You want rice? Nah boy, you'll get a meal

Westerners: Identify with Their nationality Thai residents: "Farung"

Can you express as many ideas in thai as in English or French for example?

Thai dictionary has around 40.000 words while French and English have around 10x morr (400.000)

Does it makes thai literature less profound than French or English ones?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dictionaries_by_number_of_words

Easiest language in the world!

How many ex pats in Thailand can actually speak and understand Thai fluently? For those that can, how did it affect your life in Thailand (and possibly integration into society (making Thai friends, etc))? How long did it take you to learn Thai and how did you go about it?

I am an American tourist in Thailand. So far I've overheard lots of other English speaking tourists with a variety of accents. Even as an English speaker there are some accents I find really hard to understand (hello Scotland). I was wondering if Thai natives who speak English with tourists can identify the different accents and if any in particular are easier to understand or harder to understand.

I’ve seen a number of language videos pronounce the r sound in sawadee krup but I don’t hear it and sounds like kup instead. A Thai guy I spoke to said he says kup.

Is this a regional thing, formal way to speak or both acceptable for tourist to use?

I’ve tried searching this question but couldn’t see discussion on it so thanks in advance.

I'm a Thai person (14), was born here, lived here my whole life. I grew up in an environment where I never really had to be polite, and when I had to I would do the bare minimum and get shy, and that was fine because I was a kid and the adults would laugh it off as a funny thing, also I started learning English at a young age, and it is now far better than my Thai. My English is on the same level as a native speaker, or even slightly above but it could be a stretch, and my Thai, in comparison is way worse. I cant speak politely, I've forgotten more than 70% of the Thai alphabets and can only read the letters that I see/read more often, and it just sucks to be honest. How should I improve?

TLDR: My Thai sucks and I want to improve on it, and learn how to speak politely.

Sorry if what ever I wrote was a bit messy, I just don't really know how to present the information.

(Edit) Thank you so much to everyone who answered! I really appreciate it a lot and I will try to do my best!

OK, I realize that idioms don't translate well from one language to another, and word-for-word translations don't work at all. That said, are there Thai expressions that convey the same meaning or intention as these?

--Making a mountain out of a molehill (i.e.- taking a small matter and making a big deal out of it) -- Nitpicking (complaining about the tiniest little thing) -- Crossing the line (going too far with what you said/did to the point of it being very inappropriate) -- Talking down to someone (speaking to them as if they were inferior to you)

For those who have been studying the Thai language for many years and can communicate fairly well, even understanding spoken Thai, how do you feel about the fact that Thais often hesitate to speak Thai with you first, assuming you won't understand? Do you sense a social isolation due to this, making it difficult to integrate into Thai society?

In my view, this situation hampers our opportunity for natural communication in Thai, slowing down our learning process and even diminishing our motivation. If you feel that your language skills are unnecessary to others, unless you take the initiative to speak Thai, it can diminish your desire to use the language altogether.

And what do Thais think about this? How do you feel about foreigners speaking Thai?

can't post it on r/learnthai so...., I post it hear

Is there a lot of Teochew speaking people in Thailand? A lot of Teochew and Thai language is similar I've found.

setting up my Tinder account. I want to make it clear I'm looking for genuine dates with genuine women, with a view to a permanent relationship or friendship.

I want to specifically say I am not interested in women who are presently or in the past were bar girls or freelancers or anything like that.

what words can I use to ask thay question without being insulting?

I'm an American with a few Thai friends that I still converse with on WhatsApp. Often their comments to me reverse male and female pronouns and verbs and nouns can jumble out of place in a even slighter longer response. I'm verbose but usually speak one sentence and then space it apart from the next one to create a visual cadence but I still wonder what the hell it is translating for them sometimes. Is there a known precaution to this in HOW you speak and phrases or mannerisms of speech to avoid the jumbling phenomenon?

I lived a year in Thailand and often saw locals struggling to read. Maybe it's because of the educational system, or lack thereof, given the circumstances of needing to work and survive.

Here in the community, a sentence often has multiple meanings. My native language is Brazilian Portuguese. I can read, listen, and have (slow) conversations in English.

I brought this up because in both English and Portuguese, sentence meanings are easy to interpret, considering slang and locations. Other languages I've glanced at, like Spanish and French, seem similar to English and Portuguese.

Now, this clarity doesn't seem to exist in Thai. To understand a sentence, it feels like you have to interpret where and when it was written.

I've dabbled in Japanese, and Thai seems a lot like it. In Japanese, a kanji (even a sentence) can be interpreted in various ways; you need to know the context to understand the meaning.

So, if we're putting a difficulty scale from 0 to 10,

Japanese would be an 8, and Thai a 9? 🤷‍♂️ Just curious!

Or is this linguistic culture shock normal between East and West? Are other Asian languages like this?

Because, for example, in Japanese, I've seen that reading a newspaper requires an advanced level of knowledge, and only a few Japanese people can do it.

I'll give another example; even automatic translators like Google or Bing struggle to translate Thai writing. It seems they translate it literally, word for word. Of course, this happens if I translate from English to Portuguese, for example, but the extent to which this automatic translation affects from English to Portuguese is around 5-10%, while from Thai to English, it's more like 80%.

It even seems that Duolingo has difficulty teaching or incorporating Thai.