Chinese Vs. Thai - Which is Harder to Learn? And How to Learn Fastest

Considering learning Chinese and / or Thai? Which is hardest to learn? Which should you learn first? Which will you be able to get up speaking clearly, faster?
In this clip I go through the good, bad and ugly of learning Chinese languages (Mandarin ++) and Thai. I promise I won't through rubbish statistics at you based on how many letters there are in alphabets or how many tones there are in each. Rather, I'll break them down rationally as a language learner who wants to learn the language to a level of practical use. I'll also share with you in my opinion, which language gives the biggest 'bang for the buck'.
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[@DarkKnight-yv7dy]

一位西方人把东方2国语言研究这么深！同时我也是懂得中泰2国语言。觉得非常佩服。เราก็พูดอ่านได้ภาษาจีนไทย แต่ฝรั่งคนนี้น่านับถือจริงๆ ศึกษาภาษาจีนไทยลึกซึ้งขนาดนี้ หายากจริงๆ

[@o_458]

จริงครับ

[@user-db2sy4nk7f]

你是中國人嗎

[@user-om1ze4mi7u]

很明显，他是泰国人，他写的泰文比较自然。

[@user-db2sy4nk7f]

B 也是，雖然看不懂泰文， 但中文確實有些怪

[@gusion8677]

你佩服中国人吗？

[@vorawanc5015]

As a Thai, I'm curious why would anyone want to learn Thai... We ain't big.

[@user-lv7hw5cb4o]

Thai is a amazing place. I wanna learn Thai too!

[@Sophie62_72]

I love the language so much because of how it sounds (very exotic for a french person like me). I also love the food, the architecture, traditional clothing, cinema, khon theatre, sak yant, muay thai, the history of the country and I think that thai people are jovial. Your culture is very attractive to me and that's why I want to learn thai.

[@leol6656]

Thai peoples nice

[@alisacobb5450]

I’ll be honest, after becoming a fan of Lisa and lakorns, I want to watch my lakorns without waiting for them to be English subbed and after to seeing the beautiful places in the lakorns, I’m going to visit

[@hearttv5]

I want to learn pasa thai cause I am fascinated with the thai culture..lovelots from the philippines

[@yuiade3946]

I'm Thai, I can speak Chinese and I know the basic system of Sanskrit language. I totally agree with you that foreigner should learn Thai by its alphabet, it's easier than using Roman alphabet. The sound of the language derives from Sanskrit as you explain as well as most of Thai vocabulary. I think Thai and Chinese people can learn each other's language easily with similarity of the tone of the language even though the sentence structure is comparably different, but it's not that hard. The only difficulty in learning Chinese for me is its characters which took me half a year to memorize.

[@baqikenny]

you are an OG for memorizing the basic chinese vocabs in just half a year lol

[@maxpaper2560]

i’m chinese and i’m interested in Thai. is it really easy to learn?😂

[@dhpth]

agree, I’m Thai too so I think if learn Chinese for speaking maybe not much difficult but for writing or reading is difficult to memorize same as you said

[@yuiade3946]

@@maxpaper2560 I think Chinese people are more advantageous for pronunciation but I'm not sure about alphabets. There are 44 letters in our language, but some of them pronounced the same, you just group it. The reason for redundancy in the letter sound just because of the Sanskrit roots. The difficult part is you have to remember how to spell, which alphabets to use , if you just prefer only basic conversation, I think that's not problem just to learn speaking and basic writing. 🙂

[@yuiade3946]

@@baqikenny I was major in Chinese, so I had to. 😂

[@EnglishbyChris]

Chinese is definitely way harder to learn because you have memorize the pinyin spelling, the tone, and the character. Whereas in Thai, the phonetic script, albeit very complicated, tells you both pronunciation and tone within itself.

[@GyacoYu]

But there's no syllable separator in Thai. Imagine written tieng Viet not as "etyng eVyt", which is clear, but as "etyngevyt", which is not. The systematic sound change is not a thing for learners, which can be easily managed, but the lack of syllable separator is.

[@piquedard]

@@GyacoYu oh yeah! the lack of space between words in thai is really changeling, but the more thai words you learn, the more easier it gets to separate them!

[@renatam.r.6762]

For me Thai is one of the harder languages to learn. I really prefer to learn pinyin, hanzí and tone. It's easier than understand how to read in Thai.

[@piquedard]

@@renatam.r.6762 i can't say anything about chinese as i've never learnt it! as for the thai language, if you are REALLY INTERESTED, well, try (1) to memorize the 45 or so of THAI CONSONANTS (a few are obsolete or seldom used). they are divided into three groups, low, middle, high. (2) learn three tone marks called "máy thoo, máy trii, may cáttawa", and you'll be surprized how "easy" it is to read thai! now, everybody (i think!) will tell you this, there is one big hurdle when learning thai: there is no space between words, indeed! like, for instance, in "ตอนนี้ผมเรียนภาษาไทย"= at the present time, i study thai" . oh yeah, you've got to learn how to separate words. and it requires some time consuming practice :-), i reckon. as for the thai vowels (it's difficult to explain here), they follow "naturally"! i needed not to memorize them, anyway.

[@renatam.r.6762]

@@piquedard Thanks. It's hard for me because my language is Portuguese and my language has sounds and symbols more regulars. Thai and even English changes the sound a lit bit more. I try sometimes learn the word, like in Arabic too and not the system, but I see Thai has regularity with the sounds.

[@MeLiniTaFahrenheit]

I'm Mexican, my native language is Spanish. I'm learning Chinese (it's so hard) but I'd like to learn Thai like my next language. I love your culture and language Thai friends. 👍

[@TheAnonEye]

También estoy tratando de aprender chino, pero wow estoy entre o aprender el mandarín o el cantones. Mas aprendiendo los caracteres simplificados y las tradicionales. 🥲 Está fuerte pero de veras es un lenguaje muy interesante así que no me rindo.

[@UziTuni]

Yo sólo estoy estudiando Japonés, no sé qué hago aquí. Mentira jajaj el chino y thai son muy interesantes.

[@erturtemirbaev5207]

Greetings from Kyrgyzstan 🇰🇬

[@user-rn3dh6is1t]

@@TheAnonEye你好，如果需要，我可以帮助你

[@suhribzevolution645]

รักคุณเม็กซิโก

[@duh2838]

I'm Thai, but I still think my language is difficult. Anyone who wants to learn our language must have a patience.I'm very glad that you would like to learn our language.

[@xuanhoado9128]

I can speak English. Can you help me with Thai?

[@rayatsu5826]

Indonesian here, trying to learn thai language, wish me luck!

[@duh2838]

@@xuanhoado9128 Yes,of course.(But I'm just a kid so sometimes I use English wrong,please forgive me.)

[@duh2838]

@@rayatsu5826 Good luck!,you can definitely do it.

[@cheezus2379]

Filipino here, I’m currently learning Thai 🖤🤍

[@qian9616]

I‘m a native speaker of Chinese, I majored in Thai Language and Culture when I was in college. For me the alphabet and writing system is quite hard, but once you get through that, everthing gets much easier. So for who is just starting learning Thai and think it's too difficult, don't worry, things will get better after you finish the alphabet part. And I think Thai is easier for Chinese to learn than who speak English as their native language, because the Chinese grammar system is more similar to Thai than English, HAHAHA...

[@dataperson7067]

as a thai person learning chinese, I can say chinese is harder

[@rungchu763]

Yes I agree, I have Chinese friend who self study by watching Thai drama. They can understand and speak Thai very fluently. Compare with me that I cannot speak Chinese as fluent as them speak Thai even I watch so many Chinese drama. So that's why I think Thai language will be easier. And of course for reading and writing skills, you no need to remember too much characters and stroke.

[@siunfong6686]

Hey Qian, do you teach online? I speak Chinese and I want to learn Thai, thanks a lot!

[@yangster18]

I thought Chinese has many similarities to English. It was easier to teach Chinese by speaking English explanation, but too many things in Thai are just the opposite, which is tricky to remember. And the Thai alphabet is just pure hell.... I'm struggling!

[@user-zn2jy7eu2z]

ผมเรียนภาษาจีนแบบใต้หวันอ่านชนิดจีนแผ่นดินใหญ่สำหรับผมยาก

[@hiozealben1424]

wow你中文泰语都很厉害 ผมก็เรียนภาษาไทยอยู่ครับ สำเนียงคุณเหมือนคนไทยมากครับ

[@tanutkinbuffet]

我也自学了中文ผมก็เรียนภาษาจีนด้วยตนเอง.

[@Rhodyrhodes]

I'm impressed with your Thai pronunciation. I'm trying to teach my kids Thai. They're half Thai-American. Teaching Thai is not easy!!

[@FW2012.]

a lot of half thai kids aren’t interested in learning their language, I’m glad you’re teaching them!! how is it?

[@stephie444]

@@FW2012.it depends where they live

[@FW2012.]

@@stephie444 yeah, I meant when they live abroad

[@korawitwoonsin7547]

I’m thai, i think any languages have both Hardness and easiness in their own ways. So I can’t tell which overall is the hardest and the easiest.

[@dongxuemo4090]

I agree

[@user-xb3ux6uv5e]

True. And also, difficulties vary with native speakers of different languages. An American will find Japanese writing system hard to learn but not will Chinese since there is Kanji.

[@dongxuemo4090]

I’m Australian and I learnt both Mandarin and Thai, I found Chinese easy to pronounce, but it took 10 years to be fluent at reading, but I found Thai pronunciation hard, but easy to learn the vocabulary, and I found the grammar easy , maybe it was easy for me to learn cuz I was living in the country, whereas I learnt Chinese without even going to the country

[@MrMettajin]

I'm Malaysian of Chinese descent (Hakka-Cantonese to be precise) and I'm currently learning Thai. So I'm pretty blessed to be able to converse professionally in Malay, English, Mandarin, Cantonese and hopefully Thai in the near future 🙏🏻 I had learnt basic Japanese before but forgotten the hiragana and katakana after a few years of non-active usage. Hoping to be a full-fledged polyglot one day!

[@jeffreysetapak]

Thai pronunciations and its upper case and lower case writing is very complicated. Due to ancient caste culture. The honorific version of Thai language when you speaking to royal family menbers, the sangha Buddhist bhikku or bhikkuni or even higher rank society people can be tricky and confusing to learn. Chinese wise is the confusion of Chinese characters. Chinese characters are not just difficult to write and remember, many characters shared the same pronunciation can be utterly confusing if you apply in verbal conversation without seeing the characters. At the same time, the same Chinese character might have totally different application and meaning in classical, old and ancient Chinese.

[@johnnymerz]

Saya pun

[@melvinday439]

Same here

[@lgya999]

@@jeffreysetapak 泰语和汉语一样有许多同音字，其实更适合使用汉字，而不是拼音。 比如 九 旧（汉语普通话读 jiu）, 泰语读gao， 汉字虽然读音相同但是字不同很容易区分

[@NHockerJazz]

Living in China for 2 years. My advice in regards to learning characters (汉字), learn it like they learn it. Start with learning basic characters and the correct stroke order. Then move on to studying the radicals. Do a lot of repetition. Don’t try to use mental shortcuts to memorize, or the “Chineasy” technique of interpreting the meaning from the visual aspect of the character. This works for very few characters and is more of a novelty than anything. Learning the radicals will actually enable you to infer meaning/tone from characters you’ve never seen before, or are having trouble remembering. That’s just my experience!

[@pijno]

Im a native thai speaker and i've learned some mandarin, and i have to say that your mandarin and thai are really impressive. Great explanation video.

[@aaronrobinson2121]

Agreed. I don't speak Mandarin but his Thai is really on point.

[@kritee]

My mother tongue is mandarin and I grew up in Thailand so I understand both relatively well (even though English is my best language). Personally I feel like Thai listening is pretty easy to pick up if you hear it every day. The speaking however takes a lot more time. It’s a tonal language which is what makes it tricky. To write thai is actually not too hard to learn, they don’t have as many characters as Mandarin Chinese. To read Thai can often be confusing because they don’t use spaces and it’s sometimes hard to tell where one word ends and where the next one starts, plus they have a lot of tone marks with like a billion rules. I learned mandarin from birth and I can speak and listen quite well, yet I still have problems writing and reading because there are so many characters.

[@WingngaiWong]

I am Zhuang ethnic in China. As my native language Zhuang language is also one of the Kra-Dai languages, I found Thai is easy to learn either in phonology or in vocabulary.

[@banchasu]

Wow! Your Thai accent is excellent!

[@jeonghoko5545]

The way you represented places of articulation is really cool!

[@dingdingnian288]

I ove your video, studied Chinese intensively for about a decade and now I fell in love with Thai language, studying the alphabet now and really like it. I will see how far I will get it on my own. I guess I will find out when visiting Thailand in the future. It’s real fun and your content is really helpful. Please move on with your excellent work, cheers!

[@Dinasaurous]

I’m currently super obsessed with both languages and this video was sooooo helpful thank you so much

[@jingyunroderickhuang5449]

This is extremely interesting! thank you very much

[@user-xb3ux6uv5e]

I really like how you break down the systems of both languages into minor aspects, rather than simply rating them as a whole. It is more practical and useful.

[@Sapphireia]

Super interesting! I've learned Chinese and vocab is definitely the hardest part. This made me wanna learn Thai!

[@notjunior]

You're soooo didactical! Loved the video, thank you!

[@300blackcats]

thanks for the video, as a cantonese speaker, i was intimidated by the thai writing system but your video made me a bit more confident to take that thai course in uni

[@greenjeleto]

Oh, God!! Your Thai pronunciation is really great.🤭✨

[@parkerpyle]

Holy cow this is treasure. As a Thai, this is very useful and very accurate. It’s also easy to understand. I’d recommend anyone who wants to start learning Thai watching this.

[@danielcharlesfilms2897]

Woh man you're an incredibly good teacher!

[@kathydinh2908]

I have been learning both since the COVID-19 pandemic, my Thai is amazing , my Chinese is at level 3/ intermediate level , I can sing more than 10 Chinese songs, and I watch Thai drama on KZbin with no sub titles

[@kanister21]

What's your native language?

[@wall5699]

Hi, how to learning Thai? Please tell me! Thanks

[@kathydinh2908]

@@kanister21 Vietnamese

[@kathydinh2908]

@@wall5699 like any new languages I watch n listen to music/ song that very catchy over n over with English sub then sing along til I memorize the lyrics and understand the words , I also watched thai drama some with sub , some don't and repeat their pronunciation , repeat repeat...

[@sushikgch1486]

@@kathydinh2908 I heard that Thai and Vietnamese languages had almost the same grammar constructor is that true?

[@xyquiz]

I'm Thai. You can learn any language while your memory is still good. :) When you get older, it's hard to remember words.

[@hardeepsingh-sg2kz]

absolutely right! the sooner you start the better preferably in school. I am older, 60 and although I have learnt Mandarin for about 2 years I still have problems remembering the words and find it difficult to go beyond HSK 4. Age takes it toll on memory and memorizing is a big part of language learning

[@uknowwho4497]

@@hardeepsingh-sg2kz I Learn english and spanish by myself... Um Brazilian. Still have lots od problems to write, but not to understand. Do u think i still can learn chinese? Im 28 almost 29. I really love chinese. I can understand japanese too.

[@mildzamakmak]

Absolutely true, learning Thai lay down with pronunciation and grammar then the only left is reading. I spent 2-3 months insanely reading Thai novels. Altho i don't know the meaning at first but if i read it out loud its not that hard to recognise what that word is and its meaning. At least if i dont know the meaning i can pronounce it. It's a good consolation. While Chinese? altho it‘s grammar is a lot harder when i have to write, its meaning when reading is easy to understand. The only problem is vocabulary as 1 word in Chinese can use in many contexts and have a slightly different meaning. And as He said Chinese vocab is kinda hard to remember. The feeling of seeing the word but can't pronounce it and have no clue what that means often happens to me as i sometimes totally forgotten that word.

[@yueyu7185]

这种情况中国人自己也会遇到。我作为一个中国人，并且在中国生活了14年，有时候我也会忘记这个词怎么写，那个词怎么读，原因就是我不在中国上学了，每天不需要读课文和写字。但是有一点我觉得你说的不太准确，当你学多了以后你会发现中文的发音是有规律的，当你看见一个字的时候你可以利用它的偏旁部首来大概猜一下这个字的发音。一般来说每个字都会有一个形旁，一个声旁。形旁一般是跟这个字的意思有关的，声旁一般是跟这个字的发音有关的。总之，学的时间长了就懂了，但是不要停止学习，要不然等你再想学的时候你应该都忘了。（还有，你要是能读懂我写的，那证明你的中文已经很好了。）

[@mildzamakmak]

@@yueyu7185 Thank you Yue Yu. I know that we can guess what the word might sound based on the root character in the front and the meaning on the character inside. But I still cannot grasp the essence of it yet. -Correct me if I'm wrong. I cant really remember about it. So I plan to dive into the characters topic soon. It has been long since i learned about it. p.s. google translate help xD I cant understand all of that as I'm still in the novice level. But i like how the same character can create a verse of a poem. That's literally amazing.

[@yueyu7185]

​@@mildzamakmak 哈哈哈，Google translate确实是个好东西，我有时候也用。形旁和声旁也只是一个范围，有时候你猜的和事实的差距还是很大的。不过也不要急于求成，语言类的东西没有捷径。其实环境是很重要的，就像我以前在中国的时候，老师、同学、朋友以及家人都是中国人，说中国话，所以我的中文肯定好。但是我其实从幼儿园就开始接触英语了，但是我来美国之后发现自己的英语水平还是无法和同龄人相比。

[@mildzamakmak]

@@yueyu7185 xD i get it only 80% so i need google help. It's not bad at least I can look at the pronunciation. Some words I know in speech but not in written so it was good.

[@alangraham4526]

Stumbled on this vid Stuart and most impressed with your advice. Initially I could not get a handle on spoken Thai at all so I went through the laborious process of learning the alphabet and when I did not understand what was said I asked people to write the word for me. "Bingo" the spoken word really did not correlate (for me) with the everyday spoken Thai as I needed to get my ear tuned in and the structure of general speech!

[@rambodiehardwarrior2006]

Greeting from Northern part of Thailand. It's only a few second of watching your VDO I subscribed immediately. Your pronunciation of Thai is really "perfect".

[@TheHarvestGoddessChloe]

As someone who now speaks Chinese fairly fluently and is learning Thai, this made me very happy. You went so deep into the differences for pronunciation and how the languages are made up. I look forward to checking out your Thai stuff, because I've been struggling with the Thai characters.

[@piquedard]

i'm not fluent in thai, but i find thai characters much more "human" than chinese! i'm trying to learn some japanese, and i'm able to decipher hiragana and katagana, the 2 first japanese alphabets. but only the look on kanji, the third alphabet based on chinese characters, makes me sweat already:-). now the big hurdle in thai, as for me, is the lack of space between words!

[@john-raphaellacas8107]

Love it. I learned faster Japanese after remembering hiraganas, then kanji learning went easier too. What good advices. I really wanna learn Thai and Chinese from you.

[@StuartJayRaj]

Chinese is such a worthwhile language to learn

[@oleksijm]

@@StuartJayRaj Chinese is a hidden treasure.

[@Sheeshbro6969]

You deserve more recognition, I subscribed because I like your content, very educational. I'll be watching your other videos too. 👍

[@fimoql6789]

Thank you so much for your recommendation.

[@breaky73]

Very good advice. I tried to learn Lao via a course what was set up by an American, and as a result the first part of the course book was set up in American-English romanized Lao. As for an example the word for "no/not" (ບໍ່) was spelled as "baw". Locals often use however "bor" when writing karaoke. I would as a Dutch speaker use bò or boh. Very confusing and better just to learn the Lao writing system directly.

[@mitchbernard1751]

I'm actually living what you've posited here. I grew up in Japan and learned Chinese 40 years ago; I've used it professionally ever since. I knew how to read 汉字 from the outset making vocabulary building relatively easy, at least up to an intermediate level. By contrast, 40 years later, I started learning Thai from scratch at the start of the pandemic, and from outside Thailand. Two things have stood out. First, lack of cognates with other languages that I know have made vocabulary building in Thai more difficult & time consuming than I anticipated. Second, it took me some time to adjust to the Thai tonal system and stop imposing Chinese tones onto Thai. Given the above, I was fascinated by your observation concerning Vietnamese!

[@srijulakhotha7247]

As Stuart mentioned, there are in fact a really large number of recognisable words in Thai for any Indo-European language speaker (such as English) because of the influence of Sanskrit on Thai. As you learn to read, a lot of scientific and religious words will jump out at you as clearly related to English. It's a tough language, mate, but keep it up - you'll love it!

[@mitchbernard1751]

@@srijulakhotha7247 Thanks for the encouragement. I 'get' the large number of loan words from English related to science & tech as well as pop culture. That's expected. Still, for me, compared to learning Korean while already fluent in Japanese, there are an awful lot of words in Thai that I just need to memorize. But the deeper in I get, the easier it is to leverage what I already know. All languages build on themselves! And you're right, it's a lot of work but enormous fun!

[@seanxim3697]

If you learn Cantonese Chinese you are more likely to pick up Thai tones and pronunciation faster compared with Mandarin which lost most of its glottal stops and words starts with “ng”. Maybe learning Cantonese before switching to Thai since it has many cognates with Mandarin.

[@mitchbernard1751]

@@seanxim3697 I long wanted to learn Cantonese but it's something I just didn't get to do. But I was recounting the process I went through to learn Thai tones in my first six months rather than describing any current problems. I experienced 'interference' with cognate languages, when I learned Spanish while already speaking Italian, but in never occurred to me that interference exists in terms of tone systems as well. Hopefully I'll get to experience a third tonal langauge at some point, be it Cantonese or Vietnamese!

[@philip32276]

I'm wondering if I know you or not. Have lived in Japan (Chiba) for almost 50 years, also worked as a Chinese and Japanese translator, and also speak pretty fluent Spanish. Actually my Thai and Cantonese are also quite fluent, and have also studied Korean on NHK, and studied Vietnamese from a refugee in Japan 30 years ago. Seems we have exactly the same interests.

[@nopayothongtipwaree17]

As a half Thai-Chinese and my major French language when I was in the University, I really appreciate what you contribute your lesson to make it more clear for both languages. น่าสนใจมากครับ 讲的很清清楚。Je vous remercie profondément de votre gentillesse.

[@thaihm]

Haha i love how you threw Vietnamese in there....so true. I kinda heard your Chinese and Thai fusion when you were switching back and forth. This was a great comparison video! Thank you friend. 👍🏽🙏🏼❤️

[@mikedaniels3009]

Thanx for this stimulating video. You, a falang as simultaneous interpreter Thai - Mandarin and fluent in a few else I guess,.... Rather a feat to write home about. Thanx again.

[@ArthasHastingsMenethil]

I think the hardest language is where even Natives have hard time to understand their own languages

[@banji7612]

German, many people think its easy cause it's kind of similar to English but the grammar is horrible here. I am german and I have a very hard time speaking in good or decent grammar especially writing a little text its literally my nightmare like come on we have 10 different ways on saying "the"

[@_Amin_99]

That would be arabic for me

[@iaiaiiaiii5521]

omg I’m Thai, I’ve learning Chinese for long but I could say it’s really hard language 😅 I like this video so much it’s such a useful video! Thank you for making this! btw your Thai accent is really wonderful, that’s really cool 💕

[@LuffyTU]

You nailed it in both languages,good job

[@soravisable]

As a Thai citizen of Chinese descent who speaks both Thai and Mandarin (and a few more southern Chinese languages), I did enjoy your video. It is interesting to see how the languages I always take for granted are learned by non-native speakers. I have never learned any romanisation of Thai. I agree it would more useful to just learn to write and read Thai characters. For Chinese, I didn’t learn it with Pinyin when I was young, since my family isn’t Mandarin speaking (although my parents did learn Mandarin at school as kids), Pinyin wasn’t in my education at all until I was about 12-13 years old. It didn’t help me much by that time as I was so accustomed to the Chinese phonetic system way earlier by pronouncing the sound of each character every time I practiced writing both in Mandarin and my family dialect. Pinyin is very useful for language learners as an adult, but you still need to practice writing and recognising the characters a lot.

[@starest]

好厲害！เก่งมากเลยครับ ขอแสดงความนับถือละกัน 真的好強 感謝分享專業見解

[@songting6932]

Fantastic comparison!

[@Nunice292]

You are so amazing 🎉 You can understand deeply in both Thai and Chinese.

[@hakjaolai]

I am a Hong Konger living in Canada for over 40 years and have been using English as my working language. To be honest, I now forget many Chinese characters and prefer to text my Hong Konger friends using English. I learn Thai on my own for over 20 years. While the learning curve was steep at the beginning, however, once you learn the script, the vowels, and can read, you basically know how to pronounce, because Thai is basically a what-you hear - how-you-write (and vice versa) language. Besides, many long, complicate-looking Thai words are actually made of individual shorter words with their own meanings. So if you learn how to break down a long word (that comes with time, when the vocabulary list is 4000 words or so in my case), you learn a number of new words at the same time! And these shorter words in turn will be used in other longer words, that make learning them faster. In short, Thai is easier to learn than Chinese in my opinion.

[@parham8319]

I always get asked this question to, and I agree with you. And I'd add that after learning enough Hanzi, expanding your Chinese vocabulary is just so simple as the composition of new words is quite logical. Whereas with Thai, I feel like I'm having to work hard to find a new word's etymological roots to help me remember the word. Do you have any recommendations for something comprehensive regarding Thai etymology? (Thai or English) Side note-Cool! Vietnamese is my next language...as far as vocabulary in Vietnamese, Thai wouldn't be much help right? I know it's filled with Chinese and sprinkled with French.

[@StuartJayRaj]

You can start with this that I put together a while back - mindkraft.me/sanskrit-and-pali-prefixes-in-thai/

[@jimmychen576]

agreed. you can probably guess the meaning of the new words in Chinese, but there isn’t any clue for new Thai words. Over 60% Vietnamese words are imported from Chinese, it’s easier if you speak good chinese

[@srijulakhotha7247]

Sanskrit (and it's derivatives Pali and - to lesser extent - Hindi) are absolutely necessary for anyone interested in Thai etymology. Bonus - Sanskrit is SUCH a cool language!

[@klausg]

Fascinating talk. Thanks

[@proteanbeast6351]

this is the smartest youtube video that i've seen in the past 2 years

[@yudeesaetang7468]

As Half Thai-Chinese, I can say Thai is more difficult in wording while Chinese is more difficult in vocab and pinyin. But, TBH, I work as a translator and found out that Thai language is quite difficult to understand when we need to translate into other languages.

[@Indythoughman]

As a Thai who's learning Vietnamese, and Spanish, I totally agree that Vietnamese is somewhat quite a "piece of cake" for us. The sentence structure is almost identical to Thai and it is not a big hassle to replicate the 6 tones. Never tried Chinese though, but after watching this video, maybe it's time. :P :P

[@Mdafra]

Thanks for you video, very informative. I’m Thai, fluent in Japanese and have some Chinese knowledge. I would say learning grammar and tones would probably be quite easy for both of the Thais and Chinese since they are quite similar....but for the Thais, it would be hard to remember and write the Chinese Character.....it is not that hard for me though cuz I know Japanese...

[@littleengine9502]

Very interesting, and I agree with everything. Funny you mentioned about Chinese ppl may have difficulty with certain Thai sounds - watching my Shanghai wife say the NG & เรือ had me in a fit ( then I slept on the couch that evening ) I didn't follow through with learning Chinese characters ( too time-consuming for me ) so this time around, I am pushing to learn Thai script and I feel that my Thai will surpass my Chinese because of this. Many thanks Stuart.

[@StuartJayRaj]

Yeah - Mandarin speakers have very distinct issues with Thai pronunciation - as opposed to speakers of more Southern Chinese languages like Cantonese and Hokkien. The lack of glottal stop in Mandarin combined with lack of differentiation between long and short vowels gives Chinese speakers of Thai a distinct 'sound'

[@andrewdunbar828]

I just learn characters as I go. A few by noticing I see them all the time, a few by thinking I need them and looking them up. I'm not at a stage to do well with the more abstract ones but I found getting to a stage where you can make pretty useful guesses about what a character either means or sounds like or both started to come much earlier than I would've thought.

[@GamerBreak7029]

I'm thai, and I think thai is easier, considering chinese letters..are..ahem..too many. I'm also studying chinese so Once u try learning it and understand it bit by bit is more easier then u expected. But yeah I agree with what u said👍 (in the end both languages are TOUGH, so who is gonna learn it DON'T GIVE UP!! U CAN DO IT)

[@StuartJayRaj]

Yes - as a Thai, check out the chart I put up in this clip of the tone comparisons between Thai, lao and Mandarin. This is actually a super useful tool that can be used to switch Thai to any other Tai or Chinese dialect / language.

[@alenakhiewborriboon294]

Well, I've been speaking both languages since I was born and for me, I feel like I find Chinese harder because it's not written in alphabetical form, and you have to learn both pinyin and the characters. For English words like example "ice cream" in Chinese since you don't have alphabets to spell with, the language created another word for it 冰淇淋 (bing qi lin) and the Thai pronunciation for ice cream is ไอศครีม (I sa cream) and there isn't a big difference from English. If you want a more challenging language I suggest you do Chinese because it has a simplified version (people from mainland China use this) and there's traditional (Mostly Taiwanese uses this) But in the end, this is just a personal opinion.

[@Seantorky3]

I found the beginning in mandarin was much harder than Thai. Used both Chinese and Thai when I worked in Kenya 🇰🇪. Can't wait to join your program one day.

[@andres19877]

I'm watching this video just out of curiosity. I congratulate you for this excellent analysis of both languages. I'm really pleased to see I recognize lots of Chinese characters (because I have learned Japanese). As a native Spanish speaker I can say Thai is kinda easy because I can grammatically filter it through Spanish and sometimes through English (tones are no different than orthographic accents in Spanish and we have lots of words with repeated vowels), writing is not that hard either you just need to train your memory (there are exceptions but you get use to it too). Classifiers are another story but "no pain no gain". I vote for Thai and in top of that I feel really attracted to aesthetics of written Thai.

[@emarcostar]

I'm spaniard and I'm interested in learning Thai, but i thought it was very difficult and completely different. Is Thai pronunciation similar to the Spanish one? 👀

[@andres19877]

@@emarcostar Si y no. Porque tienen bastantes más vocales y consonantes que nosotros, la dificultad radica más en las excepciones escritas, en los tonos, en que la mayoría de palabras son solo de una sílaba (con tono) y en los clasificadores que nuestra mente occidental no interioriza tan rápidamente, sin embargo te animo a que lo hagas, es una lengua hermosa.

[@AizeNFoN]

I'm Thai and I like the text at 9:28 XD

[@r3dsourman90]

เราก็ชอบค่ะ555(ก็มันเรื่องจริงนี่นะ😂)

[@damonmartin1572]

I mean I can understand Thai and find it hard in the sense it is easy to pick it up with grammar but it takes a lot to learn the vocabulary. The writing is a challenge with Thai but it's not too hard to get your head around it with flashcards and trying to read. No clue about Chinese but it looks very hard. My granddad speaks mandarin and Thai and thinks Thai is harder due to pronunciation.

[@chris78945]

Great video and really impressed by your fluency in both languages 🙂 I learned Thai to a fairly high level when I was young then in middle age Mandarin followed by Vietnamese. If I'm honest, I found Thai the easiest of all to learn helped of course by all those amazingly friendly Thai people who were always happy to chat and assist! Vietnamese (southern dialect which is really quite different from what they speak in Hanoi) was great fun to learn and I picked it up fairly quickly. The tones and vowels aren't the same as those of Thai but knowing them helps, and I love their explosive b and d sounds. Mandarin, for some reason I can't explain, was always a slog. The fact that the second syllable of two syllable words didn't receive its correct tone was really off putting. A lot of the areas I visited in China spoke Mandarin with such bad pronunciation I just couldn't understand them - all those retroflex consonants got converted to something else. And then learning hundreds of characters (I never got to thousands) seemed such a waste of time! So my order for ease of learning definitely goes Thai then Vietnamese then Chinese.

[@doggy5]

Although I don't speak Thai, one thing I've noticed from my visits to Thailand is that there are a large number of loan words from Teochew in Thai as well. An example is the Thai word for "soy sauce". And interestingly, some Thai words sound similar to Cantonese, such as the words for "chicken" and "horse".

[@rmadridista369]

im Chinese, I didn't know what it was like for non Chinese people to read Chinese until I saw Thai

[@yueshuang11728]

When you said 'computer' in Thai, it is exactly what Thai accent sounds like. That really amazes me! Never heard any foreigner speak like this before *0*

[@erturtemirbaev5207]

Where are you from?

[@yueshuang11728]

Bangkok, Thailand (was born and live here until now)

[@erturtemirbaev5207]

@@yueshuang11728 nice to meet you. Are you overseas Chinese?

[@catxi]

The screenshot of the Chinese wechat dialogue is sooooo hilarious lol. I wonder how you find such a dialogue. I'm Chinese and I've tried to learn Thai so many times but always got defeated from learning the alphabet/writing system. I know once I digest the letters I can improve a lot because I found Thai and Chinese have similar grammar and expressions. Still it is just too difficult to remember the letters and the tones.

[@christiaanveltkamp]

This video is awesome!

[@steveclarsteve8616]

That was a great video Stuart I am wanting to increase learning in both languages based on your video and my interest in both languages I have a small understanding of Chinese and a little of Thai . .Question ... is it best to learn and focus one at a time or is it "do able" to learn simultaneously ? Any input on this platform would be appreciated

[@ajpkingdom6104]

I'm Laotian. I can speak and read thai fluently. 95% of my books are Thai. Now I'm mastering Chinese. I reckon that I will be completed in the near future 😂☺️⏩☺️⏩😂

[@cashcash5995]

Thai and Lao are the same, little difference but it is the same language . Not surprise that your book are thai .

[@user-gb2yb8nb7d]

加油! Good luck!

[@ajpkingdom6104]

@@cashcash5995 Yes you're correct. But I meant I have so many good books for reading.. a lot of Thai books translate from English. Thai is better than Lao ( Lao is communist) Lao don't have any good books

[@ajpkingdom6104]

@@user-gb2yb8nb7d thanks 😊😊

[@kridsadayantarawattana9188]

@@cashcash5995 oh no it is not the same language! The scripts are different. How can you say it is the same? Then Lanna and Thai also the same? So for me , Laos who can read Thai and mastered it mean they are intelligent,

[@JosephDewey]

Excellent content, as always! "Probably the most common one is the Paiboon system by Khun Benjawan. And, you know, it's...okay. I personally prefer IPA." ...after watching probably 20 hours of you talking about how it's really not that tough to learn IPA, and it's much, much more accurate...so much so that there's really no reason to learn anything but Thai script or IPA, it was really interesting to see you talk about another transliteration system...I never thought I'd see this day. :) But it was part a very thorough analysis of learning both these languages. Awesome video!

[@StuartJayRaj]

honestly, it eats me up inside having to use transliteration systems especially when they're not IPA, but I was fighting a losing battle and thearmet demanded it. When Bingo used it for his and so many people follow his stuff I figured okay ..I'd accommodate too... but sometimes I really need to switch to IPA

[@JosephDewey]

@@StuartJayRaj That's interesting. Thanks again for the great video!

[@7sd957]

You are back!

[@seanxim3697]

knowing Chinese character has advantage both in Korea and especially Japan even if you don’t speak their language. Once in Japan, we got lost and try to ask a Japanese who speak no English or Chinese. We ended writing in Chinese which we somehow manage to understand.

[@kaidanalenko5222]

fake news/ they have different meaning when you combine hanzi into japanese 🤢 its called 'false friends'!

[@seanxim3697]

@@kaidanalenko5222 true but try to keep it simple when communicating with Japanese Kanji like asking for direction left, right, time and name of places. The most useful is ability to read address and name of places in kanji both Korea and Japan

[@archfa]

สุดยอดเลยค่ะ นึกว่าคนไทยกำลังพูดเลยค่ะ ตอนนี้หนุก็กำลังศึกษาภาษาจีนอยู่ค่ะ

[@shastasilverchairsg]

I spent 10 years learning Chinese in school... glad to see I can still understand the Wechat text. Though reading it does make my head hurt with the effort.

[@dongxuemo4090]

Wow, I’m Australian and became fluent in mandarin after about 7 years including reading but without ever going overseas, and lived in Thailand and became fluent in speaking and reading in 2 years, both languages had their challenges, when I spoke Thai at first, I had a hard time with ppl understanding my accent, and tones. Interesting you said Vietnamese should be easy because I’ve tried learning Vietnamese and found it hard. I also speak Cantonese and a little Shanghainese and the chiangrai dialect . I have never regret learning these languages because it gave me so many opportunities and great friends

[@dongxuemo4090]

And now I’ve been learning Chinese for over 20 years, and I keep maintaining my languages by reading everyday , and keeping in touch with friends

[@charlessao7523]

Hi Stuart, I am wondering why a Westerner /Western-born person would learn Thai when Mandarin has many more native speakers and China is the second largest economy in the world. Your thoughts would be very much appreciated. I am asking this, not to belittle the Thai language, but to find a way to convince someone to learn Thai or a Tai language.

[@sunduncan1151]

I’m Thai. I can learn many SEA languages easily due to similar grammar structure: Vietnamese, Karen, Khmer and Malay-Indonesian. These have SVO and N+Adj like Thai. Chinese has SVO but adj+N. Burmese is different with SOV like Tibetan, Nepali, Korean and Japanese, etc. Tagalog is more challenging with VSO/VOS and complicated verb morphology.

[@yat3069]

Do you speak Karen ? My Karen, I can understand Thai, and I'm learning Chinese

[@joshmarc100]

I'm a Filipino. I agree that Tagalog is really challenging because of its complex grammar. Most of SEA languages have similar grammar structure except for Tagalog. What only makes Thai language hard for me is the tones because Tagalog is not a tonal language.

[@filipino437]

Philippine Languages are indeed hard

[@paduka23]

Now, its time for you to learn javanese language (the most spoken local language in indonesia), its an Austronesian language (with 3 level speech based on politeness) with brahmic writing systems (called Javanese script/carakan) ✨ *Learning this language will makes you learning 3 language in one language 🤣

[@filipino437]

@@paduka23 Spoken*

[@UhYeahWhateverDude]

Interesting. I've never attempted to learn Chinese, but I have learned Arabic, Farsi, and some others - including Thai...and for me it has always been necessary to learn reading and writing along with speaking otherwise I never feel sure about what I am saying and thus, won't.

[@heymandarin8561]

As a Chinese teacher, your video is really useful and insightful. Your Chinese pronunciation is really good 😊 👍 Once you learned the method of Chinese system, it could be easy to learn Chinese language, also Chinese has comparable less grammar.

[@ackack3706]

One misconception Chinese beginners often have is that they put more effort on remembering the initials and finals of a character, but ignore the tone. However the tone is actually more important. Many Chinese people also misuse the initials or finals (mixing "s" and "sh" etc.), whereas a misuse of the tone will completely change the meaning of the word.

[@shastasilverchairsg]

Dui4

[@jordandavis6709]

Agreed

[@ThaiWithSarah]

Love it. I will stick to Thai only lol

[@danielsheppardtv]

Another interesting video! I disagree about learning thai characters first though! The school I learned at used the paiboon phonetic system for the first 3 months of studies. This got me up and speaking and having fun learning vocab, speech patterns, telling time etc etc without worrying about reading thai script/tones slowly. Then, teaching the writing/reading system, was focused on for two whole months as there are a lot of spelling intricacies, rule-breaking words/letter, etc etc. I think I would have gotten bored and given up if I started with the script! I do wish there was a standardized phonetic system for thai though. Paiboon is great because it covers the weird vowels and tones that english doesn't have. But seeing words written in english around thailand, even though I can speak thai, I have no idea how it's meant to be pronounced or which tone etc.

[@Pikachu.1412]

Oh...I love your accent! ❤❤❤

[@TiaCup]

A Thai learning Mandarin here. I struggle with both lol ถ้าเอาจริงเอาจังก็ยากทั้งสองภาษาเลย 每天哭着看书 😂

[@user-ss3hq8fk2e]

加油😉

[@singsingng6667]

加油，add oil🤪

[@MyMint23]

我在学习汉语。

[@tinsengkhiang2278]

สู้ๆนะ

[@kyle7092]

อยากให้กำลังใจคนที่กำลังเรียนภาษาไทยอยู่ครับ สู้ๆครับ :D

[@fitzhugh2542]

Sir, you are incredible. We need more humans like you on this earth.

[@Krisstofers]

It's awesome you mentioned that, because I was working as a multi lingual loan signing agent, offering services in English, ASL, Español, ภาษาไทย, 中文，と日本語。this was great, as with all the languages if I ever got stuck, I could make it through with very little modifications of Spanglish, Japanglish, even Thinglish... However, I would run into speed bumps, trying to use Chinglish. I say speed bumps, because I can't really use the full English word, sometimes... They'll just sit there and stare at me, whenever I would. Thank God they created Google!!! We'd always get through it, without any hard feelings!!! Although sometimes my fluency wasn't to par, I feel that everyone preferred my services over someone who wouldn't even try to speak their language. Because, I would take the extra steps of making sure I had the list of words I would use in my loan documents. Like Sign here, Date Here, Percentage Rates, Balloon Payments, etc. When they're prompt for further explanation, I'd offer using the document translator. Sometimes, when all else would fail, we would call someone.

[@NataliaT5]

I learning Thai 😁 I love Thai Dramas ❤️

[@DangRenBo]

I learned both Chinese and Thai (and Lao script) as an adult and do regular work as a translator. You're right that people learning Thai should just skip romanization. There are so many phonemes that westerners don't have in their first languages. I disagree with the timing you give for learning Thai script and being able to use them meaningfully. When I studied Thai at a military school (with students who are considered "high" altitude), they spent six weeks on script and pronunciation just to get us off the starting blocks. People generally ask me which is easier, and my one sentence answer is "Thai is more difficult to speak; learning to read Chinese is a lifetime endeavor."

[@dongxuemo4090]

Yes it took me about a month to read Thai , it took me about 10 years to read chinese fluently

[@dongxuemo4090]

And yes it’s a lifetime endeavour cuz after 7 years I could read 80% and now I’ve been learning for more than 20 years and I read everyday to maintain my reading and will always have to look up 1 or 2 new characters in the dictionary. But I love learning the characters!

[@ludwigxu1258]

Man you pronounced mandarin so standard, probably more precise than me as a Chinese native speaker 😂. It’s amazing!

[@pazyu]

As a native speaker of Chinese, I think the grammar of mandarin and Thai are quite similar!!! I mean the structure of sentence is much more easier.

[@stlouisramsfan03]

I speak fluent Navajo and I can hear all these tones without trying. Yay for tonal languages!

[@gasun1274]

navajo only has two though.

[@gasun1274]

did you learn it at school or were you spoken to in navajo at home since childhood?

[@stlouisramsfan03]

@@gasun1274 We have five. People say we don't have a mid tone but I believe there is.

[@MrClarity8]

I born in a Hokkien family, speak Hokkien with mixture of Malay and English. I studied at Malay school but pick up Chinese from my mother and sister. I can write my own name and few simple words. But I am feeling more comfortable with Thai. Now I am self-learning about the letters of Thai.

[@evaring3917]

I'm a malaysian chinese and I'm glad that my native language is chinese so its really gives me a lot of advantage to learn japanese or korean(Besides I can speak english and malay). Currently learning thai because of thai bl🥰 Nice video btw

[@y-negative1487]

ภาษาจีนยากกว่าค่ะ ต้องจำตัวอักษร พินอิน ออกเสียงก็ยาก 🤔

[@zammich3649]

I started studying Thai over this past year (after a very short bout maybe 5 years ago) and I will say that it really reminds me of Chinese. Chinese is highly intimidating to English speakers for its exotic-sounding consonants and vowels, those pesky tones, and the massive library of hanzi characters, but after a bit of practice is surprisingly easy. After a few weeks, you'll be comfortable having very basic conversations, and after a few months, you'll be building vocabulary faster and feeling more at ease with hanzi in general. Sadly, I eventually had to give up Chinese class because of my schedule (I was taking Chinese and Japanese at the same at school --as someone who still lives and works in Japanese, don't even get me started on that bag of worms--, and my last year there was only a single time slot for both), and have forgotten much of it. When I started studying Thai, it really beat me to a pulp. I started with the alphabet and my ass was kicked even before I bothered thinking about the tones, but after a few days of wondering if I was ever going to get the hang of it, I was looking at some text and it just "clicked." I'm still not the best at tones (I think that map that shows the relation between pronunciation and consonant class could really help me), but it's surprisingly easy now to look at a new Thai word, read it, and use it right out the gate. There are a lot of words with Pali/Sanskrit origins but honestly with the alphabet out of the way I'm not afraid at all.

[@faithite]

14:18 - Actually, "car red" - rot daeng Thai word placement follows Traditional Chinese. for example, "Angelica Herb, 1 gram." dāng guī yī jīn 当归一斤. Amazing Video. Thanks. I'm Chinese-Singaporean. I learned Mandarin Chinese for years and still can't read or write SImple Chinese well. There are over 50,000 characters (excluding Traditional Chinese variant) I can speak Basic Thai and after learning to write Thai for years, I find that Thai Writing is easier than Mandarin Chinese. In fact, Thai have tone marks and Vowel marks. Chinese only have strokes. You need to memorize one word by one word. You won't have pronunciation marks. Only han yu pin yin romanisation which you have to not depend on. If by writing, Chinese is harder than Thai. Thai would be easier after learning Mandarin Chinese as Thai is a mixure of sounds from Chinese dialects. If you want to be able to write and speak fluently, learning Thai first is better.

[@shanene3145]

I really like how you use the tone marker like in Chinese. I just makes so much more sense, and people should be able to pronounce correctly compared to now. It’s funny how we do subtext for a lot of the English words. I was just thinking to myself how would foreigners know what it means when it’s not exactly English. We really should revamp the whole Thai spelling in English on all the signs, but that’s too much money. It’s odd that we’re not better with these things when I’m sure a lot of government officials back then were sent overseas to school in order to come back and improve the country.

[@heymanheyguys7821]

ชอบมากครับ 🙏👍

[@StuartJayRaj]

ขอบคุณครับ