The Thai language is not difficult at all.

Unlike English, Thai is beautifully phonetic (it reads like it sounds) and has a much easier grammar. All the precious time you would normally use learning a complex grammar is put to good use mastering just 5 tones (Cantonese has 8), which are more fun than conjugating verbs.

Unlike Chinese, Thai has an alphabet! That alone makes it an easy language.

The Thai alphabet, though over twice the size of our Roman alphabet, is very phonetic. In addition to a logical tone system, it even has a super-helpful little squiggle over certain words (like the one above the final letter of the Thai word for Sunday, อาทิตย์), which indicates a silent letter — typically such words are polysyllabic loans from Sanskrit and therefore more tedious to pronounce, so the Thai language actually tells you which letter to drop. English, by comparison, is of no help whatsoever in that regard.

When hone says “Thai has basically no grammar”, one means ‘grammar’ as understood not by a linguist, but by a layperson.

Thai has a grammar, yes, but an exceedingly simple one. One can be struck by how simple its grammar is compared to English (not to mention French which, by the way, many English speakers find impossibly difficult).

It’s also true, that Thai’s tonal nature is the major stumbling block, and not only for European learners. I noticed that Japanese students often struggled with Thai tones and vowels far more than Europeans. The Japanese language seems to have no diphthongs — combinations of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable (ex. glooay, “banana” in Thai) — which Thai has in abundance. And certain Thai vowels are especially challenging for Japanese learners.

Vowel length is not an alien concept to English speakers. In English we have what we call short vowels (the A in “hat”, the O in “hop”) and long vowels (the A in “hate”, the O in “hope”). Thai vowel length is purely about length, not about changing the vowel itself, as happens in English. But no European/English speaker ever had trouble grasping the concept of Thai vowel length. Their problem was being able to hear and reproduce proper vowel length combined with tones.

Which is why there is Repetition, Repetition, Repetition.

Just as an experienced bird-watcher or hunter learns to imitate animal calls well enough to fool the animals themselves, if you want to learn any language well enough to be understood by native speakers, you have to get into the mindset of hitting Replay.

People may stare at you as you walk down the street in Bangkok repeating “ah-aaah! oh-oohhh! i-iiih!” under your breath or the “mai mai mai mai mai” tonal phrase over and over, but that’s what it takes for your brain to become familiar with new sounds and form new linguistic habits. Repetition is not difficult.

It does help if you speak another tonal language like Chinese. But in Thailand, the most well-known Thai-speaking foreigners (a couple of TV hosts, a couple of singers, etc.) are not Asians but Westerners.

The two key ingredients for learning any language are a genuine desire to learn it, and a parrot-like ability to Replay. Practise until you sound exactly like what you hear on the street.

Thai is easy. Which is why Thais will always tell you:

Pasaa Thai ngaai-ngaai! (“Thai language easy-easy”)…

Pasaa Ang-grit yaaaak! (“English language haaaard”)

(ource: Quora)