Complete Thai: Teach Yourself Paperback – 28 May 2010

I bought the original edition of this book years ago and was speaking, reading and writing Thai in just a few days. This book provides a clear and concise introduction to the Thai language and I doubt that any other publication does a better job.

DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK! I speak 7 languages, and have learned and studies in many different places with different material. But this book is the worst way of learning a language!!!!It includes a lot of unnecessary vocab for beginners while missing out the most important ones! Unfortunately I had to buy this book for my thai class at SOAS University. After 9 weeks I can say which region or province I come from, wether I am from the north or south - but not how to ask a general "Where do you live?". Neither do I know how to say: "He, She, They, Me, We".The english translation from thai script dose not at all represent how the words are pronounced! In Unit one they have spelled the Thai letter "Aa" with a "u", and "Aam" with "um" - resulting that my hole class still struggles getting back to the right pronunciation (as our motivation was hight at the beginning and we all made flashcards to remember the sounds, the WRONG sounds).The book includes no exercises at all, and keeps introducing new vocab without putting it in the vocab list at the end. Further there are many spelling mistakes in Thai that my teacher keeps correcting while we read through it. Everyone in my class hates that book!!!! Even the teachers admit that they only took this book because a „good thai book“ was to expansive for students. This is the most useless book I have ever had! Buy a pimsler course and you will learn more in 10min than I have learned in my first 10h of studying this book at University!!!