You can touch any Thai word in the dictionary to hear a high-quality sound recording of a native Thai (Kun Benjawan of Paiboon Publishing) speaking that word. Click the buttons to hear some sample sounds:

The app includes more than 18 hours of studio-recorded sound!

Say goodbye to toneless, gravelly robot voices and limited sound sets: our comprehensive sounds set a new standard in the industry.

Works even when you're in a taxi or a countryside street market and not connected to the internet: all entries and sounds are stored right on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, and you will incur no data charges when you use the app.

Enjoy a clean layout that lets you simply touch with your finger to scroll through multiple, complete definitions on the screen at once:

Best of all, just pinch with two fingers to make the Thai and English text as big as you want—no more reading glasses!

Full, native support for the iPad's larger display:

As you type the word you're looking for, the dictionary instantly jumps to the nearest word. You can often find your word by typing only a few letters:

Every single Thai word is accompanied by an easy-to-read, English-like pronunciation guide (also known as "Transliteration" or "Phonetics"), so you can learn to speak and recognize Thai words immediately, without needing to learn Thai script first. Our hand-edited pronunciation guides give you the tones, stress, and everything else you need to understand and to be understood.

We even let you choose which pronunciation guide system you want to use from a list of 12 popular systems.

This dictionary goes three ways!

Most dictionaries let you look up English words, and some also let you look up Thai words using Thai script. But Paiboon's revolutionary three-way design bridges the gap for English speakers by introducing a third section where you can Search-by-Sound™: you can look up Thai words that you hear by their sound using the same easy-to-read pronunciation guide. Hear someone say "sanuk?" Type "s-a-n-u-" to find out what it means:

Search-by-Sound™ has been a hallmark of all Paiboon dictionaries since 2002.

For more information on Search-by-Sound™ and why it's so useful for Thai, click here.

In addition to our signature Paiboon+ pronunciation guide system, the same system used in all Thai learning materials from Paiboon Publishing, this software lets you choose from 11 other pronunciation guide systems:

With a single touch in our app settings screen, all pronunciation guides transform into your chosen system, and you can even look up Thai words by sound using your chosen system.

Whether you are visiting Thailand for a short while or living there, you will find most of the vocabulary used in everyday life, including basic medical, cultural, political and scientific terms. 150,000+ entries: more than five times as many as Paiboon Publishing's 2009 printed volume. Plus an additional 28,000 place name entries (not counted above) that help you to pinpoint geographical locations in Thailand.

Our software includes a comprehensive, interactive introduction to the Thai language, including a "Speaking and Understanding" section with clickable sounds, and a "Reading and Writing" section with examples of Thai letters in multiple, real-world fonts.

Sample Topics:

• Speaking and Listening: Consonant Sounds, Vowel Sounds, Tones, Practice Similar Sounds, Stress, Parts of Speech, Classifiers, Word Register.

• Pronunciation Guide Systems: detailed charts fully explaining each system.

• Reading and Writing: Thai Consonants, Thai Vowels, Thai Tone Rules, Dictionary Order.

• Useful Word Groups: Colors, Numbers, Months, Days, Thai Provinces, Thai Classifiers.

Unlike typical dictionaries based on low-quality, free internet data meant for Thai natives, our superb Paiboon Publishing dictionary entries are hand-crafted by a team of Thai- and English-native editors with your needs in mind.

When we provide a translation, we clarify which meanings of each English word apply to each Thai word (for example, "glass (drinking)" vs "glass (pane)"):

Classifiers are a critical part of Thai grammar, needed for even basic usage. Our dictionary provides crucial classifiers for more than 15,000 noun entries—a first in the industry. Our language introduction tells you how and when to use them.

Touch any Thai word to see all the other dictionary words contained inside it. This fun and innovative feature is great for learning how complex ideas are expressed in Thai, and learning new words too!

You've probably noticed that the Thai letters appearing on signs and menus in Thailand often look nothing like what you learned in textbooks. A unique new feature of our software dictionary is that you can click on any Thai word and see that word written in a set of real-world fonts that you are likely to see on signs, menus, documents, and even in Thai handwriting. It's an indispensable feature for getting around the country:

With our ground-breaking "Explain Spelling" feature, you can crack the code of Thai Script. "Explain Spelling" goes hand-in-hand with the comprehensive language guide also included with this software, which introduces all the written symbols of Thai.

Touch any Thai word to call up a visual explanation of its Thai Script spelling that shows you how the vowels and consonants of each syllable fit together, and how to determine each syllable's tone:

Each of our explanations provides links to the relevant section of our language guide so you can quickly learn Thai Script.

Nothing like this has ever appeared in any dictionary software on any platform.

As you are reading any dictionary entry, you can click on any Thai or English dictionary word in that entry to jump to its entry (we grey out words that are not dictionary headwords; the vast majority of words are clickable). This can be a great way to explore different shades of meaning and learn new, related words.

Also, you can click on any part of speech or other symbol to go directly to the relevant section of our language guide to learn more.

As you look up words, help pages, or use the other special features of our app, you can always touch the back button to get back where you were, or jump to any point in your complete history in our History screen, just like a web browser. You can also clear your history for privacy.

You can separately customize the fonts used for Thai and English text, and you can also choose whether to use the standard Apple keyboard or custom Thai Script and Thai Pronunciation keyboards that we include with our application. In some cases, such as iPads running Apple iOS 3.2, our app even provides you with a Thai keyboard when Apple does not!

For those who prefer to fit the most information possible on-screen, we even offer an alternate compact layout. Here is an example with the compact layout and customized fonts:

The Problem

The Solution: Search-by-Sound™

It all starts with pronunciation guide systems. Paiboon Publishing has developed an easy-to-use pronunciation guide system called "Paiboon+," which spells out Thai words using English-like letters. With Paiboon+, there is just one simple way to write each sound. There are other pronunciation guide systems too, and if you're already familiar with another system, our dictionary lets you choose from amongst 12 different systems in use today.

Every Thai word in our dictionary is written with the Thai alphabet and also with your chosen pronunciation guide system. But Search-by-Sound™ takes that one step further: there's a whole extra section of the dictionary where you can look up a Thai word by its pronunciation guide.

For example, if you hear someone say "sanuk," you just flip to the "Thai Sound" section of the dictionary and enter "s-a-n-u-":

The dictionary provides you with the exact pronunciation, the word written using the Thai alphabet, the definition, and you can even touch to hear a high quality sound recording of a native Thai speaking that word.

Conquer Those Terrible Tones

Search-by-Sound™ makes this much easier by allowing you to search for a word without needing to know its tones. You can then look at all the possibilities and choose the correct meaning from context.

Throughout our dictionary, Thai words are always shown in both the Thai alphabet and using a pronunciation guide. So, if you look up an English word, you can rely on the pronunciation guide to help you pronounce the word correctly and be understood.

Paiboon Publishing is the world's leading producer of South-East Asian language learning materials, including the famous Thai for Beginners and the infamous Thai for Lovers. There's even an audio companion to the learning books, a guide to pronunciation, and a multi-volume series on how to Speak Like a Thai.

Our software dictionary is the perfect companion to these materials because it supports the same pronunciation guide system as the Paiboon Thai products (for more detail on pronunciation guide systems, see Search-by-Sound™).

If you have a mobile device, don't miss out on this indispensable learning app from Paiboon Publishing:

The Thai for Beginners App
by Benjawan Poomsan Becker
and Dominique Mayrand

For iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch: Buy Now
For Android: available mid-2012.

The best Thai language learning app available anywhere!

Paiboon Publishing’s Thai for Beginners app makes it easy to study your Thai lessons wherever you go with your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. The lessons follow the format of the Thai for Beginners book but a real Thai person speaks each of the over 3,000 words or phrases. Test your ability to hear and understand Thai or test your knowledge of written Thai with the built in exercises. Hearing the spoken Thai will help you increase the speed of learning the language that no book alone can do. Plus you’ll find many new opportunities to practice your Thai since your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch will be with you all the time.

Buy Now from the Apple iTunes App Store

For more info on Paiboon Publishing products, see www.paiboonpublishing.com. Here are just some of the titles that you can use alongside the dictionary software:

Thai for Beginners	Thai for Intermediate Learners	Thai for Advanced Readers	New Thai-English Dictionary
Thai for Travelers	Practical Thai Conversation - Vol 1	Practical Thai Conversation - Vol 2	Improving Your Thai Pronunciation
Speak Like a Thai Volume 1	Speak Like a Thai Volume 2	Speak Like a Thai Volume 3	Speak Like a Thai Volume 4
Speak Like a Thai Volume 5	Speak Like a Thai Volume 6	Speak Like a Thai Volume 7	Thai Keyboard Stickers
Thailand Fever	Thailand Fieber	Thai for Lovers	Thai for Gay Tourists
Retiring in Thailand	How to Buy Land and Build a House in Thailand	How to Establish a Successful Business in Thailand	Thai Law for Foreigners

Apple iOS Operating System: Our app requires Apple iOS 3.0 or higher. You can find out which iOS version your device has installed by looking in the Apple "Settings" app on your device's home screen (in Settings, look under "General...About...Version"). Certain features, such as See Real-World Fonts, require functionality that Apple introduced in iOS 3.2 (iPad) and 4.0 (iPhone/iPod Touch). So, you will get access to all the app features if you have iOS 4.0 or above. Fortunately, Apple lets you upgrade your device to the latest iOS operating system for free (or for a small fee on some iPod Touch models).

Space: Our app requires about 380 megabytes (380MB, or 0.38GB) of space on your device.

No Internet Connection Required: You can use the app, including its high-quality sound recordings of each Thai word, without being connected to the internet or incurring any data charges. All the entries and sounds are stored right on your device. Works on a plane or on the train.

Installation: There are two ways to purchase and install the app:

• You can use Apple's iTunes program on your PC or Macintosh to access Apple App Store (iTunes will sync the app onto your device after purchase).

• You can do it without needing a PC or Macintosh at all by using Apple's "App Store" app that appears in your device's home screen. In this case, your device will need to be connected to the internet via Wi-Fi during purchase (because Apple does not allow users to download apps larger than 20MB over 3G or other mobile networks). For example, you could install from an internet cafe, restaurant, coffee shop, or any other location in Thailand that offers Wi-Fi.

Either way, find it in the App Store Reference section as:

Talking Thai–English–Thai Dictionary
from Paiboon Publishing and Word in the Hand

(links to Apple iTunes site)