This post is meant mostly for those who haven’t yet started to learn to read Thai.

Many many years ago, before I even started to learn the Thai language, I remember chatting with a Thai friend of mine. We were waiting in line at a convenience store at university, and he was talking about Thai newspapers. He mentioned that in Thai there were no spaces between words. Whoa! How can you tell one word apart from the next? CanyouimaginenothavingspacesinEnglishandhowconfusingandannoyingthatcouldget?! He couldn’t really explain how it all worked, but he joked that ‘sometimes Thais even get confused.’

Well, a year or two later I found myself learning to read and write. All I had was a list of the Thai alphabet with the English letter equivalent next to it, and a 30 page book written in 100% Thai. And no teacher. I remember sitting down painfully going letter by letter trying to pronounce it all. I had already spent ~7 months learning to speak and building up a good vocabulary, so I was often able to recognize words after pronouncing them. I remember it taking hours to read a single page, and burning lots of brain cells in the process. And I remember not being able to tell where a word ended and the next began – except for when I recognized a word. But over the next few days I started to pick up patterns, where I was able to clearly identify syllables of words I didn’t know.

It turns out that’s how you identify words, by dividing up the syllables and by recognizing words you are already familiar with. So as you build up your vocabulary, and rote practice pronunciation, you’ll pick up in speed.

I’ve been learning for many years and have read countless books, but I still occasionally get confused by compound words. A compound word is when you take individual words that have a meaning, and then combine them to get a completely different meaning. For example, dragonfly, jawbreaker, outcry, highway, etc. It becomes confusing when you understand the individual words, but you are unaware of the compound word. The trick to working with these is if the translation of the individual words seems a bit odd, check the dictionary for the definition if theoretically it was a compound word.

The most famous compound word among Thai learners, in my opinion, is the word for ‘responsibility’. It’s three individual words with individual meanings, but when combined means something entirely different.

รับ rap4 – to receive

ผิด pid2 – wrong, incorrect

ชอบ chawp3 – to like

รับผิดชอบ rab4 pid2 chawp3 – responsibility

Another one that took me a bit to figure out is the word for ‘quality’. Notice how when you combine the two single-syllable words below, a third syllable is created. So to read correctly, your eyes need to look at the next word while you’re still reading the current word. If you weren’t paying attention to the next word while reading the current word, you might end up leaving out the middle syllable.

คุณ khun1 – you

ภาพ paap3 – picture

คุณภาพ khun1 na4 paap3 – quality

This can all seem to be a real challenge at first, but with lots of rote learning and practice you’ll get faster at it over time.