This is a beginning book on the Thai Language that I wrote in the 1990s with the help of Thai colleagues and friends. I’m offering a free download to anyone interested, and you can click below to download it.
An advanced book on the Thai language – Thai Reference Grammar – which I wrote with a Thai co-author, is also available for free on this website along with a book on the Sierra Leone Civil War that I wrote with a Sierra Leonean co-author.
Essential Thai was a difficult book to get into print in the 1990s because it has a complicated layout with a lot of columns and boxes. The layout was done by a company in Bangkok on one of the original MacIntosh computers that were the first to do desktop publishing. A Laotian colleague helped design the visual tone markers on a font design program called Fontographer. There are some anachronisms in an old language book like this such as “Going to the Post Office”, which people hardly do now.
Essential Thai was first published by the Post Publishing Company but their book division was phased out and Orchid Press republished it with a new cover, and it sold well for many years. Unfortunately publication and distribution has ceased because of the general decline in printed book sales and the rise of online courses and apps for language learning.
You are free to use these materials any way you like. The books can only be downloaded onto a computer, not a phone.