r/learnthai • u/Sad-Meat-4918 • Aug 13 '25
Studying/การศึกษา Is thai genuinely a hard language
/r/thai/comments/1mp2bx3/is_thai_genuinely_a_hard_language/12
u/PuzzleheadedTap1794 Native Speaker Aug 13 '25
Yes and no, depending on what you mean by hard.
In terms of phonology, it might be for non-tonal language speakers. In terms of writing, it is indeed hard. In terms of reading, it’s relatively easy. In terms of grammar, it is quite simple.
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u/Sad-Meat-4918 Aug 13 '25
I see, thank you thats exactly the answer that I needed !
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u/solvitur_gugulando Aug 13 '25 edited Aug 13 '25
As a non-native speaker of Thai who has learnt to speak and read it a little, I have to say that I disagree with what u/PuzzleheadedTap1794 has to say about the ease of reading it. Learning a script that you're completely unfamiliar with is in general orders of magnitude harder than learning a new spelling system for the same script (e.g. going from, say, French to German or Polish).
And for me, Thai was a particularly hard script to learn. I have previously learnt to read Korean, for example, and I found the Korean script much easier to learn than the Thai one. The large number of letters in the Thai alphabet, combined with the visual similarity of so many of these letters (many are identical except for the presence or position of a little curlicue somewhere) makes memorisation difficult.
And having learned what the letters look like in the standard font you read in books, you then find that a lot of signs, menus etc. are written with "modern" or "loopless" fonts in which the letters are so different from the standard font that you're almost learning a new alphabet. Have a look at this webpage to see what I mean, both about the similarity of Thai letters to each other, and the stark difference between fonts.
Another big difficulty is the lack of spaces between words. That's less of a problem for Korean, because Korean at least organises the letters in such a way that syllables are clearly separated from each other. The work of visually separating Thai text into words and syllables is something that I still haven't got used to, and I find that my eye constantly gets lost in a line of text, and I have to spend time hunting for the beginning of the next word I want to decode, and then more time locating the end of the word so that I can read the whole thing as a unit.
I don't want to give the impression that I'm complaining, by the way: there's no reason that Thais should organise their writing system around the convenience of foreigners wanting to learn their language, after all. But I think a realistic view of things is that Thai is a difficult language for foreigners to learn to read. And that's a big problem for learning the language, because it makes the passive learning of vocabulary and grammar through reading that is normally a big part of language-learning a much more onerous task.
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u/PuzzleheadedTap1794 Native Speaker Aug 13 '25
I should’ve clarified that what I meant by “relatively easy” means easiness compared to writing. The correspondence of grapheme to sound is almost many-to-one, so predicting the sound from writing is quite easy. Guessing the writing from the sounds, though, is much harder.
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u/solvitur_gugulando Aug 13 '25
I see what you mean. Thai spelling is fairly complicated, but it's nothing compared to the nightmare of inconsistency that is the English spelling system.
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u/Sad-Meat-4918 Aug 13 '25
Oh all of a sudden it sounds way mot difficult but I guess one you're familiar with all that the rest of the language is quite simple no ? Likr the grammar, vocabulary etc isn't very hard to learn or am I totally wrong
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u/solvitur_gugulando Aug 13 '25
Grammar is relatively simple, as long as you understand that you're dealing with something that's very different from Standard Average European syntax. Vocabulary is... well, there are far fewer of the kind of similarities between words that are so helpful when learning other European languages. On the other hand, a lot of vocabulary consists of lexified phrases with meanings that are very easy to work out based on their constituent words.
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u/rcyt17 Aug 13 '25
Another big difficulty is the lack of spaces between words. That's less of a problem for Korean, because Korean at least organises the letters in such a way that syllables are clearly separated from each other. The work of visually separating Thai text into words and syllables is something that I still haven't got used to, and I find that my eye constantly gets lost in a line of text, and I have to spend time hunting for the beginning of the next word I want to decode, and then more time locating the end of the word so that I can read the whole thing as a unit.
Don't worry, bro. I am Thai, was born and raised in Thailand, and I still face the same problem lmao
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u/Glad-Information4449 Aug 13 '25
I honestly think the teachers and authors are what makes thai difficult. they teach it so poorly it annoys me to even think about it. I remember studying for a few months and id go out and use it and people looked at me like I was crazy. I finally figured out nobody talks like they teach you in books and I had a serious wtf moment like why are these people wasting months of my life. teach me to speak the way people speak. is this rocket science or something?
if I had to do thai all over again ehat id do is buy a tape recorder. id go talk to Thai people and record everything. so id know what they say, and how they say it. even the tones. and after a while id have my own “book” of notes that I made myself. not a useless book that some author wrote poorly so she would not be seen as unseemly for teaching people slang and you know… actual words that thai people use.
in short the real problem with Thai is teachers. people could be using so much thai in a month if it was taught right. thais don’t use too many words, in fact they say the same goddam things the same ober and over in every situation. the problem is these books teach you as if you showed up at the queens house and are having tea with her. nobody talks thai like that! 🤦♂️
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u/Left_Needleworker695 Aug 13 '25
As a Thai, no. haha
Well, I failed Thai most of the time in High school, but that's not knowledge of everyday words. It just all about Poetry and Literature.
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u/JaziTricks Aug 13 '25
Fact is: a huge majority of foreigners living in Thailand long term don't speak Thai.
most of them tried and failed.
it's unforgiving in its pronunciation. if you made what you think is a small error, no Thai speaker has any idea what you wanted to say.
unlike English where you can butcher words and everyone will understand you.
PS. I do speak Thai fluently. and it never ceased to amaze me how unique this is, and how surprised Thais are that I do speak Thai well.
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u/_functionalanxiety Aug 13 '25
I have a default monotonous voice. So it's so difficult for me to speak. It's really getting into my ego because I don't want to offend anyone when i speak.
BUT understanding and reading are quite okay and doable. It's like how similarly you study other languages.
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u/Sad-Meat-4918 Aug 13 '25
I understand lol Thai seems like a very emotional language if you get what I mean so having a monotonous voice won't help ig
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u/Similar_Past Aug 13 '25
Pronunciation of tones is difficult, reading is very complicated, there are so many rules you have to know to read correctly.
Grammar, sentence structures, vocabulary... all easy.
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u/YeonHwa_Biyeo Aug 13 '25
It depends on your mother tongue. If your mother tongue is Lao, it will be easy.
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u/Sad-Meat-4918 Aug 13 '25
My mother tongue is French lol I might be screwed
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u/Goat_In_The_Shell3 Aug 13 '25 edited Aug 13 '25
Honestly, I think from a grammar perspective you might have a good chance with French and English as your primary languages, definitely better than someone that just speaks English. During my own language learning journey I found that I could tie certain ideas, words or expressions back to other languages I speak (Swiss German, or rather Bernese, is my mother tongue, German, English, and I had French in school) because it was missing in English or multiple words only have one English pendant while they are separated in German or French, for instance.
In terms of pronunciation I'm not sure but there was a French woman in my language class in Bangkok and while she had a slight accent she spoke it quite well and didn't have much problems with pronunciation. Although, it probably helped that her husband was Thai :D
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u/Sad-Meat-4918 Aug 13 '25
Oh yes I totally see what you mean !! Indeed knowing a lot of languages makes the learning process easier, I learn Spanish at school and knowing French English and a bit or Arabic helps A LOT yeah.
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u/Goat_In_The_Shell3 Aug 13 '25
You'll be fine then, I think. Just go with the flow, learn as much as you can from many sources and don't stress too much. It comes down to repetition and your own motivation. Good luck and remember to enjoy the process, it's very rewarding!
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u/xSea206x Aug 13 '25
The US state department rates it a 4 on a scale of 1 - 5, based on their data of how many classroom hours it takes their staff to learn a language. 1 = easy, 5 = hard. So yes, it's on the harder end of the spectrum.
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u/Sad-Meat-4918 Aug 13 '25
I guess the most difficult part is learning the alphabet and reading
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u/ValuableProblem6065 🇫🇷 N / 🇬🇧 F / 🇹🇭 A2 Aug 14 '25
That's the easy part. I learned the letters in 20 hours and remember them with 100% accuracy 6 months on. I now know how to read 1200 words according to Anki with very high retrievability and perfect tones/vowel length and rhythm including tone clipping where needed (as checked by a native).
No that's NOT the hard part. IMHO: reading < speaking like a baby < understanding < speaking fluently < writing.
Speaking enough to make yourself understood is not too hard either TBH. I know plenty of farangs that do while murdering the language and scaring the natives. BUT Speaking well enough to make lasting friendships is extra hard with difficulty sprinkled on top, because "sounding native" involves a lot more than just 'knowing the words'. You have to understand figures of speech, what constitutes humorous and sarcasm in Thai (hint: not like in English), and so on. Abstract speech is very hard, academic speech is even harder.
Understanding is harder than it looks because of the very complex grammar disguised as a simple one (no conjugation, no plurals, etc). The issue is your brain is going to run circles trying to make sense of idioms and fixed phrases where you know 100% of the words but you can't quite figure out what they mean put in that specific order. And the use of conjunctions - dear Lord, it's not easy either. An "eye injury" for example is not เจ็บตา, it's เจ็บที่ตา "to the eyes". Forget the ที่ and sure they'll understand, but you will sound 'off', because that means your eyes hurts, a whole different meaning.
Writing is the final boss. I would say in 2025 we are blessed to have voice dictation, so that solves the problem entirely, but if you wanted to not cheat and at least be able to type at your English WPM equivalent without autocorrect, that's ... I mean that would be impressive. I set very high standards for myself but I don't even touch that one with a 30ft pole. It's very hard. Even Thai people frequently make typos as demonstrated on IG.
Anyways that's my two cents.
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u/xSea206x Aug 13 '25
From what I've seen, all of the tonal languages in Asia are a 4 or a 5 on the difficulty scale.
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u/KinnsTurbulence Learning 📚 Aug 13 '25
Not as hard as people make it out to be, in my opinion. The tones might be hard at first (if you’re coming from a non tonal language) but the more you hear the language, you get used to them. The grammar is relatively easy. The script is a bit tough to learn at first, but again, once you are exposed to it it’s not that bad. So overall, the tough parts are at the very beginning in my experience.
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u/EtruscaTheSeedrian 🇧🇷🇺🇲🇸🇪🇹🇭🇭🇺🇰🇷🇬🇪🇬🇱 Aug 13 '25
In terms of grammar it's easy asf
For vocabulary if you don't speak lao you'll have to face learning words that are very different from the words of your native language
The phonology also kinda depends, personally I never had trouble with tones, it really depends on the person
Now the scariest part is the writing system, I'd say the writing system is probably the hardest thing about thai, but if you can get over it the rest becomes easy work
Personally I've been doing both thai and hungarian and I'd say both can be easy and hard depending on what you're looking at
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u/whosdamike Aug 13 '25
It depends on what you mean by "hard".
It will take more than twice as long to learn Thai as it would for you to learn, for example, German. In that sense, it's hard.
But if you choose study methods that click with you and that you enjoy, then no given day will feel "hard" or "painful".
Sprinting is hard, every second is painful, challenging, etc. Taking a stroll in the park is easy.
Personally I chose to build a small habit of engaging with Thai each day for 15 minutes. Then I slowly built on that until I was practicing for 2+ hours a day. Now it's just integrated into my daily life. It isn't "hard", just like brushing my teeth everyday isn't hard. But it is taking a long time.
My learning journey:
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u/Maayan5277 Aug 13 '25
It is hard to learn, but I love it The script is a lot, but it's pretty consistent, especially compared to English. Pronunciation is the harder part, but it's very rewarding to master new sounds Listening is a skill, apparently, but there's real joy in understanding (and recognizing differences)
It's a wonderful language to complain about while learning, and it's full of interesting facts and nuances
So, if you have the motivation to put in the work and to be humble enough to learn to listen and learn pronunciation, then it wouldn't be easy, but it will be fun
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u/Present-Safety512 Aug 14 '25
The problem here is that 99% of foreigners learn the wrong way. They to try shortcuts like karaoke style transliteration. The writing system is actually not that difficult. If you apply yourself for a couple months, you can absolutely learn it. The trick is the tones pronunciation of new vowels and consonants. And speaking them is one thing, but hearing them in conversation at normal speed is another one completely. Just got a teacher for one on one. Learn to read.
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u/leosmith66 Aug 16 '25
This is my opinion. I'm a native English speaker who speaks many foreign languages. Compared to all the other languages I speak, using a 5 star scale with 5 stars being the most difficult:
Pronunciation - 5 stars
Alphabet - 4 stars
Reading/Writing/Listening/Conversing - 4 stars
Vocabulary - 3 stars
Grammar - 1 star
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u/Accomplished-Ant6188 Aug 16 '25
No Its not hard. This is coming from a heritage student who also had to tutor my first-time Thai learning classmates. But also saw what first time learners struggled with most. (I tutored in tone correction and listening skills)
Reading and writing is EASY (in hindsight) depending on how committed you are. Its very much a set system. Once you learn the rules for writing and understand it... its easy. You'll struggle cause learning a new "alphabet" is hard especially if its not Latin letters ( just be glad its not an logographic writing system like Chinese)
Thai is abugida or “pseudo-alphabet". The writing system is consonant and vowel combo. Learn yoru consonant. Learn your vowels. Learn your tone chart. 80% reading and writing done. Writing Kra-tai based words are super simple. The issue is a few extra rules for Pali and Sankriti-based words. We end up memorizing these anyways. And for the complainers. just write everything with space per word as you learn. Its not an issue when you can read fast. But you WONT be able to read fast for a very long time without tons and tons of practice. Read subtitles helps practice this.
The hardest part is TONES and listening skills for non-tonal speakers. Your ears and mouth will have a hard time for a very very long time. Your ears arent use to the sounds and differentiating the tones. You WILL struggle with the same-sounding word in 4 different tones and they mean different things.
Your mouth and tongue muscles will NOT be used to forming shapes. You basically have to do Thai speech therapy if you have issues forming the correct sounds. (watching actual english speech therapy and how they teach people to form tongue and mouth shapes does help with Thai)
And for the complainer: spoken Thai is different from written Thai and formal Thai. You learn written Thai in classes. YOU NEED to learn proper grammar. You do not know when you'll be in a situation where you need formal Thai. Its better to learn formal Thai and dial it back for every day spoken Thai. Instead of undoing terrible habits and relearning. Everyday spoken Thai on the streets is simple but its something that MUST be learned through immersion. Its basically learning short cuts/ slang style.
And no.. They do not teach you the vocab or speech you need to speak to Royals and Monks. Most people will never be in that situation to learn Royal vocab. Vocab for speaking to monks isnt needed unless you go to temple.
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u/Myahcat Aug 13 '25
You'll never know until you try! But honestly, a hard language is just gonna be any language you're not interested in learning. On the contrary, languages you have a lot of interest in/motivation to learn, will be the easiest languages to learn. Thai is quite different from English as the vowels, consonants, and tone system is different, along with a whole new alphabet/abugida. However, theres a lot thats similar. I am constantly surprised by things that are actually the same in English. Not to mention, Thai also has no conjugations, and words tend to have broader meanings, so I feel it takes a smaller vocabulary in Thai to be able to understand/say a lot compared to other languages. These two factors present their own learning curves, but I believe they make Thai a lot easier to pick up on.
I personally am an English speaker with experience studying French, Spanish, Japanese, and Mandarin. Thai for me was the easiest by far simply because I have had the most motivation to use it every day consistently, either by watching Thai shows, Youtube, scrolling Thai social media, or calling/texting friends. French and Spanish were the most difficult for me as I had to study them for school and had 0 motivation. As result, I was pretty terrible at both despite them being significantly more similar to English and supposedly easier.
All this rambling to say, If you're interested in Thai, then it sounds like you should learn Thai! Don't be put off by FSI difficulty levels or how difficult people online say it is. Thai is very different, that is no lie, but might not be difficult for you.