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Thai Reference Grammar: The Structure of Spoken Thai
 
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Thai Reference Grammar: The Structure of Spoken Thai (Paperback)

by James Higbie (Author), Snea Thinsan (Author)
3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 443 pages
  • Publisher: Orchid Press; Bilingual edition (1 Jan 2001)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 9748304965
  • ISBN-13: 978-9748304960
  • Product Dimensions: 24 x 17.6 x 2.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 165,487 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #5 in  Books > Languages > By Language > Other Asian Languages > Thai > Learning Materials
    #13 in  Books > Languages > Grammar, dictionaries & phrasebooks > Dictionaries
    #23 in  Books > Languages > By Language > Other Asian Languages > Vietnamese > Dictionaries

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Product Description

Product Description

Thai Reference Grammar was written to meet the need of students and teachers of the Thai language for information on advanced sentence structure. The book is divided into chapters based on common grammatical-structural categories. There are over 500 separate topics, and the most important feature is the sample sentences for each topic, of which there are over 2,000. These sentences are not stuffy, old-fashioned grammar examples, but samples of typical, idiomatic spoken Thai. The authors, an American and a Thai both with advanced degrees in linguistics and language teaching, analysed thousands of Thai sentences to formulate clear and concise explanations for all the important sentence patterns of the Thai language. Examples are given in both Thai script and transliterated Thai, written in the English alphabet with no special phonetic symbols. Tones are marked with a special font that shows the level of the sound of each word, essential to pronunciation in tonal languages like Thai. Originally published in 2001, Thai Reference Grammar is now in its fourth printing.

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Customer Reviews

3 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.3 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Book on Thai I've Seen, 21 Jun 2004
By A Customer
A new book on the grammar of spoken Thai has been released, and it must be the best book on Thai I've seen. Thai Reference Grammar, by James Higbie and Snea Thinsan, is a reference book rather than something you're likely to polish off in one sitting. The authors analysed examples of spoken and colloquial Thai, then came up with their own examples to illustrate how sentences are built. It comes to more than 400 pages, and must represent thousands of hours of work.

The authors consulted Thai speakers interested in passing on the language, to find out what makes it tick. The transliteration system is good: it gives you the length of vowels as they exist in spoken Thai.

This can be different from their value in written Thai, and in fact the authors change the Thai spelling of some words, given in their examples, to show the way the words are pronounced (kao, for he, has a high tone in spoken Thai but rising tone in written Thai) in cases where this differs from the written version!

The book does not confine itself to spoken Thai, however; for any given word ('so', for example, in the sense of consequently or therefore) it will give you the six or seven Thai words in use, and show you how they are deployed; and will tell you which are in every-day use and which you're likely to encounter mainly in writing ie the formal ones you can avoid.

The authors seem to know exactly what trips up or holds back a learner. You'll find an entire chapter here devoted to the order of events (before, after, in three days time), another to tenses, another one again to the use of 'gor', and yet another to end-sentence particles.

This book is a serious and comprehensive study of Thai. I know of none better, and have read plenty. It is accessible, though will take you a while to get through: I spent three hours with it today, and covered less than half a chapter!

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3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Could have been very good, but..., 19 Aug 2003
By A Customer
Yes, there is a niche for a grammar book on advanced level Thai. However, this book succeeds only partly. Readers likely to be interested in this level of detailed grammer are mainly readers and writers - or at least learners - of the Thai script. Yet another author who decided to invent a new romanisation system! It is most frustrating in its persistent use of non-phonetic romanised script. Key grammar points are all romanised with no original script against them. Likewise, the index is in romanised script only. The only concession - almost an afterthought - are the examples which, in comparatively small print, are shown in Thai script after romanised and English versions. A terrible shame - it could have been such a wonderful book! Perfect for those who only wish to speak the language and never become proficient readers/writers.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Not what it says on the tin., 4 April 2008
I would never use this book for reference purposes except for the classifiers at the back if I fancy showing off. Yet when I needed it, it didn't have the one I wanted!!! (presents) Maybe it is there but I just couldn't find it - which still makes it fairly useless.
There is some interesting stuff inside but despite being fairly fluent I'm just not THAT interested.
Illustrations don't illustrate, it's hard if not impossible to reference from, examples in thai are too small to read and you need to put in a lot of effort getting to grips with the new romanisation format.
Needs a lot of re-work if it wants to compete with other contenders out there.
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