This is the first volume of a two-volume course designed to teach Standard Thai. Standard Thai is the national spoken language of Thailand and is the dialect of educated speakers of Bangkok and Central Thailand. Standard Thai in spoken and written form is known to some extent by nearly all Thais. There are approximately 20 million speakers.
The materials contained in the first two volumes consist of the following:
(1) A Programmed Introduction to Thai Phonology,
(2) A standard text of 40 lessons, and
(3) A text glossary.
Not included in the text but considered to be an integral part of the course are a series of audios consisting of taped portions of the text and other supplementary materials.
These materials were designed to be used in a course of instruction where the main focus is on teaching the student to speak and understand Thai. This is not to say that reading and writing should be ignored, but that additional materials would be required for that purpose.
Basic to the approach recommended by the authors of this text are the following tenets:
(1) During the Thai Lessons only Thai should be spoken.
(2) The teacher should be either a native speaker of Thai, or a non-native with excellent control of the language.
(3) Every effort should be made to make the instruction both in and out of class approximate 'real' use of the language.
(4) The use of audio-visual devices of all kinds (charts, films, objects, etc.) is encouraged, but they must be used in such a way as to function as an integrated part of the instruction and not just as an interesting appendage.
You can find the other volume of the FSI Standard Thai Course here:
FSI - Thai - Basic Course (Volume 2)
Thai is the national and official language of Thailand and the native language of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the TaiKadai language family. Some words in Thai are borrowed from Pali, Sanskrit and Old Khmer. It is a tonal and analytic language. Thai also has a complex orthography and relational markers. Thai is mutually intelligible with Lao, though Lao speakers more easily understand Thai than Thai speakers understand Lao, because Lao speakers have more exposure to Thai.
Many scholars believe that the Thai script is derived from the Khmer script, which is modeled after the Brahmic script from the Indic family. However, in appearance, Thai is closer to Thai Dam script, which may have the same Indian origins as the Khmer script. The language and its script are closely related to the Lao language and script. Most literate Lao are able to read and understand Thai, as more than half of the Thai vocabulary, grammar, intonation, vowels and so forth are common with the Lao language. Much like the Burmese adopted the Mon script (which also has Indic origins), the Thais adopted and modified the Khmer script to create their own writing system.
While in Thai the pronunciation can largely be inferred from the script, the orthography is complex, with silent letters to preserve original spellings and many letters representing the same sound. While the oldest known inscription in the Khmer language dates from 611 CE, inscriptions in Thai writing began to appear around 1292 CE.
Thai is spoken in: Thailand
Thai is also called: Central Tai, Siamese, Standard Thai, Thaiklang
