Hi Prema

That's the sort of thing that my books are full of, it can be a bit off putting when you start.

As it says in your post "There are no spaces between words" which makes Thai writting all the more difficult.

Opinion seems to be divided as to whether it's easier to speak Thai if you also learn to read it at the same time. I have a book which shows how to write the characters complete with little arrows to show the direction of the pen strokes but they are all so similar that I've never made any progress and probably never will unless my spoken Thai improves a lot more.

When I was Cambodia last year it was interesting to compare Thai and Cambodian (Khmer) as they share about 10% of their vocabularly. Thew could not read Cambodian but he could understand a little spoken Cambodian. They couldn't understand him though but as English and French were reasonably well understood I would translate his Thai when he wanted to say anything.

I've just spoken to Thew on the telephone and the importance of tones was all too clear again. I told him, in Thai, that I have a cold. The word for 'a cold' in Thai is 'Wat' which is also the word for a temple. Spoken with a high tone it means Temple and spoken with a low tone it means a Cold. Get the tone wrong and I would be telling him that 'I have a temple".

One of the worst causes of confusion is the word 'Glai' which spoken with a falling tone means "nearby" or "near". Spoken with a middle tone it means "far away" or "far". Even one of my more serious text books describes the use of the same sylable to describe two exactly opposite meanings as 'perverse'.

Jon