanations are missing, you won't learn the order of words in a Thai sentence (as I had actually hoped for), there are no explanations on the exact situations in what you have to use which different translations, apart from really really brief two-sentence statements that are very vague.
I read through the book hoping to finally understand where adverbial clauses go in Thai in which situations or constructions (because this is kind of difficult), or some explanations of how and when to use มา, ไป, and ให้, but about in the middle I couldn't take it anymore and I skipped the examples and hoped to find something interesting that I either didn't know yet or that would shed some light on Thai Syntax. I didn't find anything. I really recommend to read the Thai grammar by David Smyth. This book here might still be useful though when you suddenly want to know how to say "For about 2 years" or "If he had gone" or for a list of common classifiers, so it's at least not completely useless. But I was very disappointed!

[Richard Piet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review coming ...