Learn Thai Alphabet & Tones

Thai script is hard to start because tone isn't marked the way most learners expect. It comes from a mix of consonant class, vowel length, the final sound and any tone mark. Learn Thai Alphabet & Tones is built around that problem. It doesn't try to teach conversation. It teaches you to read, starting with eight signs and a first word, มา, meaning to come.

The course has 90 lessons in five modules. First Letters gets you reading simple words in seven lessons. Live and Dead Syllables adds low-class consonants, long vowels and final sounds. The Mid Class brings in mid-class consonants, short vowels and hidden vowels. The Silent Partner covers high-class consonants and ห, which changes a syllable's tone without adding a sound of its own. The Five Tones module puts it together so you can read tones from spelling and hear all five. The developer says the course covers 34 of Thai's 44 consonants, so a few rarer letters aren't part of it.

The practice is varied on purpose. You build words from parts, pick between similar-sounding options by ear and trace new consonants, and signs you've already learned keep reappearing in new words, like นา for rice field and งู for snake.

The app runs on Android and iPhone with no account and no ads, and the interface is available in English, Russian, Korean, Chinese and Japanese. Lessons, the bundled recordings and the review flashcards all work offline. Purchases and the first setup of voice practice may need a connection. The first seven lessons are free. The remaining 83 unlock with a monthly or yearly auto-renewing subscription or a one-time lifetime purchase, and the site doesn't list the prices.

Speaking practice is off until you turn it on, and every lesson can be finished without it. On Android it downloads an 88 MB speech model and recognizes your voice on the phone. On iPhone it uses Apple's speech recognition, which works on the device when Thai is available there and otherwise sends the audio to Apple. The developer's privacy policy says neither the recording nor the recognized text reaches the developer.

The privacy policy is long and specific. The app sends usage events to Google Analytics for Firebase and crash reports to Firebase Crashlytics, with no in-app switch for either, and on Android Firebase also collects the advertising ID to measure the developer's Google Ads campaigns. On iPhone it also uses Yandex's AppMetrica for install and session measurement, which collects full IP addresses. RevenueCat checks purchase status at each launch. Lesson progress stays on the phone, and an optional progress sync on iPhone is off by default.

It's for adults who want to read signs, menus and messages in Thai and are willing to learn the tone system properly instead of memorizing romanized phrases. Someone who mostly wants spoken phrases for a short trip will get more from a conversation app.