Ling Thai App Review

by Daniel

If you've checked the app stores for Thai language learning apps, you may have noticed that there aren't a lot to choose from.

One of them is Ling, a DuoLingo-clone targeting dozens of languages that you won't find on DuoLingo.

I tried out Ling, and here's my review:

Things I Like

First, some positives:

I like the pacing of new activities.

Like DuoLingo, Ling jumps from activity to activity to try to keep things interesting. You'll do a matching exercise, then a fill-in-the-blank, and then a translation.

Each lesson is very short, introducing just four new vocabulary words.

Teaching is mostly implicit.

Ling teaches by example, rather than trying to explain grammar rules. I think this is an effective way to do it.

Pronunciation is pretty good.

Ling doesn't use recordings of native Thai speakers, but instead uses Microsoft's computer generated Thai voices (I think). These do a pretty good job of pronunciation, although you can hear a hint of a robotic sound.

They have the speed slowed down quite a bit from natural speed--maybe half speed? I think it's a good choice for hearing sounds clearly. You get a good bit of exposure to comprehensible input, which is an important part in gaining fluency.

The transliterations are helpful.

Ling uses the popular Paiboon+ style of transliteration, which I think is the best choice for combining accuracy with accessibility. They also include the Thai script to give some initial exposure. Both of those are well-designed choices.

Things I Don't Like

Not everything is that great, however:

Some vocabulary forms aren't good.

While the vocabulary is usually okay, I'm a bit skeptical of some of Ling's choices.

For example, Ling teaches เขา /kʰǎw/ for "he" and เธอ /tʰɤː/ for "she." Actually, เขา /kʰǎw/ can be used for either "he" or "she." I'm a bit unsure of using เธอ /tʰɤː/ -- it often means "you" and Wikipedia says it isn't used by males.

It's things like that that make me suspect that Ling's Thai is spit out of a word-for-word translation without being carefully checked. You might want to confirm with a native speaker before you try out what you've learned.

Translation isn't always a great exercise.

One of the ideas that Ling takes from DuoLingo is to ask you to translate a sentence into English, using a word box of possible choices. I'm not a fan of this exercise.

First off, there is really only one correct sentence that could be made with the available words. Limited to only those words, any reasonably intelligent person with no Thai knowledge would put together the right sentence.

Secondly, it's weird picking English words when Thai expressions don't map one-to-one with English. To talk about your age in Thai, you use four words: "I," "age", "25", "years." But for the English translation, I'm picking the words "I," "am," "25," "years," "old." Translation requires you to switch out of Thai-mode and into English-mode to process the different phrasing, which isn't that helpful for actual language learning.

Conclusion

Ling is a good way to get a stream of comphensible Thai input, even if some of their vocabulary is poorly chosen.

Their activities are well-paced and reasonably enjoyable. However, I'm not sure how effective their translation activities are for acquiring Thai. Also, since Ling doesn't challenge you to produce Thai on your own, I think you'd struggle with speaking.

Ling is a $9/month subscription, or $150 for lifetime access.