15 hours ago, ricktoronto said:

If you're talking about bar girls or freelance girls just be pleasant and assume their English will be limited and subtlety and what you think is humourous will not be well understood.

Thai bar girls love my Thai word play and witty banter. I can tell by how hard I'm laughing.

On 1/24/2025 at 2:05 AM, blerkman said:

I've started learning Thai using Drops and bought some training on Udemy

A free, unlimited alternative to Drops is to use "Anki" with one of the public Thai "decks". Google it for more info, if interested.

Thai101 and Ling have been apps I've used the most. tried other but it never stuck.
Used The Thai101 YouTube channel and 'Let's Learn Thai'. The latter one has a course as well.

Also looking to test out a tutor via italki.

On 1/2/2025 at 6:04 AM, bb32 said:

100% worth the effort, helps to get around off the tourist track and break the ice with girls. 

I cant have a proper conversation, but I can have a good laugh with maybe 100 words and can count etc.  I just learnt from apps/ translation tools, tried books but too boring.  And girls 😂 would just pick what words in english I say regularly and look those words up: ordering a coffee, directions, nice smile etc and build on that.  Got a girl in bed, run through and try learn all the body parts in Thai its fun for both

Do most of the Isaan girls, the ones guys typically meet, speak fluent Thai or no? Sometimes I've spoken some Thai to them and they didn't seem to understand; but it could just be my poor pronunciation. I ask because Isaan is apparently its own language; or at least a significantly different variant of Thai--or perhaps Lao.

Edited September 12, 2025Sep 12 by SJJ23

5 hours ago, SJJ23 said:

Do most of the Isaan girls, the ones guys typically meet, speak fluent Thai or no? Sometimes I've spoken some Thai to them and they didn't seem to understand; but it could just be my poor pronunciation. I ask because Isaan is apparently its own language; or at least a significantly different variant of Thai--or perhaps Lao.

 

You are correct.

Isaan is actually a dialect of Lao as there is mutual intelligibility between Laos speakers and Isaan speakers (i.e. a Thai person speaking Isaan can communicate in Laos no problem). But they cannot speak Isaan to a regular Thai person (e.g. from Central Thailand) and be understood, therefor it's actually not a dialect of Thai, according to the linguistic definition (because there is no mutual intelligibility between Thai and Isaan).

However, Thailand would probably say Isaan is a dialect of Thai, but this is not linguistically true, just as there are 'Chinese dialects' that have absolutely no mutual intelligibility at all, but the Chinese government will still maintain they are dialects of Chinese. This is one of the reasons why we cannot say exactly how many different languages there are in the world, and how many are just dialects of each other.

This is also the same for Malay and Indonesian, as well as Swedish and Danish. Despite being from different countries, they can speak freely to each other, just as an American and a Brit can speak freely. They are in fact speaking dialects of the same language.

That said, all Thais are educated in the Thai language. So every Thai should be fluent in Thai, even if they only spoke Isaan at home. Though in deepest, darkest Isaan the teachers probably only speak Isaan, but the written materials will be in Thai, so they will be speaking Thai formally for that.

A good example is my kid who was fluent in English and Isaan, but weak in Thai according to her kindergarten teacher, but they all become fluent in Thai in the end because the formal education is in Thai (not to mention all media is in Thai).

I guess if they don't understand you, it is because your tone or pronunciation is wrong.

 

 

Edited September 13, 2025Sep 13 by NanAtSOL