Online Thai Language Learning

[ilz]

Learn many words with their right tones and all of a sudden it will become like a reflex to get the right tone for every new word (although there are some exceptions) .

[Gaybutton]

By the way, if you haven't had a look at Ilz's blog, you are missing an excellent source of Thailand information. I think those who see his blog will agree.

[ilz]

Thanks Gb for the kind words ; however i did not visit Thailand from 2020 to 2025 and visited again only last March
I have yet to take the time to update

[Gaybutton]

I have yet to take the time to update

While it is always good to update, your blog is still very well worth reading. Much of the information is still valid.

Ok, back to learning Thai language . . .

[Jun]

A job advert at a bar
As I could only partly read this, I tried Chat GPT.

That struggled with เกย์สาว, "gay girl".
Translations offered included "Tomboy" and "Effeminate gay". A big difference between the two!
Google has "gay girl", which I'm sure is literally correct, particularly as it is writing the English word "gay"in Thai script. Yet, I suspect they mean effeminate gay.

[Gaybutton]

I suspect they mean effeminate gay.

I'm not sure either. It is probably a colloquial way of saying that is perfectly clear to native Thai speakers.

[Jun]

They probably succeeded with the recruitment of an effeminate gay. I walked past last night and there was a young lad wearing some kind of bikini top.

Back to online language learning. I asked Gemini to produce a list of Thai consonants and the class of each. Firstly, the font they used was terrible and misleading. Secondly, there was a mistake, as they put one low class consonant as mid class.
Copilot got the same request right.

Copilot then successfully produced a list of falling tone words.

However, today I asked Copilot for a list of low tone words, starting with a mid class consonant. This had obvious errors, with many falling tone words. I only did that yesterday, so it was easy to spot. After asking "are you sure that's correct", Copilot swiftly fixed the errors.

I then asked it to sort the list by frequency of use, which it did. AI should be perfect for that.

[Jun]

Well today's AI output from Copilot, after one of my "are you sure that's correct?" questions: "Yes — ม (mo ma) is indeed a mid‑class consonant in Thai."

This beggars belief. That's a low class consonant. Even Copilot said it was low class last week. What use is AI, if it can't even consistently follow the most simple part of a language model ? That's the kind of thing computers should always get right.

In practice, it's no use at all for checking my interpretation of the tone rules.

I'm missing http://thai-language.com/

[thaiophilus]

Consonant classes aren't difficult if you relate them to how they are articulated. Unaspirated stops (and nothing else) are all mid class. Nasals are all lower class. The rest come in high-low pairs.

[Jun]

Since it's one of the first letters covered in the textbook, I know ม (mo ma) is low class & only discovered Copilot doesn't know when trying to cross check my reading of the tone for a word using copilot.

Copilot disagreed with my result. I checked again and still thought I was right.

So I asked Copilot how it determined the tone & was astonished to find out they put ม (mo ma) as mid class. This is really basic AND different to the result Copilot gave last week.

I've had a few other dodgy results from AI recently.
For example, ask 3 different AI providers to give the tone for pronouncing Thai colours and the results will be all over the place.