The best AI apps to practice speaking Thai

What you need to practice speaking Thai

Thai takes work. In our ranking of 67 languages it’s the 23rd hardest for English speakers, at 6,184 effort points. That’s about twice what Spanish takes.

And it needs a few things most apps were never built for.

• A script you can readThai has its own alphabet, and words run together with no spaces between them. Until you can read it, you want spaces between the words and the pronunciation above each one: ผม is pǒm.
• Tones you can hearThai has five tones, and a different tone is a different word: ใกล้ (glâi) is near, ไกล (glai) is far. The quickest fix: say your sentence, then hear a native speaker say the same one.
• ClassifiersTo count things, Thai puts a little word after the number: มะม่วงสองลูก, two mangoes, is literally “mango two round-thing”. Everyone gets these wrong at first, so you want them fixed while you talk.
• Polite endingsPolite Thai ends sentences with ครับ (kráp) if you’re a man, or ค่ะ (kâ) if you’re a woman. You learn them fastest by hearing them in every conversation.
• Lots of Thai you understandSpeaking activates the words you have. New words come from input: Thai videos and texts where you already understand most of it.
• Lots of speaking timeA language this hard takes hours of talking. A few minutes a day won’t get you there.

A complete fluency system, not just a speaking app

Our speaking practice is the heart of Teacher AI. But speaking alone won’t make you fluent, and neither will input alone. You need both, and you need to see it working.

So Teacher AI is a complete fluency system. Input grows your Thai. Speaking activates it. And we track every word along the way, to get you to real fluency as fast as we can.

1. Step 1Input grows your vocabularyWatch Thai YouTube videos and read stories at your level, with spaces between the words and Paiboon above each one. You always see how much you already understand, and every word you tap becomes a flashcard. How Watch and Read work.
2. Step 2Speaking activates itUnderstanding a word isn’t the same as using it, with the right tone and the right classifier. Talking with your teacher, for as long as you like, is how words move from “I know that one” to “I just said it”. Every mistake gets fixed, with a Why?.
3. Step 3We track every wordYour passive words are the ones you understand when you read or hear them. Your active words are the ones you’ve used yourself. You see both grow, how your time splits between input and output, and how many words to your next level.

Brand new to Thai? Start somewhere else first. Teacher AI works best from about A2, once you can handle simple everyday sentences. Before that, you just don’t have enough words yet for open conversation. So learn the basics with a course like Ling or Pimsleur, and come back when you want to talk.

What it looks like in Thai

Here’s what a moment of practice looks like. You answer, your teacher replies with the pronunciation above every word, and if you made a mistake, your sentence gets fixed right there.

A card for every word you tap

Tap any word, in a conversation, a video or a story, and you get its card: what it means, what kind of word it is, an example with the pronunciation, and a memory trick. Tap play to hear it.

An illustration of three word cards, rebuilt for this page. On the real card, the wording depends on the word. Below: real screenshots of the web app.

Meet your Thai teachers

Two teachers: Nok, from Bangkok, and Somchai, from Chiang Mai. Pick the one you like.

• 
  Nok Srisai

  Bangkok · Thai
• 
  Somchai Suksawat

  Chiang Mai · Thai

Input: Thai to watch and read, at your level

Here’s the input side up close. New words come from lots of Thai you hear and read, where you already understand most of it.

Watch and Read are on the web app for now, both with spaces between words and the pronunciation above each one. Words you read along with, without tapping, count toward your passive words. Every word you tap lands in your flashcards. And when you’re done, you talk about it with your teacher.

• Your own YouTube videosPaste a link to a Thai YouTube video, or an Apple Podcasts episode. We turn it into a page you read along with: spaces between words, Paiboon above each one, new words in yellow. No subtitles? On a paid plan we transcribe it for you, within a monthly allowance.
• Suggested for youWatch suggests Thai videos by topic, from channels made for learners to podcasts and the news, each with the share of words you’d understand.
• Stories written for youRead writes Thai texts at your level, from A1 to Native, about anything you like, and suggests ideas from what you talk about with your teacher.
• How much you know, before you startTeacher AI keeps a list of every Thai word you’ve met: the ones you use when you talk, the ones you read or hear, the ones you tap. Thai has no spaces, so it cuts the text into words first. Then it checks every word against your list and shows you the share you already know.
• The 80% rulePick videos and texts where you know 80% or more of the words. Then your brain fills in the rest from context. Under 70% is too much for now. 90% and up is easy and fun.
• Then talk about itOne tap on Talk about this starts a conversation about what you just watched or read. Retelling it is how new words become words you can say.

Teacher AI or Duolingo?

Lots of people look for Thai on Duolingo first. It isn’t there: Duolingo has no Thai course for English speakers. Thai only shows up as a language Thai speakers learn other languages from. Here’s the comparison anyway, from Duolingo’s own pages.

The apps side by side

The apps, one by one

Where another app might suit you better

Head-to-head comparisons

Teacher AI vs Talkpal · Teacher AI vs Duolingo. All comparisons.

Other languages

SpanishSpain and Latin AmericaFrenchFrance, Belgium and SwitzerlandMandarin ChineseSimplified or Traditional, with pinyinCantoneseHong Kong, with JyutpingJapaneseWith furigana or romaji, and a kanji countDutchThe Netherlands and Flanders, with Flemish voicesBrazilian PortugueseWith Brazilian teachers and well-known polyglotsItalianWith Italian teachers from Podcast Italiano and Vaporetto ItalianoGermanWith German and Austrian teachers, from Lingster Academy to Herr AntrimEuropean PortugueseWith teachers from Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra and Faro, and Portuguese With LeoEnglishWith American and British teachers, from Espresso English to English Like A NativeKoreanWith teachers from Seoul and Busan, and every dropped 요 fixedRussianWith the stress marked above every wordTurkishWith Can from Turkishle, and every ending fixed as you talkArabicWith teachers from Cairo, Amman and Jeddah, and a straight answer on MSA or dialectPolishWith teachers from Warsaw, and every case ending fixedSwedishPitch accent, en or ett, and nobody switching to EnglishIndonesianWith teachers from Bali and Bandung, for the Indonesian people actually speakHindiWith teachers from Delhi, Jaipur and Mumbai, and every missing ने fixedRomanianWith teachers from Bucharest and Transylvania, and every ending explainedCatalanFor when Barcelona keeps answering you in SpanishVietnameseWith teachers from Hanoi and Sapa, and every tone, classifier and pronoun fixedUkrainianWith two teachers from Lviv, and every case fixed as you talkGreekWith teachers from Crete and Thessaloniki, and every gender and ending explainedHebrewFor Hebrew without the vowels, with two teachers from Tel AvivCzechWith Klara and Lukáš from Brno, and a Why? on every case ending