This article was originally posted on WomenLearnThai.com.
Announcing the second WLT free draw…
Curious. Is there such a thing as a paid draw? Not sure. Anyway… after WLT’s first free draw went off ok – Complete Thai: David Smyth Updates Teach Yourself Thai – I decided that giving away free stuff will be a regular item. A good thing, because I’m sitting on a pile of extra stuff. I have Thai dictionaries, Thai courses, Thai phrase books, and even a handful of Scooby Doo books translated into Thai.
In the last draw, Kaewmala (Thai Women Talks) and Ajarn Pasa (Tweet Yourself Thai) shared the joys of keeping everything above board. Thanks you two!
This round, Amy Praphantanathorn (Expat Women in Thailand – no longer online) and Talen (Thailand Land of Smiles – no longer online) are helping out. Amy will do the bowl honours, and Talen will come in with the winners. And if there is a glich similar to last time, their roles will switch.
And same as last time, to get your number(s) in that bowl, you simply leave a comment that matters.
Each comment gets counted, so go ahead and leave as many as you like. But the comments must add to the conversation as well as pertain to this post. So ‘cool’ ‘great’ ‘rad’ on their own do not count as comments. Nor does, ‘this contest is really really fab and I really, really, really, wanna win a copy’.
(Ok Martyn, give it your best shot 😉
The draw will be open until 8pm Sunday evening, Bangkok time. And baring any glitches, the winners will be announced sometime on Monday.
Win a FREE Thai-English English-Thai Software Dictionary…
The two Thai-English English-Thai Software Dictionaries have been generously gifted by Chris Pirazzi and Benjawan Poomsan Becker. Hugh reviewed the dictionary here and I reviewed it as well.
As you can read in my review, Chris and Benjawan’s dictionary is packed with features, but light on controls. And when your focus is on learning Thai, quick and easy is needed. It’s a handy dictionary for most any level of Thai speaker, with a plethora of updates in the wings.
If you want to take a peek at the dictionary, then following Hugh’s advice is advised:
Play around with the trial version to see what you think of this new software dictionary. I believe that if you are a serious Thai learner, you will put this dictionary to good use. Especially if, like me, you are on the computer for a large part of the day.
Ok, that’s it from me on the contest until Monday soonest. May the best Thai students win! Something like that.
”MERRY CHRISTMAS” back Alok! And you are so very welcome. Researching and writing for WLT is a gift I give myself so it’s always great to hear that others enjoy it too.
Hi Cat,
Thank you so much for all the stuff, Reading Materials /links on Thai language, that i’m receiving from you.
I’m storing some of the materials on my separate folder and read them, when i’m free.
This is just to Greet you, Guys out there on WLT …
” MERRY CHRISTMAS”
Regards
Alok
Alok, I’m glad you like the dictionary. I too depend on it. Some words do sound different when sung but that’s the same in any language. And since Thai is understood in context, a sound that’s a bit wonky will still be understood.
Hi Cat,
I was busy, all these days, exploring the treasures on Thai-Eng,Eng-Thai Dictionary, that i won recently.
Trust me,i find the Dictionary,amazing…
I’m learning the Tonal part of the words and now i could differentiate, how the same words could have two or more different meanings, provided they are pronounced in a different tones, Great!, loved that….
I went through,”the 39 Thai words you must know”, i find them useful.
I listen to more of Thai pop songs.I wonder,as to why some tone of the words on such a song ,sound , a little bit different than the normal tones.I’m i right or just confused??.Please do throw some light on this topic.
I’m aware of how a tones are done on songs and basically it has to go on as per the tune, so in such a case there could be a variations on tones.For Thai, it’s not that easy, i guess, because Thai is a lexical tone language,which means that each word must be spoken with the proper TONE for the word to be properly understood.
Sincere Regards
Alok Singh
Martyn, I’m sorry that you missed it too. The dictionary is a useful product so I was chuffed to have two. Both Todd and Alok are quite excited about their wins…. as you’ll soon see.
But, there will be more, more, more to win. Soon.
Catherine I’m sorry but I missed this post as I was on my way to Thailand at the time. Once there I didn’t access the net much at all, not least until the latter stages of my trip.
Thanks for the plug and sorry for letting you down but I was unaware of the competition. I’ll give it my best shot on the next one.
Congrats Todd and Alok! Please let me know that you’ve received the alert so I can send you the information to collect the Thai dictionaries.
Thanks to everyone who contributed to the post: Amy, Talen, and all who commented. And a huge thanks goes to Chris and Benjawan for making this so.
AND THE WINNERS ARE….
I have just received the official envelope made of kevlar and sealed with Silly Putty. As I open the envelope I would like to take this time to thank the wonderful Catherine for hosting such a fine contest and Chris Pirazzi and Benjawan Poomsan Becker for putting out such fine material and providing copies of their wonderful dictionary.
DRUMROLL…
The Winners are:
TOD DANIELS
ALOK SINGH
Hi Peter. You certainly are 🙂 It is indeed a great giveaway. Quality. And I hope the two people who win the dictionaries will come back and say ‘hey!’
Wow, I’m cutting this close to the line, just one hour before the close of the draw! Another good giveaway Cat. I love the sound recordings which are absolutely essential. The Thai fonts seem very readable too. I think this will be an essential tool for any serious student of Thai. Tomorrow promises to be a day of high tension, excitement and drama as we wait for the results to be announced 😉
Hi Camille. And what good timing 🙂 Your comment about sharing left overs is partially correct. In planning a review of Peter Robinson’s books, I ordered from Danny at DCO. Just this minute, when the books arrived, I got a surprise. I was rushing when I sent my order and mistakenly added a book I already own: Phra Farang, an English Monk in Thailand<. So along with the book review will be another draw. Stay tuned...
Hi Cat,
This is a good way of sharing your knowledge and your ‘left overs’, just kidding though, it’s well appreciated.
The dictionary sounds rad and cool though 😉 and will be of great help to anyone on the shaky path of learning to speak, read and write Thai!
Good luck to all who’s on that path!
Hi Alok,
Talen is going to be blogging about his Thai course for quite awhile, so be sure to sign up for his site feed.
Have you looked through WLT’s archives? There are a zillion posts giving advice with a focus on learning Thai. Hugh and Rikker, and other guest authors, spread the Thai language learning love quite nicely.
One of the strong aims of WLT is to support the Thai learning community so please stop by the Thai bloggers section to see what everyone is up to. Everyone has their own learning style and it’s interesting to see how they are getting on.
Hi Cat,
Recently i made a small comment and suggested to do some changes, on the format, you use for, “interviewing Successful Thai language learners…”. Thank you for your positive response…
My Point to repeat the same thing,once again, is to, highlight and let you know and the other students of Thai that, i have been benefited going through such a tips that i see on the interviews and the Post, specially done by ‘TALEN’on “Thailand land of Smiles”.
After reading Talen’s Post,”Telling Thai Time By The Numbers, helped, me a lot and i could understand how it should be, though i know the Thai Numbers, but was not putting them in a right way….
Similarly, it’s Joe Cummings on the “Interviewing Successful…, his tips on Thai Root to be Sanskrit and Pali, was a Boon for me to understand Thai words and language more aggressively, coz ihad been a student of Sanskrit.
Language as a whole,has no end to it but I guess,such a small small things could act as a CATALYST ,to explore more NEW things and would generate ideas, as to how one should go, on a right possible way to learn a language …
Sincere Regards
Alok Singh
Talen, a scorpion? Hah! Bring it on….
And now I’m off to read your latest post – thanks in advance for the tweets and stumbles and more 🙂
Hi Todd, thanks for your review of the software dictionary. I’ve heard about guys with overly soft voices too. And for a Thai course a split of male/female teachers makes sense (I was glad to hear that Talen’s teacher is Thai). But do you think a dictionary is going to make that much difference?
I do like paper books over pdfs, Absolutely. I also like being able to search inside a dictionary or grammar book. It’s pure gold. Being able to search also helps when I want to cheat (I’m the cut and paste queen 😀
Cat, I have 2 well worn water cannons and a bottle of Thai whiskey with a scorpion inside…I will be waiting for you.
Now I’m off to tweet, stumble and otherwise spread the word of this excellent giveaway!
..unfortunately, we will not be able to offer discounts to Palm users
I understand and will buy the new Iphone version! Hope the many hours you have invested will still allow an acceptable pricing!
Thanks for the good work!
I downloaded the free version and played around with it for a while.
Like most things from Benjawan, it’s a pretty darned good product. Then again given her fame in the niche market of ‘teaching thai to foreigners’, I doubt she’d put something out that wasn’t of good quality.
I do think it’s a pretty steep price point for a thai-english, english-thai dictionary, no matter how many fancy bells and whistles it might happen to have. I’m also sad that she doesn’t offer the RID pronunciation, only a modified version called; “Easy Thai” (which seems close except for the superscript letters denoting the tones of the individual syllables).
The sound files are super clear; but having a women pronounce every word may or may not yield the proper pronunciation when a guy attempts to pronounce the same word. If you could toggle between a woman’s voice and a man’s I think it’d be a plus.
I’ve met way too many foreign men who’ve undertaken learning thai from a female teacher, and who actually speak reasonably good thai. Except that their thai come out in a high falsetto voice (kinda like Minnie Mouse) instead of their normal timbre, as they attempt to mimic the tones in a thai word and instead learn to mimic the teacher’s pitch.
Still, I’d hafta say, overall a pretty darned good product, and certainly worth having for someone starting to learn thai.
Personally, I prefer paper dictionaries, over most everything else, but that’s just me, as most of my thai learning takes place away from my p/c.
A heads up… I put the compliments, questions, and suggestions to Benjawan and Chris and they’ve asked me to paste their replies below.
From Milton: If that is the same Benjawan of Thai for Beginners fame, please do pass along my gratitude for making a fine, well-structured textbook (that and David Smyth’s Thai: An Essential Grammar are my primary texts). I especially love the audio component.
Benjawan: It’s always an encouragement to hear a compliment like that. I’d like to thank the users as well for supporting me.
Denis: being an Android user, a version for Google’s system in the future would be great.
Benjawan and Chris: Chris says he might do the Android version in the future. We will see how the iPhone goes first.
Emil: I’d like to learn if they’d consider selling the PC and iPhone versions together.
Benjawan and Chris: We will consider that.
Ualan: Will the Palm users be entitled to a discount when they move to the Iphone version?
Benjawan and Chris: The iPhone version is a brand new dictionary that we develop from scratch. We’ve invested thousands of hours of time to develop what we believe to be is the best Thai-English software dictionary. It’s a different product from the Palm and therefore, unfortunately, we will not be able to offer discounts to Palm users. We need to recoup the money we paid for the development of the product and we hope people will understand our position.
Catherine: Oh, and I’d like to put a bid in at this time for Chris to develop a dictionary chip to be hardcoded directly into my head 🙂
Benjawan: Chris can probably do that.
And what a world it would be if we could hardcode memory chips directly into our brains Yes?
Hi Snap, it’s it a beaut? I run it on Parallels on my Mac and there have been no problems at all with the software. I know all about those 42,000 words too. I’m waiting for the day when Chris comes up with a dictionary chip I can have melded into my brain.
Catherine, I downloaded the trial version of Thai-English English-Thai Talking Dictionary. What a great program! It’s three way searchability is fantastic…and it has audio, which I find invaluable.
It’s packed with great features, like the inbuilt Thai Keyboard. This program could really enhance my studies…now all ‘I’ need is the rest of the 42,000 words ;), never mind about Martyn, lol!
Shooting them with paint guns? Hehhhhh… Btw Talen, I still have my Songkran water gun and it’s still plastic wrapped even. Remember, we were going to have it out this year? I’m saving it for next year so be warned. Be scared.
Again, thanks for helping out on the draw. As I’ve made many friends since starting WLT, this is the best method to keep everything aboveboard. And then, hopefully, no one will feel awkward about winning. Ok, everyone but you can join in… and Amy. But you two can come in on the next one.
Excellent giveaway Cat and one a lot of people should be vying for. I still like my idea of lining all the commenters up and shooting them with paint guns to choose the winner but your way works too 😛
Emil and Denis, thank you for your comments. I’ve put the new question to Chris and Benjawan so hopefully they’ve have time to answer. They are awfully busy right now creating the new iPhone dictionary app. Exciting stuff.
Milton, that’s right. Benjawan wrote Thai for Beginners and many others. The entire range is at Paiboon Publishing. Something else you might be interested in is this post: Interview: Benjawan Poomsan Becker.
My favourite book teaching to write Thai is Reading Thai is Fun by James Neal. That link takes you to the bookstore I use, DCO. Danny from DCO sources, then delivers books by motorcycle taxi which means that I don’t have to struggle through congested BKK traffic.
Btw – did you know that David’s Thai: An Essential Grammar is now on iPhone? You get it via amazon.com to read on the free Kindle app. It’s great because you can do a search instead of scrolling through every page for what you need.
Catherine, thanks to you and Benjawan for the explanation. ขอบคุณครับ!
If that is the same Benjawan of Thai for Beginners fame, please do pass along my gratitude for making a fine, well-structured textbook (that and David Smyth’s Thai: An Essential Grammar are my primary texts). I especially love the audio component.
Another question (and apologies if this has been covered before on this blog…I’m new here): are there any good resources for learning that style of Thai font that looks alot like the Roman alphabet? I get read the traditional stuff pretty well by now, but when I come across that it’s like looking at a whole ‘nother script!
Hi everybody,
I just went to the link mentioned in the above post and downloaded a demo version of the dictionary. I have to say I am quite surprised. I wasn’t aware that there is a dictionary out there that has (good) speech output for all words in Thai. Even more surprised that there is a mobile version (also with speech?) available….. being an Android user, a version for Google’s system in the future would be great.
Best feature (for me at least) are the different included fonts. Even after years of Thai learning I still have trouble with many of the fonts you see on streets and signs. Some of the fonts are just too different, so this feature looks like it could help improve that a bit. 🙂
*sigh* the shocking formatting of my first post is pretty reasonable evidence of the limitations of an iPhone. I’m off to see if I can find Chris’ twitter profile because somewhat like the previous poster, I’d like to learn if they’d consider selling the PC and iPhone versions together.
PS apologies for the double post, feel free to edit/collate/discount on wh 🙂
Hi Catherine (and by extension everyone else reading),
Here’s my attempt, I hope it advances the conversation or at the very least pertains to it (lol):
I purchased the text version of Paiboon’s dictionary on the recommendation of @thai101 and despite being all e-crazy now I have an iPhone I would highly recommend it to anyone who still prefers paper to digital. That said, I’ve been hankering for news of the iPhone version because as Chris himself (and also here on WLT) it’s goi g to be bigger and better and, well, slightly less chunky.
Alas, I won’t always be on the iPhone and the PC version would also come in handy (subtle :p)
I have been using the Thai-English English-Thai Software Dictionary on my Palm Treo Telephone since years and it has always been very helpfull despite that the Palm version has no sound.
My thai friends (and me) are glad to be able to use the Palm software thanks to the integrated Thai keyboard.
I hope the Iphone version will be out soon and will be glad to use the windows version if I win 😉
Will the Palm users be entitled to a discount when they move to the Iphone version?
Btw – here are the translations from the software dictionary:
ambassador n.
ราชทูต râat-chá~tôot; เอกอัครราชทูต àyk-àk-ká~râat-chá~tôot
classifiers: ท่าน tân, คน kon
ทูต tôot n.
diplomatic agent
classifiers: ท่าน tân, คน kon
The dictionary has sound files and registers. Registers tell you which words can be used in different social surroundings (with teens, the older generation, respected monks, etc).
For register, both of the words above have: used in settings where those of higher social rank are present; formal, respectful, deferential.
Hi Milton. Welcome to WLT 🙂
I asked Benjawan and this is her reply:
If he is not Thai, just speak English. Don’t even try to use pronouns with the ambassador because it may sound funny or even pretentious.
He can address the ambassador as ท่าน and himself as ผม and use ครับ for the polite particle.
เอกอัครราชทูต is the highest rank of ambassador from one country to another and he works at the embassy, but ทูต can be anyone, like a cultural ambassador.
Hey everyone!
I’m a Thai newbie. I’ve been studying now for a couple of months. So here’s my situation. I live in South Korea and next week I’m going to meet Thailand’s ambassador to South Korea. My Thai isn’t good enough to hold down more than very basic conversation, but I’d like to give it a shot anyways. So, my question is what is the proper the way to address an ambassador in Thai?
Thai-Language.com lists both เอกอัครราชทูต and ทูต as the words for ambassador. Which one is correct? My previous experience with Asian languages suggests the longer version is more appropriate for addressing an exalted person. Would I put คุณ before it? Also, how would I refer to myself? Is ผม (I’m male) formal enough? What about for polite endings? Will ครับ work or should I go with something even more formal like ขอรับ?
Thanks,
Milton