I’ve been now practicing Thai writing for a few months. Filled several notepads with this beautiful script and now I could say I can read headlines, social media, street signs (yes, those written in those cryptic sans-seriff typographies) and children’s books with big pictures.
I started learning the alphabet from zero, letter by letter, and then spent one entire month assembling syllabes together (as you may know, we do not ordinarily read by joining letters, but by visually identifying whole words).
Most importantly: I avoid like pest looking at any transcriptions into latin alphabet, which is how most of Thai language methods work, polluting your eyes and mind with alien artifacts that are never fully descriptive. If you aren’t a native English speaker, the confusion is even worse. Learning directly in Thai allows you to make sense of the words’ inner build, the logic that governs every human language, allowing you to grow your vocabulary faster.
Also, I avoided dealing with the physical speech; only focused on proper spelling and tone marks, as if I were learning some sort of dead language (an idea that I love btw). A Thai person would have never let me do that because, in a tonal language, the wrong accent is just plainly wrong. But the complexity of learning script and pronunciation at the same time had always overwhelmed me and blocked my progress. My speech now is awful, but I can say I got a basic reading [and writing] level so, if destiny allows, there will be time to step further.
