Thai Megathread

With Leo's permission, I want to create a catch-all thread for Thai. Ask questions, tell us about your favorite YouTube channels/movies/series/books, resource recommendations/reviews, etc.

I'll start it off by listing my favorite resources. I started learning Thai using Becker's books and websites that are long gone, along with going to a language school in Thailand, so I don't have any great recommendations for books for beginners or on how to read. 

My main method of studying these days is using the Language Reactor extension (formerly Language Learning with Netflix) with Thai subtitled videos on Netflix and YouTube. For those not familiar with it, it opens a window beside the video with line-by-line subtitles. You can click on individual lines to repeat them and there's a pop-up mouse-over dictionary. It has other features like saving vocabulary but I just use Anki for that. This has been an absolute game-changer for me and it works with most other languages too.

Thai Reference Grammar by Higbie and Thinsan is the best grammar book available.

100 Words That Make You Sound Thai and the sequel Another 100 Words... by Stephen Saad. He is a fluent foreigner and these books talk about his method and give tips along with the 100 Words (which is actually a few hundred because he gives example sentences, alternative similar words, etc.). These books are focused on colloquial speech and his descriptions are excellent. He has a beginner book also which is most likely very good as well.

Master List of Thai YouTube channels with subtitles. Language Reactor works with all Netflix native Thai material as far as I can tell so no need to list it here. I will update this list whenever I find a new channel or one is recommended. I prefer ones with subtitle files so they can be used with LR but there are some good shows with the subtitles printed on the screen so I will list those also. Not every video on every channel has subtitles, many will be labelled with [CC].

With Subtitle Files:

Point of View

เล่าเรื่องรอบโลก by Karuna Buakamsri

DrAmp Team

Dhamma. com

SpokeDark TV

เสมเสวนา SEM Talk

Mahidol Channel มหิดล แชนแนล

Go Went Go

With on-screen subs:

Club Friday Show interviews

Nanake 555

For lower levels Pickup Thai podcast has some decent upper-beginners material, though it's paid. To learn to read I did a brief course of reading/pronunciation lessons based on the Benjawan Becker (paiboon) books that most people use because they're one of the few beginners materials. I don't like the paiboon books that much but their dictionary app is excellent. 

Read Thai in 10 days is widely recommended too. The site Thai-notes.com has some good resources for beginners - lower intermediate.

Also the site selfstudythai.com has some interesting intermediate study materials featuring news articles with transcripts broken down into sentences for study. There's a corresponding anki deck you can find on ankiweb if you want to study the vocabulary in flashcards. It's a good resource for building vocabulary related to current affairs. 

kikenyoy wrote:

Point of View
เล่าเรื่องรอบโลก by Karuna Buakamsri

I just wanted to second this one. I stumbled upon it by accident today, and realized it was already on your list. I consider myself to be B2, and found both of the following to be quite comprehensible:

A very detailed account of the origin of the word ฝรั่ง. This was enlightening to me, because I've heard it explained so many (questionable) ways before.

Great explanation of the connection of the word สวัสดี to the swastika. I never really thought of this before - I wonder if this explains why some Thais post Hitler banners and such. 

Book Recommendation...this is 55 stories taken from Naa Nek's call in show, with sections on Love, Family, Friends, Work, Life Goals and Misc. The book is mostly written in colloquial language and gives some interesting insight on Thai culture. I think someone at high B1 who is patient and doesn't mind using a dictionary could work their way through it but it's more suited for B2+. I think I'm mid B2 level and I averaged maybe 4-5 unknown words per page. The book is 255 pages long but there is a lot of empty space and sections with large text so it's about normal 100 pages.