This article was originally posted on WomenLearnThai.com.
Free Thai podcasts to peruse…
For language learners who learn from abroad, podcasts can be a convenient way to access native media in the language they’re learning, directed at native speakers. If you’re learning French or a language of similar status, you’re spoilt for choice; there are scores of podcasts on offer, catering to every taste and interest. Unfortunately, the situation is very different for us Thai learners. This post summarizes the few podcasts I know that publish episodes on a regular basis (as of January 2013). If you know any other podcasts directed at native Thai speakers, please add them in the comments!
Voice of America’s daily news round-up: Monday to Friday, VoA publishes a 30 minute program with global, US and Asian news, and reports on health, science, entertainment, technology as well as the occasional interview. It has quite a good mix of topics, and Thai news are covered to some extent. It’s clearly the number one news podcast in Thai.
VoA has also a good website, and there are transcripts (or close transcripts) for many of the reports they broadcast. VoA also has a weekend program on iTunes, as well as an alternative version of its weekday program. Mike from Self Study Thai offers VoA audio and transcripts in a convenient format with English translations.
NHK Japan’s daily news program: NHK publishes a daily 14 minute (Monday to Friday) or 9 minute (Saturday, Sunday) news podcast in Thai. They bring almost exclusively news related to Japan, with very little coverage of world news and almost no coverage of Thai news. It’s very Japanese, formal and boring. The Thai they use is beautiful, though.
SBS Australia: SBS publishes short news clips on a regular basis, about 2-5 per week. The clips are directed at Thais living in Australia. A few of this year’s topics were: bush fires, rip current safety tips, natural gas development divides Queensland, Assad’s speech, coal industry. I spent some time working in Australia and enjoy listening to news from down under, but if you have no connection to Australia, their selection of topics might not mean much to you.
There are some more podcasts on iTunes to be found but they don’t add episodes anymore. There’s nothing from Thai broadcasters as far as I’m aware of.
Hi Andrej,
Sorry on the delay as I didn’t have “notify me of followup comments” checked. I’m not much of a podcast listener, preferring movies and television to get exposure to Thai audio as I live in Thailand. The only changkhui podcast I’ve listened to all the way through is “Innovation by Chalermpon Punnotok”, which is about wanting Thailand to become a technology innovator rather than a bunch of consumers. It’s an interesting topic for me, though it didn’t get me interested enough to listen to any of the other podcasts. Now if you want any movie recommendations, let me know! 😉
Hi Mike, thanks for the link to Changkhui. I’ve listened to a few of them (they have quite a number of podcasts on various topics) and find them somewhat random and overly long. What is your experience, and can you recommend one of their podcasts specifically?
Hi Andrej,
Thanks for helping to plug selfstudythai.com. It’s much appreciated!
As for another Thai podcast site worth checking out, visit ช่างคุย.คà¸à¸¡ – Changkhui.Com สถานีพà¸à¸—คาสท์ไทย.
Cheers,
Mike
Mia, sure, cool! Are you going to make your Thai podcast available via itunes as well? That would be great! 🙂 Looking forward to listening to a chatty podcast in Thai by you!
Your welcome, Hugh. VoA Thai is basically run by the three or four Thai journalists they have, plus a few freelancers, and while they present a good number of reports from other VoA journalists, they do a lot of reporting themselves.
Andrej,
Thank you for sharing the links, I’m surely will forward it to all my intermediate/advance students.
I would like to add Thai Girl Talk to the list. Let me know if you think it doesn’t fit into the category since it’s not all in Thai.The podcast mainly teach beginners. In the future episode though, intermediate/advance learners will benefit from our podcast because I will record a separate MP3 of each episode only in Thai along with transcripts.
Andrej,
I am not a big fan of the VOA English version but I just listened to the Thai broadcast. The announcers speak very clearly. Much clearer than the broadcast on Thai TV and radio. Thanks for the link. I think they can be very useful.