Using an iPhone & iPad in Thailand Tips, App Reviews and News for the iPhone and iPad by Richard Barrow

Thai Survival Phrases on the iPhone

It seems like a good idea to learn Thai on your smartphone. After all, it is always going to be with you wherever you go and so you have no excuse not to learn some phrases in a spare moment.

My first learning Thai app is called SurvivalPhrases - Thai and it seems a good starting point. What you get are 60 short audio lessons in the following seven categories: Asking for Help, Basic Conversation, Etiquette, Food & Drink, Shopping, Transportation, and Travel & Accommodation. They admit themselves it is not going to make you fluent, but it does give you a good grounding on what you need in order to survive a holiday in Thailand. In addition to the language lessons, you are also given culture tips as a kind of added bonus.

The lessons last on average about five minutes. At any point during the lesson you can pause and rewind. There is also a transcript which almost follows faithfully to the audio file. I wasn't sure why that was needed at first, but then realized the accent of the speaker wasn't always that clear. Don't get me wrong, she is very fluent in English and I would be happy to have her as a one-to-one Thai teacher. However, I think it would have been better to get a professional narrator for the lessons and let the Thai speakers narrate the Thai sections only. Having said that, It is easier enough to follow her. When she speaks Thai, she says the phrase first at normal speed and then breaks it down much slower word-by-word. She also does it twice for female and then male speakers. At the end of each lesson there is a chance for you to test yourself by translating phrases that she says in English.

While you are listening to the lesson, you have the option to following along with the transcript, read the culture tips or review the vocabulary and phrases. Unlike the transcript, you get the Thai script in the vocabulary section. I know you don't want this as a beginner, but it is helpful if you have a Thai friend who will probably have difficulty with karaoke English. I am a bit disappointed that there isn't a chance to hear this vocabulary word or phrase. I would find that much easier to learn. The way it is set up is that you would have to find that particular phrase in the five minute lesson to hear it again. I would have also liked to have seen additional vocabulary that could be used with the phrases. For example, in the allergy section, it only talks about a few things that you could be allergic to. It would have been nice in the vocabulary section to have added a dozen or so other common allergies. Not only don't they do that, they don't even have all the phrases used in that lesson.

I sort of liked this app for the iPhone, but I kept getting the feeling that it could have been a lot better if only they had done their research. Basically, a lot of missed opportunities to make it a great app. I think I am right in saying that this app started as a podcast and then someone thought it would be a great idea to collect all these podcasts together into an app. Which is fair enough but it needs to be more interactive. Otherwise, we might just as well listen to the podcasts on our iPhone. It even has lesson numbers which seem to relate to the podcasts. However, none of the lessons on the iPhone app are in the correct order. So, the one at the top of the list might be "lesson 45". Very confusing. If it was indeed a podcast first then they should have at least edited that bit out. Or, given us an option to choose the lesson we wanted. If they had let us do it that way instead of by category, then it might have been easier to see our progress.

When I first started to review this app just over a week ago the price had just dropped to $9.99. I was actually going to make the comment that I felt that although there was a lot of content, I didn't feel that at that price we were getting our money's worth. Now I see that they have raised the price back up to $19.99 which I think is a mistake. It is not a perfect product. You have a narrator with an accent who makes basic grammatical mistakes when speaking English. Even the transcripts have grammar mistakes and typing errors. See how many you can spot in their screenshots above! I also had a problem with the programme crashing at times and I had to restart. It is possible that might have to do with the recent OS upgrade. Which reminds me, there is no multi-tasking capability. So, you cannot exit the programme without losing the sound. I also had a problem when listening to the lessons in my car. My iPhone goes to sleep after 2 minutes and so does the sound in the lessons! Obviously I would have to turn that off. Overall there is a lot there that you can learn from this app. But, they either need to make it more interactive, or bring the price back down to below $10.