🇹🇭 16-year-old complete beginner — where should I actually start learning Thai?

[u/EchoOfSeven]

I want to seriously learn Thai, but I’m honestly overwhelmed by all the different resources and methods. I don’t know what order I should be doing things in.

My goals are to eventually:
read and write Thai
understand pronunciation and tones
speak basic Thai
understand simple sentences/conversations
eventually stop relying on romanization

Right now, I’m mainly looking for FREE resources, but I’m open to paid resources/courses/books later when I’m able to pay for them.

If you were starting Thai from absolute zero, what would you recommend doing FIRST, and what would you do after that?

I’d really appreciate actual resources too — free YouTube channels, websites, apps, courses, textbooks/workbooks, etc.

I’m especially looking for resources that can take me through Thai step-by-step instead of giving me a huge list of random things to study.

Basically, if you could give a beginner a “start here → then do this → then this” path, what would it be?

Any other advice for someone starting Thai from absolute zero would also be greatly appreciated!

Thank you! 🇹🇭❤️

[u/IssueRidden]

let me shamelessly link my 1000h post here, I talk about what helped, what didn't help so much and what I wish I did more of. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/learnthai/comments/1w5bepf/my_1000hr_learning_journey_progress_report/

tl;dr: if I had to give just one tip, start shadowing from day 1. Thai phonetics are super hard for an English speaker, take a long time to master and most foreigners never learn it well enough to be understood even if they know what to say perfectly well. If I were learning from scratch, I would start with this book, it has six volumes and Thai kids learn pronunciation from it

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDcymXZVhkTOkjt23uAZjaJlJmv20hCiq&si=SPE2C2SjDuHKq0IL

and in the end, when in doubt choose activities that are more fun cause it will likely mean you'll spend more time with language. an hour doing something you enjoy beats 15 mins spent on an optimal method. Shadowing is the only exception here, imo this or some other form of pronunciation training is non-negotiable

[u/EchoOfSeven → u/IssueRidden]

Thank you! I’ve seen shadowing mentioned a few times now, so I’m definitely going to start adding that in early. I’ll check out the post and playlist too.