How do you find a Thai bride if you don’t speak Thai?
Wow, this language barrier issue is very close to my heart!
I’ve been searching for a Chinese wife for over five years now. I’m an ordinary British guy. I don’t speak much Mandarin Chinese!
So how did I overcome the language barrier in my own search for an exotic Asian bride?
In this article I’ll reveal my secrets, which are:
English Speaking Thai Women
English speaking Thai women do exist! Date these and most of your problems are solved.
I think I dated around a dozen women when I lived in Bangkok. Or was it two dozen? I forget now. Anyway, all but two of them spoke pretty good English. One spoke hardly any English, but despite that we managed to get to the three dates stage, so it wasn’t too bad.
English speaking women are very plentiful on the Thai Cupid dating site and also on Thai Friendly. If you prefer ladyboys then there are loads of English speakers on MyLadyboyDate.
For some reason many American and Canadian men prefer to marry women who don’t speak any English. Maybe non-English speaking girls are seen as being more exotic. Whatever the reason, these guys sure are making life hard for themselves.
So after an uphill struggle with my first Asian girlfriend (who didn’t speak much English at all), I resolved to only date English speaking women from then on.
So once you’ve signed up with Thai Cupid, which sort of English speakers should you approach?
Ideally you should look for someone who has learnt English at University or as part of her job.
Be a little wary of girls who have learnt English from working in bars. Bar girls don’t often make such good Thai brides, and there’s also a risk that they may be scammers. Scammers find it much easier to scam men if they can actually write in English.
I was friends with a few bar ladies in Bangkok and they were great fun to be around. We managed to communicate, even if they didn’t speak that much English. I don’t think they would have made great wives though. Most were terrible with handling money – maybe that’s why they were working as bar ladies.
One other thing – English speakers are often very intelligent women with decent jobs in Thailand. They’ll be quite ambitious in their choice of husband. Don’t be surprised if the English speaking girls turn you down, especially if they’re much younger than you. If this happens, move on and just try more girls. Dating is just a numbers game, and sooner or later you’ll find The One!
Meeting English Speaking Thai Women in Person
Of course there will be words your Thai girlfriend doesn’t understand but this isn’t too hard to solve.
When you meet your Thai girl in person, it’s a good idea to try and determine what her level of English is like. In time, you’ll understand the words she knows.
Try to use simple English – use words like big and small instead of massive, gigantic, huge etc.
Learning Thailish is useful too. Try to learn phrases such as “same same”, which means similar. You’ll find that Thai people tend to use English words but with Thai grammar. They also use the suffixes that are very common in Thai. So they’ll say “Hello ka” instead of “Hello”.
One of my Chinese girlfriends only understood very basic English. We managed quite well because we could point to things, and also use her hand-held electronic translator.
A good tip I have is to install a Thai-English dictionary on your smart phone if you have one. These are great for translating single words. There are even some apps you can get these days that can translate food menus and signs. Or you can point your camera at something and it will give you the foreign language word for that item. I’m not sure how good apps are at translating Thai though. I find that OCR of Chinese characters lags way behind the character recognition systems used to read English.
Learn an Asian Language
If you’re serious about finding a Thai bride, then consider learning some of the Thai language. While you’ll need an awful lot of time on your hands to become fluent in Thai, it’s not too hard to learn many basic words and phrases.
Maybe you could even learn some Thai while you’re dozing off:
You could download this video using a service like LilSubs and then listen to it while you’re on that long haul flight to Bangkok!
There are many self-study language kits you can buy. Alternatively why not look for a tutor in your local area? When I learnt Mandarin Chinese I found it much easier to learn from a real life teacher. I actually found that the best foreign language teachers were in my own country, not their native country. I had a couple of terrific Mandarin teachers when I lived in the UK. They were way better than the teachers I had when I lived in China itself.
Like Mandarin Chinese, Thai is also a tonal language and pronunciation is critical. So you’ll likewise benefit from learning Thai from a real person.
One problem I had with learning Thai is that there’s not really a recognised standard for translating Thai into English. So if you know the romanised version of a Thai name, it might have several different spellings. I love this song by Thai folk singer Kawthip Tidadin for example:
But searching for her videos on YouTube is actually quite difficult. I’ve seen her name spelled as Kawthip Tidadin, Kowthip Thidadin and even Cowthip Tidadin!
Mandarin Chinese is much easier in this respect as the English spelling of Chinese words has been standardised. For example, the famous Chinese beer is called Tsingtao, but this is the old romanisation system – it should really be called Qingdao, after the city in which it was first brewed.
As to the Thai written language, I’ve tried learning it but it’s really difficult. I’ve only ever known two farangs who could read Thai. There are however only around 32 different characters to learn, which is a lot less than Chinese. I passed my HSK 2 exam which means I can in theory read 300 characters now. That’s quite a lot but apparently I need to be able to learn ~2000 of them in order to read a newspaper!
Well if you’re interested in learning Thai script then this video may get you started:
It would be extremely convenient if you could read Thai. So give it a go, especially if you’re thinking of living in Thailand or retiring there. Outside of the major cities it would be especially good to be able to read the language! I’ve lived in China and I’m able to save money and travel on buses only because I can read the timetables (which are never in English).
Get Some Help!
Why struggle with trying to chat to Thai women on a dating site? I’ve been there, done that, and it can be a hell of a frustrating experience!
So why not use an introduction agency like Thai Silk or Thai Professional? All you need to do then is look at the women on their website, shortlist some you want to meet in person, then book your trip to Thailand. Once you’ve in Bangkok they’ll supply you with a human translator for your first meeting with a Thai woman.
Problem solved!
So those are some of the ways round the language barrier associated with finding a Thai bride.
If you’ve got any more tips on how to communicate with Thai women, then leave your suggestions below.
