Practice Thai

Two kinds of practice. The games below build a new round every time you play them, so they are worth coming back to; the drills are fixed sets that walk you through one idea once.

Games

Every round is drawn fresh from the phrasebook and the answers are shuffled, so a second go is a second test rather than a memory of where the right button was. Nothing is saved to an account — your best score for each game is kept on this device only.

• Game: hear it, find itConnect a Thai sound to the Thai spelling, without romanisation standing in between.
• Game: read it coldRead a phrase in Thai script with no romanisation and no audio, and say what it means.
• Game: build the sentenceProduce a Thai sentence yourself, in the right order, from its pieces.
• Game: what comes backRecognise the answer you are going to get, not just the question you asked.
• Game: which particleGet ครับ, ค่ะ and คะ right without thinking about it.
• Game: against the clockRecall meanings fast enough to keep up with a real exchange.

Drills

Fixed sets on decoding: letters, consonant classes, tone marks and reading.

• Practice: letters and consonant classesRecognise the first seven consonants by name, and place common letters in the right class.12 questions
• Practice: tone marks and readingName the four tone marks on sight, and read simple words built from the letters in steps 2 and 3.10 questions
• Practice: hearing the five tonesTell Thai tones apart by ear, using real word pairs where the tone is the only difference.12 questions
• Practice: what letters sound like at the endRead the final consonant of any Thai syllable correctly, and tell a live syllable from a dead one, which is the column you need in the tone table.13 questions
• Practice: vowel forms and lengthRecognise Thai vowel forms including the shortened shapes they take when a final consonant follows, and hear length as meaning rather than decoration.12 questions
• Practice: numbers and pricesUnderstand any price you will hear at a market, in a taxi or at a counter, including the large units that rents and vehicles are quoted in.13 questions
• Practice: picking the right classifierCount things the way Thai grammar requires, and reach for the safe fallback when you do not know the exact classifier.13 questions
• Practice: khrap and khaReach for the right politeness particle without thinking, including the statement and question split that women make and men do not.11 questions
• Practice: telling the timeHear a Thai time and land on the right half of the day, including the evening block where the number you hear is six less than the number on the clock.12 questions
• Practice: choosing I and youPick the right word for I and you in a market, a clinic and a visa office, hear the kinship words that stand in for both, and know which pronouns you should recognise but never say.14 questions
• Practice: which yes?Answer a Thai question with the right yes — hand back the verb it used, and choose deliberately between ใช่, ได้, ตกลง, เอา and ก็ได้ instead of reaching for one all-purpose word.14 questions
• Practice: bpùat, jèp and mêuayChoose between ปวด, เจ็บ and เมื่อย from the symptom itself, keep ปวดคอ and เจ็บคอ apart, and build the เป็น conditions without breaking ท้องเสีย.14 questions
• Practice: bpai or maaPut ไป or มา on the back of a verb without stopping to think, so that every request you make says who is expected to move, and reach for พา instead of เอา when the thing moving is a person or an animal.14 questions
• Practice: who to waiDecide who you wai, who you answer with a nod, and how high your hands go — the judgement, not the gesture.14 questions
• Practice: temple etiquetteDecide on the spot what to wear, where your shoes come off, where your feet may point, and how to get something to a monk — including the part a woman does differently, and why.14 questions
• Practice: láew, jà and yangPlace แล้ว, จะ, กำลัง, อยู่, เคย, ยัง, เพิ่ง, ได้ and มา where each belongs, answer a …หรือยัง question with the only two answers it takes, and leave the marker off altogether once a time word has already fixed the time.14 questions
• Practice: can, know how, and up to itChoose between ได้, เป็น and ไหว from the reason behind the sentence rather than from the English word, and keep ไม่ได้ on the right side of the verb.14 questions
• Practice: which no?Refuse, deny and correct with the right negative — choosing deliberately between ไม่, ไม่ได้, ไม่เป็น, ไม่ไหว, ไม่ออก, ยังไม่, เปล่า and ไม่ใช่ — and hear why ไม่ได้ไป and ไปไม่ได้ are opposite sentences.14 questions
• Practice: what to call peopleChoose the kinship term, title or name for anyone you deal with in a day — a waiter, a landlord, a doctor, a monk, an official, a stallholder — and know when a role outranks an age, when a name outranks both, and which name you were actually given.14 questions
• Practice: not yet, just, and almostAnswer กินข้าวหรือยัง without reaching for ไม่, and place ยัง, เพิ่ง, เกือบ, แล้ว, กำลังจะ, ไว้, เคย and เดี๋ยว so a listener knows exactly where in time you are.14 questions
• Practice: which job is hâi doing?Hear ให้ in a real sentence and work out in one step which of its jobs it is doing, then put it on the right side of the verb in your own sentences.14 questions
• Practice: yàak, dtâwng and mâi dtâwngChoose between อยาก, อยากได้, อยากให้, ต้องการ, เอา, ขอ, ต้อง and ควร from the counter you are standing at, and decline what is offered to you with ไม่ต้อง instead of reaching for a bare ไม่.14 questions
• Practice: is, and when Thai says nothingTurn any English sentence containing "is" into Thai by choosing between เป็น, คือ, อยู่, มี and no verb at all, and negate each of them the way Thai does rather than the way English does.14 questions
• Practice: what the menu is telling youSplit an unfamiliar Thai dish name into its method, flavour and protein slots so you know what will arrive, find the section you want from its header, and read what the slashes, plus signs and parentheses in the price column are actually telling you.14 questions
• Practice: open, closed and the red signsRead the standing signs of a Thai street on sight: tell open from closed, find the entrance, the exit and the right door, recognise the prohibition template on any red sign, and catch the small words that change what a sign is actually promising.14 questions
• Practice: the line that takes your moneyFind the anchors on two documents that are grids rather than prose: on a till slip, the total, the cash tendered and the change; on an electricity bill, the units used, the amount owed and the due date, even when the date arrives in Thai numerals with a Buddhist Era year.14 questions
• Practice: reading the notice on the wallTake a Thai notice apart the way a resident does: subject line first, then the date, the time and any line that asks you to act, and tell a building memo from a government announcement by how it opens and how it closes.14 questions
• Practice: reading the board at the cartStand at a made-to-order rice cart and read the board unaided: tell the header from the dish lines, pick a protein where the board offers a choice, spot the add-on lines at the bottom, and read the numeral column without guessing.14 questions
• Practice: blend it or split itLook at two consonants at the start of a Thai word and know whether they blend into one sound, split into two syllables, or hand a class forward — and get the tone that follows right.14 questions
• Practice: what your phone actually saysRead a LINE thread the way it lands on your phone: hear the dictionary word inside a chat spelling, recognise the furniture (the repeat mark, the row of fives, the warm particle), and pull the time and the deleted pronouns out of lines that state neither.14 questions
• Practice: the letters you do not sayRead a word that carries letters nobody pronounces, and give it the number of syllables it actually has rather than the number it looks like.14 questions

The audio in these games is synthesised and labelled as such. That is honest for recognising a whole phrase, where length, rhythm and consonants all help you. It is not good enough for minimal pairs that differ by tone alone, so those drills still wait for a native speaker.

These follow on from the Read Thai track.