How to Read Thai the Rapid Way - The Top 25 Letters in 25 Minutes (Video Workshop Lesson 1) [HD]

This is the first lesson in a series of video lessons to teach you how to read (and pronounce) Thai accurately - using the Rapid Method.
Sign in at Rapid Learn Thai www.rapidlearnthai.com to access the Rapid Read Thai online course (the first few lessons are free) and keep the course pages open in a separate window for reference.
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Note: I forgot to mention in the video that the "P" letters turn into "F" letters when you extend the line on the right. Think of a balloon that is tied to the toe of the girl or ladyboy doing the "push-ups". When you blow air into a balloon, you go "fffffffffffffff"! (Or think of it as the "ph" in "photo" where the "p" becomes and "f" when you add in the airy "h" letter.)
It is said that Thai is a 'tonal' language. Well, so is English! Right? RIght. Thai 'tones' are actually very straight-forward and in fact colloquially Thai is mostly spoken in a kind of monotone (except for certain crucial words and at natural pauses). For now, just ignore the tones because in the Rapid Method these are added later as a kind of overlay.
Tones are important in the sense that you need to know how to read and pronounce them correctly, but 1) it's VERY EASY to do with the Rapid Method and 2) most of the time they aren't pronounced anyway.
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The minimalist Rapid Method is designed for busy people who don't have the time or inclination to "study". The courses are based on reading authentic (colloquial) Thai texts, and using this as a basis for learning to speak and understand everyday Thai with minimal effort. The underlying theory is that - at least for adults - you can speak and "hear" accurately and fluently if you can already "see" the words and phrases in your mind's eye. Gaining conversational fluency is then primarily a matter of developing a kind of "muscle" skill, like dancing or playing a sport or musical instrument.
In this lesson, we cover the most common 25 consonant letters (three of which also double up as vowels), which make up around 80% of the Thai words you will encounter in everyday situations.
The next lesson in the series will start you on the road to reading simple words, and the lessons after that consist of a journey of learning to recognize and remember more and more words that become progressively more complicated.
By the end of the course, you will be able to read virtually any Thai word and pronounce them accurately and clearly with the correct tones.
It seems counter-intuitive, but the most effective way to speak Thai is to know how to read first... Try it out for yourself by signing up for a free trial course (learn 30 letters and be able to read over 100 words) at www.rapidlearnthai.com.
Please visit Learn Thai Online rapidlearnthai.com to sign up for the free trial version of the course to try out the Rapid Method for yourself.
UPCOMING 15 half-day online RAPID READ THAI workshops
- OCTOBER 17-31 (10pm - 1am Thai Time: for people living in Europe/UK/Americas)
- NOVEMBER 14-28 (10am - 1pm Thai Time: for people living in Thailand/OZ/NZ)
cost ฿28,000
UPCOMING Intensive Six-Day RAPID READ THAI Bootcamps (covid-permitting)
- FEBRUARY 21-26, 2022 (Mon-Sat) - Ko Lanta
cost: ฿42,000
If you can't attend a workshop then you can also study by yourself online at your own convenience (cost: ฿10,000)

[@sweatycrabthailand4262]

hey, if you stumbled upon this as a westerner trying to learn thai, THIS is the way to go. I could not learn thai trough any of the other channels and courses, but this one takes advantage of a mnemonic system that the creator of the course REALLY must have worked a lot on and really stretched his imagination to make. I learnt the basics of the thai alphabet literally in days, and while im going trough it again a few weeks later now, its AMAZING that i remember practically everything from the first time trough it. I could actually read thai after a few days, its amazing. Very very impressed. /gary offenberg, sweden

[@LearnThaiRapidMethod]

Hey Gary, what a wonderful testimonial. I remember that you bought the Rapid Read Thai course about a month ago; and I see that you've just completed the first reading of the course. Well done! Please let us know how you get on with the second reading, this time gaining fluency with the tones. :)

[@PolyMathWannaBe62]

I've been going through the rapid read Thai course. I've been teaching either TEFL, biology or chemistry for over a decade. I'm in awe of how good the full course is. I don't know how he thought of the clever little stories to help remember the letters but it all falls in line with the most up-to-date research on language acquisition. A really outstanding set of materials and far superior to other courses out there, including other online courses, in my opinion. Really Excellent!!

[@jz4901]

What a fastastic video this is. The stories are silly and imaginative. I watched the start of this video and then started to create my own mnemonics, but returned to yours. Thank you very very much. I'm not a student of Thai, but am here in Thailand for a short while, and so was curious about it. Thank you again!

[@acsmith1771]

Thanks! That's some pretty intense opening music for learning an alphabet 5555

[@yoyobam4013]

Thank you so much for your hard work.

[@Nomadicshieldmaid75]

All off a sudden learning thai became hilarious!😅😅😅 downloaded rofl

[@johnt6037]

Gary hi. Really good work. Thank you. As a complete beginner I've just finished this particular video and I wanted to ask which video or videos would you recommend (in sequential order) so that I might build on what your first video has taught me. Any advice gratefully received!

[@LearnThaiRapidMethod]

Hi John, this is quite an old intro to the course. You should go immediately to the Rapid Read Thai app on the website and work through the first lessons (free), and then memorize the vocabulary words you've encountered, in the Review section. Here is a passive walkthrough of the lessons: kzbin.info/aero/PLbAp6qqfMe9fgWu3LzNdb4z1ki5ywkkJ2&si=E-wObIV2E95CqJ6x But it's essential for you to interact actively with the app for it to sink in properly and "register" in your mind. The Rapid Method is more like an aerobics class for your brain than an intellectual "linguistic" pursuit. 😎

[@johnt6037]

Many thanks. I will do that. Thank you again.

[@elmerdaserdmannchen2604]

You are verily enlightened

[@Urdatorn]

Haha, this takes the prize for most hilarious mnemonics ever! Good job. Did you do the drawings yourself?

[@Itermerel]

11:50 I can't unsee this now...

awesome job

[@MarkyNomad]

I always thought it was weird how Thai had multiple letters meaning the same thing, but the cell-sell comparison made me realize that once again English is able to match the stupidity and inconsistency of any given langauage

[@LearnThaiRapidMethod]

Yeah I thought the same, though the thoroughness of the rough inconsistencies makes tough to plough through the list of exceptions that I end up with a painful cough. All my efforts come to to nought, especially after having spent so much dough on learning the language - enough already! 😅

[@sysomyoung7437]

Ur so good

[@johnt6037]

Superb methodology for recognizing and remembering Thai characters however as a beginner and someone who is only 15% through the list of consonants can you help me to understand what is the distinction between the sound being made by the cackling witch and the sound being made by the ladyboy carrying the cactus! Both are described as 'Ca' ( unless I missed something!). So please can you help me understand in what way they are different from each other?? Many thanks and keep up the good work. John

[@LearnThaiRapidMethod]

Hi John. Firstly, as you can see, this is a pretty old video. The Rapid Method has improved significantly since then - but it's still a good & effective video, so I'm leaving it up for now. Secondly, you are absolutely right in that "cackling witch" and "carrying the cactus" are EXACTLY the same sound. The difference is that the witch is a WOMAN, and it's a LADYBOY who is carrying the cactus. What this does is affect the tone of the word. Example ขา is a female word (cackling old WITCH), so it has a "questioning" tone - caa? It means leg. คา is a ladyboy word, so it will have a "monotone". It means to be jammed or stuck. Tones can be changed in other ways, such as adding a "surfing" mark to the letter. So ข้า is pronounced with an "emphatic" tone, because it's now a "surfing girl" - caa! It means slave or menial servant. While ค้า is pronounced with a "skeptical" tone (what!?) and means to trade or do business. Look at the free lessons in the Rapid Read Thai app, and you'll see how this is done. It's actually quite easy, but you need to walk through a simple flowchart or decision tree to figure out what the correct tone is for each word. BTW, I now call this letter the "captain's old mother with a CURL in her neck" coz it looks so similar to the U Boat Captain.

[@johnt6037]

@@LearnThaiRapidMethod really appreciate the comprehensive reply. And I now understand the significance of "gender' . As always I was trying to run before I could walk! Again thanks for such a great reply.

[@dancingruth]

I like the concept, but these are a stretch as a mechanism for remembering. Carrying a cactus (which doesn’t look any more or less like a cactus than many other letters), so it’s a “k” sound?

[@LearnThaiRapidMethod]

If you're prepared to *see* the shape of each letter, rather than simply trying to "remember" them then it becomes instantly and permanently memorable. Unfortunately, everyone has different knowledge and experiences, so there is no one universal way to "see" the shapes. I've tried to find images that work for most Westerners, and in the workshops we occasionally have to come up with a different image that works better for some individuals. You choose the one that's most memorable for you, and maybe tweat it so that it fits better with what YOU see. No, Carrying-the-Cactus doesn't look much different from many of the other letters. In fact, many letters look identical to each other but are wilding different in sound and "sex". As for Carrying-the-Cactus, it has the same "c" as in "carry" or "cactus", I don't therefore think of it as a "k" but as "carry" or "cactus". Associating Thai letters with English/Latin letters can lead to incorrect pronunciation and bad habits that are impossible to unlearn later. And if Carrying-the-Cactus doesn't work for you, what about a Cork-in-a-bell-jar? (This is only a first step in the process. A hint of what is to come. You need to find a way to distinguish it from the Doubled-over-fakir (which is male) and somehow explain why it's a ladyboy letter. The latter is fairly easy. Think of the cork ladyboys stick up their anus, a butt plug! And then you're done. But why would a cork be different from doubled-over? You could look at the very smaller angle of the diagonal line and say you're cutting the cork into a sliver. If that's not satisfactory then you would need to try some other images and explanations (stories), The time and effort spent in making up these scenarios for each letter may seem a long convoluted way round, when you could just memorize the letters by repetition a few hundred times. But my research (and that of memory champions and experts) indicates that the overall time required to memorize all the letters is drastically reduced, by a factor of around 4 or 5. AND, you will retain the memories almost indefinitely. Whereas letters or facts learnt by sheer brute force can be easily forgotten within a few months if you do not continuously review them.

[@Just_Mike64]

Brilliant ! shame the full video course so expensive. Maybe if you lower the price you will get a lot more customers and in the end make more money than with the pricing you have now. 50 customers at 12k baht make you less than 500 at 2k baht...

[@LearnThaiRapidMethod]

Sorry, Mike. It is expensive because it was expensive and time-consuming to produce and, unfortunately, Thai is not a particularly popular language like French or Spanish, or even Hebrew. I'm surprised at how few 'farang' bother to become literate in Thai - even after living her for 10 years and having Thai kids (who they don't understand)! I did offer this course very cheaply at one point but there was no increase in sales at all! If you are serious about becoming fluent (and literate) in Thai then you need to take this course. Other people (including myself) have spent far more money and wasted many years trying to learn the conventional way. kzbin.info/www/bejne/o3TPcqGibNFkZ80 I do, however, offer discounts to people who are really keen to learn but can't afford the program. Please register for the free trial version of the course and then write to me with your circumstances and I'll see what I can do for you. :)

[@Just_Mike64]

Thank you so much for your reply, i too was shocked at how little Thai most of the expats i met can speak. One even asked me what the "khrab" was that he heard so often and that after spending half a year in Thailand.. I learned most of my Thai vocabulary by simply making word / verbs list and trying as many videos as i could on the net. As i have big trouble learning the alphabet i found yours and it's really good. Added problem for me is that English isn't my native language complicating things even more. Will repeat this video till i know all 25 and give your trial a go right after that. And thanks for your kind offer !

[@LearnThaiRapidMethod]

Mike, this video is a kind of teaser/taster. Please register for the free trial version of the course on www.learnthaionline.com and you can work through the first 30 letters in a more structured way - with guided practice material - far more effectively than just repeating the video. It'll only take 2-3 hours! (By the way, don't worry if English isn't your native language. It works just as well. You may decide to change some of the stories to suit your own language, but it seems your level of English is more than adequate to be able to fully-understand this course as is.)

[@briansounalath]

agreed. I want to buy this course but no way paying $450 for a youtube powerpoint

[@theophiluschambers3628]

@@LearnThaiRapidMethod I am interested in your live workshops in chiiang mai ? When is the next one ?

[@failtolawl]

For ห. (Ho Hee). For me it looks like a priest holding a staff in a robe. (Top right circle is his head, left circle is the head of the staff). "Holy" man, or Ho-Hee.

[@LearnThaiRapidMethod]

Whatever works for you, memory (and hence mnemonics) is a very personal thing. But you need to incorporate other information into your mnemonic. It's a girl letter, so it'll need to be priestess, rather than a priest: a holy lady. This matters when it comes to tones. This letter is also often used (silently) to change "ladyboy" letters to females, which subsequently changes the tone of the word. BTW, the Thai name of this letter is "ho heeb" (ห หีบ) of (treasure) chest letter. What you wrote is a very vulgar word in Thai.

[@failtolawl]

First, off, that's hilarious. One of the most difficult things I have found in listening to Thai is that because Thai doesn't enunciate the last letter like English, it's very difficult to determine what consonant they actually end on, if any at all. I work with Thai people and they seem to hear me better than I can hear myself. Second off, when you are talking about tones, do you mean the Male = Middle, High= Female, and Low= Ladyboy? What determines rising and falling tones?

[@LearnThaiRapidMethod]

Yes, it's hard. I've found that it helps to 1) speak Thai accurately so that you develop a kind of muscle memory for the sounds, particularly the endings which you press-down-and-hold (but not enunciate), a bit like the first "k" in "bookkeeper"; 2) read and listen to (conversational) texts out loud over and over again, slowed down perhaps. Listening while reading somehow allows your mind to anticipate/create the correct sounds and you'll find you can hear more clearly. I've been reading up on research about this. One of the most fascinating areas is the "illusion of consciousness" where we construct our realities out of clues taken from the environment. We don't see or hear things as native signals: we construct (or hear) an entirely subjective experience of our own making. This means you can't hear more accurately just by listening harder, you have to already have a pretty good idea of what it is you're hearing - and that becomes better (and clearer) the more you read and as you acquire more vocabulary. You are then better able to anticipate what you are hearing from the context. "I'm not feeling well, so maybe I should go see the xywyxywyxyw" (you can guess that the final noise is going to be "doctor", but if the sentence ended something like "I should go to the xyxyxyxyxyywywywy", you can immediately guess that the final noise will probably be "hospital") As for what male/female/ladyboy is, yes they correspond to what is know as the "classes" of consonant letters; but high/middle/low is very confusing because there is absolutely no one-to-one correspondence between a high class and a high tone, say. It's also not useful to think of the tones as high, rising, falling, etc. because the sound comes out unnaturally if you do, and Thais can't hear what you are trying to say. We use "tones" naturally in English (without being aware of it; in fact Thais usually aren't aware of using tones in Thai either). Usually we'll make a kind of energetic sound that falls off a bit at the end when we want to emphasize something or express excitement ("wow!") but other tones fall off at the end also, so trying to produce a "falling tone" is ambiguous at best and usually completely incomprehensible to a Thai. I've boiled down the tones to a simple flowchart involving two, three or four questions (depending on how far down the decision tree you need to go). If you contact me via the website I can send you the handouts pertaining to this; or just sign up for the trial and then work through the final chapter which is about how to derive the tones from the sex ("class") of the initial consonant letter in a word. The short answer is that it's a combination of factors that determine the tone. :)

[@sofiamae2111]

I still cant hear the difference between the “c”ackling witch and “c”arry, pls explain thanks!!

[@LearnThaiRapidMethod]

There isn't any difference, except that the cackling witch is female and the ladyboy carrying a cactus is... err... a ladyboy. 🙃 This will affect the TONE of the word, but the sounds are exactly the same. (BTW, this is a very old video. I've implemented a lot of improvements since then, and now think of the "cackling old witch" as the "Uboat captain's mother with a Curl in her neck"... because she looks very similar to the Uboat captain.)

[@litoboy5]

cool

[@gamestv4875]

"Lady boys like sexual activities" , LMAO Awesome video , thank you.

[@Borrelaas]

How do you speak and keep the air inside your mouth? It's bloody impossible

[@Borrelaas]

By the way, great stuff, i've learned alot from watching this :-)

[@LearnThaiRapidMethod]

yes, it's tricky - but we do it automatically when saying words like "dental" or "bottle" (there is no explosion of air like for "tea", say). Put your hand in front of your mouth and feel the difference. What seems to work for most people is to position your mouth as though you're going to say "s" (a bit like getting ready for a golf swing or the run up before takeoff: you can't just hit the ball without first getting into the proper position, and a plane can't simply lift up into the air like a helicopter). To get the muscle memorry, start by actually adding an "s" before the ก "k" (as in "sky") or ต "t" (as in "sty") or ป "p" (as in "spy") and then gradually take away the "s" sound without actually changing the position of your mouth & tongue. Eventually, you will get the right *feeling* for Chicken-in-the-Sky, Sagging-Stomach and Spy-Balloon. The sound of จ "ch" ("chew") is much harder. Try to make this sound with the tongue at the very roof of your mouth and don't expel any air nor make a sound with your throat.

[@genestone4951]

he's talking about voiced vs unvoiced. Most languages have this, including English, we just dont notice it.

[@marphy2004]

rumbe nandri

[@genestone4951]

Interesting technique, but standard Thai already has letters assigned to a mnemonic. This method may be funny, but I don't think its very useful.

[@LearnThaiRapidMethod]

Not really. The Thai alphabet is kind of like Alpha Charlie Bravo. 1) You have to know what the words already mean in Thai (but you could learn them of course, and in fact I have English mnemonics for this at a later stage if you ever want to learn the letter names in Thai - even though it isn't necessary at all). The Thai names have no association with the shape or "sex" (class) of the letter, so they don't help you to read. There's also a lot more to know. Learning the letters is actually the easiest part. I've condensed all the various reading rules into 20 principles plus half a dozen that show you how to "package" each word in a sentence without spaces. It takes about a week of intensive study to master reading, albeit slowly like a child. But then, what we achieve in our one-week bootcamp takes Thai kids about two years to learn, and about 6-9 months for (adult) foreigners. You can't do it without mnemonics and simplification and interconnectedness. (Well, you can, but it's so much more difficult and takes a really long time!)

[@garfieldnate]

Your mnemonics are gross! (Un)fortunately I will never forget them. BTW why did you us the s-consonant trick for the unaspirated t and p but not for the ch? That I can think of, you have estuary or eschew. I decided to remember that character as the sea captain who decided to "eschew" human contact and live in a cave. Similarly, I thought it was easier to remember the male chicken trying to fly in the sky as a male skylark instead. No need, really, to remember that it's a boy, since all of the unaspirated stops are boys/middle class.

[@LearnThaiRapidMethod]

Thank you, they are supposed to be. I didn't think of "estuary", it might have worked. But the "chew tobacco" letter (จ) is also unaspirated and quite difficult for us to pronounce. The "ch" sound in "estuary" seems to be an aspirated sound (but maybe it depends on your English accent). "Eschew" won't work because that's an ordinary "sh" sound (which doesn't exist in Thai, except maybe in the Northern region, where the "chop" letter ซ is often pronounced this way). However, mnemonics is a very personal thing, so if "eschew" works for you (if the character looks like a figure sitting in or in front of his cave) then use that. Do add something to your story about it being unaspirated - maybe the cave is airless and claustrophobic, say. And practice saying the sound correctly (not by listening, because you'll hear whatever it is you expect to hear, but by making it a physical feeling: a noiseless (unvoiced) flick with your tongue spread against your palate with minimal extraneous movement... A male skylark also works great - the letter looks like the head of a bird, so it's probably better than "chicken". Originally, I used "cockerel" (which is my preferred mnemonic) and added in "cockerel-in-the-sky" (like Rocky Rhodes in Chicken Run) to remind me of the "s-k" trick. I quickly discovered that a lot of Americans don't know what a cockerel is coz they call it a rooster, which don't work at all! ("rooster-in-the-sky", maybe?) In the Rapid Method, I eschew technical grammar/linguistic terms coz it makes things unnecessarily complicated. Thinking of "aspirated" or "unaspirated" doesn't really help to pronounce Thai correctly anyway because it's more about knowing how to form the mouth physically and then practicing it till it becomes a muscle memory and then it just *feels* right. :) And why add in an extra rule when you end up remembering the sex of each letter subliminally anyway? The Rapid Method focus on subconscious learning: remembering as a kind of side-effect of something else (that's hopefully enjoyable in its own right) and then practicing the physical *actions* until it becomes automatic... a bit like driving a car but much more complicated. :)

[@garfieldnate]

With my linguistics degree aspirated and unaspirated are no problem :) The s-followed-by-voiceless-stop pronunciation rule for English is an important enough one that "skylark" is a good enough keyword for me (again, with my specialized background). I certainly have no idea what kind of bird a skylark actually is! Thanks for the videos! They are fantastic and I would definitely recommend them to anyone with or without a linguistics background.

[@jaycorujo4694]

Thanks for your note on watching this new version. I was watching the old version. Dear God I am honestly having a hard time adjusting to the language and getting used to it but am trying. I don't think is your method of teaching, but the lack of confidence and most important live practice with a person, since there is no Thai community near me. I really want to try. So I will watch this and see if I manage to memprize how it works. Thanks for your lessons. I'm sure is effective. I just don't have anyone to tell me where I'm wrong.

[@peterlukaszewski]

Mostly a great way of learning the letters, but I find the comments surrounding ladyboys somewhat offensive.

[@williamreed7099]

What the hell am I watching. 😂 lol

[@briansounalath]

frankly his interpretation of "lady-boys" is a bit offensive and probably more based on his personal experiences with them.

[@MMABeijing]

if it is based on his experience then it is more objective than yours I suppose. Also it is for comedic and mnemonic effect

[@Mickenos85]

Id say he was giving his opinion as are you. Also Are you a lady boy and find his description of you offensive ? Or are you feeling offended in behalf of a ladyboy. You do appear to be the only one finding this offensive.

[@briansounalath]

@@Mickenos85 you're a cuck. I don't even need to ask

[@JamesColemanChess]

I found (and do find) the visual mnemonics really helpful

[@misubi]

Wow this has got to be the least politically correct learning method ever. lol

[@rolandgalicio]

This is not the right way to learn Thai. This this is very disrespectful. You are planting malicious thoughts into learning Thai. When you learn through this method, everytime you read Thai letters, you will think of these. Only bad people themselves will think this is okay.

[@MMABeijing]

good trolling, or maybe you are really stupid

[@LearnThaiRapidMethod]

Err... maybe you are just trolling or do you genuinely have a knee-jerk reaction? What exactly do you find disrespectful - particularly about an approach that teaches you to be literate within a week or so!? What I find eminently disrespectful is the hoard of expats (we're all "economic immigrants", after all) who make virtually no effort to learn the national language. And even if they do, it's a mere smattering so they can order a taxi driver about or food from a restaurant or beer from a bar. I've seen the media headlines about all those immigrants from Syria, China, Mexico, etc. and heard my own friends say that "if they want to come and live and work in our country then they must learn to speak English". I've even heard people say: "I'm not prepared to buy products from [China/India/Malaysia/Thailand] unless they speak to me in my language!" Do you refuse to learn French, German, Spanish or Hebrew on the same grounds, btw? :) Hypocrite, comes to mind.

[@genestone4951]

This seems to be Pattaya barstool Thai. Not very useful for actual language students. Standard Thai ALREADY includes an object associated with a letter, like chicken (gai) for ก "gaw-gai". And the official system makes way more sense. This is an amusing video to watch perhaps, but best to not take it seriously.

[@fewd3]

I believe that this is the right way to learn Thai but at the same time it's not the most appropriate way to learn Thai Too much focus on ladyboys Not going to lie it is pretty effective and I will give the owner of this video credit for that even though it's not the most appropriate way to learn Thai, it is still effective and this method is better than not putting the effort into the Thai language. So he tried

[@Nomadicshieldmaid75]

We love ladyboys ​@@fewd3

[@t.k.abrams4720]

The term "ladyboy" is very transphobic and I'm surprised you're allowed to teach it. It may be a cultural norm to call trans people "ladyboy" in Thailand, but that doesn't make it not transphobic. It's also a cultural norm in India for women to say yes to a man who asks to marry her. It's still a very sexist cultural norm. Update your language 💃🏼

[@LearnThaiRapidMethod]

For those who care, the term "ladyboy" is a completely neutral term for the Thai equivalent กะเทย (ka-teuy) which literally means "hermaphrodite". Thai language is very colorful and tends to borrow words from English or Chinese and then shorten them (e.g. the 7-11 is referred to, in Thai, as "sehwen"). Previously, there was no distinction in the Thai language between homosexuals and transsexuals or transvestites, but nowadays the word เกย์ (keh) is used for gays/lesbians. I've befriended many ladyboys and I'd say there were two main types: 1) men who like to dress as women and develop breasts, and prefer sex with straight men but they can also be bisexual (in Thailand, there is a very fluid concept of sexual identity and preferences - indeed, Thai people in general literally change their names and identity several times during their lives). This type of ladyboy tends to be taller, more masculine with bigger hands and an Adam's apple! They also tend to be more ostentatious and promiscuous. They often refer to themselves as ladyboy in English (e.g. in person, or on Tinder or dating websites) or ka-teuy in Thai, but the slang term they use with other Thais is "type 2 woman". These ladyboys have all the trappings of a woman, but prefer to keep their male genitals intact. 2) The second type of ladyboy is a genuine woman-in-a-man's-body. They tend to be petite, shy and impossible to distinguish from a real woman. They take hormones as soon as they can, usually starting as young teenagers and aspire to obtaining a sex-change operation as soon as they can afford it. Unfortunately, the hormone therapies completely kill their sex drive, but they don't care: they just want to be women and have no interest in sex anyway. This makes it very hard for them to find an understanding boyfriend and eventually a husband though! Finally, there are what we refer to as gay people. But men in Thailand on the whole have an effeminate appearance with almost no body hair, so there are few 'openly gay' men because they don't really see themselves as being any different from a 'normal' man. It's a very small distance to cross over to preferring a man rather than a woman and I'd guess that most Thai men don't identify themselves strongly as either gay or straight or even bi, and yet wouldn't think twice about sleeping or being intimate with another man or woman. It's like asking, do you prefer chocolate or strawberry ice-cream - I like chocolate better, but sometimes as a change (or if there is no chocolate) I'll have strawberry instead. It's really no big deal. Similarly for gay women, but there is perhaps a stronger distinction between "butch" women (known as "Tom" in Thai, from "tomboy" in English) and the more effeminate and very attractive and feminine "Dee" (contracted from the English word "lady"). Western moralistic notions of sex have been infiltrating Thai society since the Vietnam War years, and the Buddhist influence is to encourage people not to be slaves to their sexual desires; but deep down they still view sex as a natural and healthy bodily function that needs be 'exercised' regularly. You don't hold in your shit just because it's dirty and smelly, it'll lead to constipation and illness. Thais on the whole take the same view about sex (and shitting too, by the way).

[@peteralexander4892]

Amazing insight, thanks.

[@Just_Mike64]

O dear one of those SJW's that escaped from the "universities" in the US...

[@69RTR]

I've been living abroad for 20+ years and hate when any culture tries to impose their own culture, especially stupid ones as the current "progressive" ultra-senstivity in America around such things. you obviously have never been to Thailand. Having Said that, however, using ladyboy as the core of learning in this program is the main reason I wouldn't buy it. i don't want to learn Thai by freaky lady boys images in my head. The creator obviously has some strange infatuation with ladyboys to make it like this. I would have preferred something more neutral or less perverted.

[@LearnThaiRapidMethod]

RTR I'm sorry that you will miss out on the opportunity to follow the Rapid Method to learn Thai. A few people do have similar concerns about having to 'wallow' in something distasteful in order to benefit from the course. I've obviously left out an important introduction to the Rapid Method, which I will address in another video and various articles. Here's a preview for now: The Rapid Method incorporates several Accelerated Learning techniques that have been important learning and memory tools originating way back in ancient Chinese, Egyptian and Greek cultures. However, the most important advances have been made only in the last 30 years or so. One of the crucial aspects of learning a language is to acquire a working vocabulary of at least 1500 (preferably 3000) words and to memorize letter shapes and sounds and various linguistic rules. Our brains are not so good at remembering this kind of information, but we are extremely good at remembering images, particularly if they are "significant" in some way. What we find "significant" is usually something that is shocking, traumatic, sexual, disgusting or funny. Anything that was extremely emotional in some way. Everyone remembers - in considerable detail - their first day at school, or the first time they had sex, or some super-embarrassing incident, or experiencing the birth of their child, etc. Unfortunately, if you want to use AL techniques to remember a large body of unrelated information, the only effective way is to use shocking, bizarre imagery - otherwise it just doesn't work. I explain to my students that if there is a letter or word that they can't remember in my course then the image and mnemonic is probably too bland and needs to be changed - to something brighter, bigger, more colorful, more shocking, more disgusting... It's very personal, so a "ladyboy squirrel licking his nuts" might not work for some people. In fact, many people are a bit confused about the letter being a squirrel (animals can't be ladyboys, right?) so after a lot more thinking we've come up with a more effective image that seems to work for everybody: a "ladyboy bending over and Lifting up her dress (exposing her Nuts in the process)". This evokes a far more graphic - shocking and funny - image for the L/N letter. As you can see, there's a lot more work involved to learn something using AL techniques. However, it turns out that even taking into account the time required to devise hundreds and hundreds of mnemonic images, it's still quicker to learn all the information this way than to do so the normal brute-force approach of repetitive rote-memorization. In my research, it seems to be about two to three times faster overall (and what you learn sticks almost indefinitely compared to rote-learning which can be completely forgotten if you don't keep it up). What I've done with the Rapid Method for Learning Thai is to do all the AL thinking work for you in advance, so all you have to do is follow me down the rabbit hole and acquire the language skills almost instantly (but because our brains work like muscles, there is still some extra work to do to make it all subconscious and automatic). Finally, just like dissolving sutures, most if not all of these bizarre, shocking images disappear from your mind. They're only a temporary scaffolding to help you remember the information. After that you simply remember without knowing how you remember: I often can't think of what mnemonic I used to remember a word, I just know it. After about a year, most people who learnt to read Thai using the Rapid Method can't remember the images for each letter either - they just read, almost without even being aware of the individual letters anymore. Try this little exercise. I want you to look at the word in the next line and then answer the question below by immediately shutting your eyes so as not to see the word: - aluminium (Without looking at the word, please visualize what the shape of the letter A was that was used in the word.) There's a good chance that you won't have noticed, but it's different from what you probably assumed, right? (Look again closely if you don't know what I'm talking about.) A few brave people who initially felt disgusted about the notions used in the Rapid Read Thai course decided to hold their noses and attend a workshop after all. Usually as a last resort! They tried several other courses over the years without success; and so they decided to make one last attempt before throwing in the towel completely. They've all reported that it's not nearly as bad as they imagined it would be. And at the end of the day, the ends justified the means: everyone can now read Thai and are finally able to make rapid progress in being able to speak and understand Thai.