Learning Thai Alphabet

 I'm a visual learner. I can't master a language if I don't know its alphabet. I need to read it first and then hear it, so I decided that before I pick up more and other than the initial sawadikaa or kapunkaa (Hello and Thank you, respectively), I need to learn the alphabet. That's why it took so little time for me to speak Norwegian or Spanish: I literally saw all the signs everywhere and it was really easy to figure out what means what. Also, as K. pointed out, all those languages I was familiar with are relatives and part of the Indoeuropean language family, whereas Thai couldn't be much further from them, even if it wanted to. Therefore, those common roots of words (except for some refreshing familiar words, like coffee!) (which I recognized on a sign today, yay!), don't help me either. It's something completely, utterly, totally different and even after 3 months, I feel completely lost. Also, give it to the fact that I have absolutely no contact with locals - well, I have some, but I have no contact with non-English speaker locals - those I'm friends with or know them, know English (even my landlady!). At the school, there is a very small number of Thais, as well, so I don't have a chance to learn it there, either (and anyway the school's policy is to speak in English). 

I was recommended the above video by my friend, W. I listened to it during one week and diligently practiced it's new words and expressions. The good part is that the language has a lot of logic! The tonal rules are well-understandable (5 tones altogether and at this point I must recall that I often beat myself up about why not moving to China or Taiwan instead when I had already invested 2,5 years learning that language 10 years ago. Not mentioning the fact that they "only" have 4 tonal rules. Whatever.)

Just to be fair and to say something in favour of the Thai alphabet, as well, they do not depict concepts but sounds. So the logic is similar to that of Latin letters, however different the characters are. Until the point, where the symbol responsible for letter "ph" changes at the end of the word "n" - but you wouldn't know where that is since Thai is not a language which uses space as syllable borders. Or punctuation. Seriously what?! I mean อะไร? 

At this point, I'm at the very beginning of learning Thai and I don't think it would change in the coming months or years. I can't , absolutely can't imagine how I would be able to make a difference between words without syllable borders and have the least idea if the sound should be pronounced "ph" , "th" or "whatever" Also, kudos for my students who can put together a couple of English sentences with the correct grammar AND spelling. 

As for now, and as for my very little understanding, Thai syllables always start with the consonant. However, the vowel could be written above, under, left or right! Basically, like Thai traffic: you could expect a motorbike from any direction, at any time! Just watch out for them - as well as for the vowels. 

After having listened to this video compilation twice, I must say, there are some mystical signs that I haven't learnt yet. Nevermind, luckily, I have some good and trustworthy friends, too, who would torture me SPELLING the word before reading it. Like the other day, when we sat in a café (Café Hug <3) with W. and I was excitedly showing off with my unreadable scribble of นา (nah) which means rice field or ดี (dee) which means good, no, no, he requested it to be read out first with "nanou" and "aa" and "dodee" and "ee". Imagine my rolling eyes at this point. Thank you though, I definitely see the logic in it! :-) But it's hard... very hard. :-( 

Well, and my biggest achievement this week: it only makes me happy that I walk around and I recognize some of the letters. I don't mind it that I don't get the word but just recognizing it makes me happy! :-) But yesterday, I was walking around and saw this sign: กาแฟ. The first letter in it is "gaogai" which can be "g" or "k" or whichever sounds (the chicken-sign), and long "aah", long "aye" (in Hungarian: é), and the upside down "M" with longer caption is letter "f". I was still anxiously paging up and down in my mental notebook if  the letter ฟ has a different pronunciation depending on its place, but in the meantime I tried to put together the word as well, when I had my first Hallelujah-moment! YAY! :-)))) I was smiling like a 60kW light bulb during the entire walk from that on - and with this little help you also learnt a Thai word for today, dear Reader. Of course, it might be useful for you, if you can't start your day without it, but it's nothing for me, not something I would order but it doesn't reduce the sense of achievement! ;-) 

That's about my philologist self - I hope you enjoyed this little detour! :-) I'll come back with more once I can fluently read and write some basics! (So approximately in a year :-D )

 My first attempt before the enlightening video - thanks W! :-)

บาย!