Thai Reference Grammar

Hands down the best grammar book for the Thai Language. This book is aimed at serious learners and it formatted in a way that will be familiar to people who study major languages. Thai has a problem of too many poorly designed grammar books trying to offer "learn thai in 1 week."

This book is AMAZING."If" you have a pre-existing foundation and knowledge of Thai already, this book is perfect. It is more at an intermediate level and would not suggest this for any first time beginners. The explanation of format and sentence structure is pretty straight forward. I was a student in Thailand (thai school, not english speaking school) many years ago. Having retained quite a bit of the language, this book was an excellent refresher for me.

This book was recommended to me and in turn I highly recommend it to others. It's not a book to read back to front, rather as a supplement to what you're currently studying or interested in learning (although I'm only at the beginner level so it's likely this book is still somewhat advanced for my level). It's helping to consolidate my meagre knowledge of Thai

I'v read atleast 20 books, tried many different programs etc. and this book was the greatest help thus far!, its not a 1 stop shop learn to speak fluently book like all the rest claim but if you are already reading other books for vocabulary etc. then this book will help you really put all the words together properly!...

This heavy book is good quality material and the content is very comprehensive, though not as clear as I would have liked at times. For example, the book explains (p, 313) the difference between "laeo" and "thee laeo" this way: "Laeo is used for present perfect tense or for past simple tense with actions that can be seen as continuing over a period of time, while thee laeo is for short action verbs such as buy and decide." I'm not really sure what a "short action verb" really is. The book doesn't really explain. The book says "Kao pai Oobon laeo" means "She has gone to Oobon (already)" whereas "Kao pai Oobon." means "She went to Oobon." Actually, present perfect and past simple both use the same sentence pattern in Thai: "Kao pai Oobon laeo." Also, Kao could mean "he" and the sentence "Kao pai Oobon." could be translated as "He goes to Oobon." as well as "He went Oobon." The context of the conversaton would indicate which verb tense is meant. "Thee laeo" means "last," so it would be used in sentences with a time expression, such as "Kao pai Oobon mua duan tee laeo." (She went to Oobon last month." Or with sentences with action that has just occurred (like present perfect tense in English). So the book is not entirely accurate or thorough at times, and so a teacher would be essential! Thai is not an easy language! It would be nice if the book gave a word for word transliteration of the Thai sentence into English, not just a translation, which would help with learning vocabulary. The phonetic system is easy to learn and used in Higbie's other excellent book, Essential Thai. The tones are given for example sentences, but omitted for headings and explanations--not sure why, but be careful to learn the correct tone! The Thai script is a bit too small for non-Thais, I think. Basically, a very useful book, but you'd best have a Thai teacher too.

A very well done, well put together book. Not for the person who just wants to know the basics or does not take learning Thai seriously.Other reviews are accurate about the tone annotations being different and sometimes inconsistent, but the person learning and speaking Thai will love this book as it more comprehensive and accurate than most others.Not for the beginner.

hefty book....makes me feel like I am back in school and that gives me a sense of security like this book knows what its talking about. definitely for the more experienced speaker

I spent many months on this book. There are good and bad points.Pros:1 .It's difficult to find intermediate books on Thai grammar as most Thai books are very elementary.2. It tried to be very comprehensive and give Thai grammar equivalent for English grammar.3. It has more than 100 Thai sentences and examples for each grammar points.Cons:1. There are no general structure explained for most of Thai grammar points and how the grammar differs from English grammar. The way of teaching is purely rote learning.2. Some of the Thai grammar are actually grammatical wrong and is more like Englist grammar so that the English mind can understand it better. For example, classifiers are compulsory in all sentences in Thai unlike English but some sentences left them out making it felt unnatural when I used it to speak to Thai people.If the author can improve on points 1 and 2, this book will be great. Point #1 was very well done for the other book I bought on elementary Thai (the red colored book) grammar.

Ce livre consiste en fait d'une collection d'exemples tirés de la vie réelle qui illustrent toutes les facettes de cette langue fascinante. Et quelle collection! Vous n'y trouverez pas d'exercices ou de jeux, ce ne sont que des phrases, avec leurs traductions (en l'occurrence, en anglais), que vous pourrez étudier comme vous voulez. Cette recette peut ne pas être idéale pour toutes les langues du monde, mais pour le Thaï, c'est tout ce qu'il faut!

An overflowing treasure chest of gold.

This is second grammar book on Thai which I have read (the other one is David Smyth, Thai An Essential Grammar). It has lots of good and essential information on how to use Thai language, formal and non-formal variants. But it has one big flaw, the transliteration. As this book is supposed to be for intermediate and advanced level students and on that level (I think) you should already know how to read Thai script, even the book seems to make that point as it really doesn't teach you how to read Thai script, like on David Smyth book, it just teaches how to read the transliteration system. So why to use on every grammar explanation part just the transliteration but not Thai script? Also other problem is that the transliteration on explanation part doesn't have tones or vocal lengths marked. This isn't that big problem as you can always look up the words from the example sentences.Other reviewer complained that the thai script was too small, but I have 2008 version and it seems they have fixed that, as its written on normal sized fonts. Too bad they didn't change the tranliteration use also.Other than that, its really must to have for anyone who is serious about learning Thai. It hast lots of staff that was missing in Smyths book, but also Smyth books have stuff that you cant find here, so its good to own both books. If there wasn't transliteration, or just on lesser amounts, I would give this 5 stars.