One of the ways to speak easy Thai is to mingle with the locals. Sawatdee Khrab (hello) is a greeting that a foreigner would often hear when touring the streets of Thailand. Knowing the language will make it easier for a foreigner to interact with the locals especially in getting discounted prices at markets and shops and to make friends, in general.

In fact, many Thai people would tell you poot tai geng no matter how limited a foreigner’s command of language is. And no matter how the context means, a foreigner will always be understood even if the tone is wrong. This is because most Thais realize how difficult to speak their language thus, they are more tolerant of the mistakes.

Most Thais do not expect a foreigner to speak their language more so, string few sentences. However, learning the language can also make one’s stay or experience in Thailand interesting and challenging.

Thai is the official language of Thailand and is spoken by Thailand’s dominant ethnic group.  Some Thai words are borrowed from Old Khmer, Pali and Sanskirt.

Unlike the English language, Thai language has its nouns uninflected, has no gender and no articles. Its subject pronouns are often omitted. Further, there are three distinguishing voice patterns for plosive consonants which are unvoiced and unaspirated, unvoiced and aspirated, and voiced and unaspirated.

Like Chinese and Vietnamese, Thai is a tonal language which means that a single word can have various meaning depending on how it is said. For instance, the word mai can mean "not", "new", "burn", “ wood" and "silk". In sum, there are five phonemic tones, namely: low tone, mid tone, high tone, rising tone and falling tone.

The easiest way though of knowing the proper tone is to listen to a native speaker. The rising and falling tones are the easiest ones to learn. Just a rule of thumb, do not speak slowly and hesitantly as doing so will distort the tone hence, will make the words harder to understand. Words uttered at a normal speed are easier to understand than those spoken hesitantly.

So, the next time you go to Thailand, try to learn Thai. Your visit will not only be fun and exciting but also interesting and useful. You may not be able to speak easy Thai but it is worth the try. After all, you go there precisely because you want to learn something new.