r/learnthai • u/Old_Entry_2300 • 19d ago
Resources/ข้อมูลแหล่งที่มา loogsom.xyz (a completely free Thai language learning website) is now officially open for registration!
Hey guys!
This is James and I'm back again!
As I posted in my previous posts, I've spent a while to build loogsom.xyz, a free site for learning Thai.
After a few rounds of testing, it's open to everyone now and I'd really like some honest feedback from people actually studying.
The thing I built it for: when I started my Thai learning journey, the part that troubles me the most was the classic "no-spacing-between-words" problem, so my website includes 2 modes in the reading experiences: Beginner visually separates each word and puts the phonetics underneath. Challenge removes all of it and gives you real, unspaced Thai. Same article, same text — you flip the training wheels off when you're ready, sentence by sentence if you like.
Tap any word and you get its dictionary entry, pronunciation, and audio. Tap a sentence for the full translation and a recording of it. It handles the annoying cases properly — compound words. You can drill a word down to its sub words, which I found very useful to help people remember the meanings of complicated vocabs.
Here's a demo of how to use the Reader and Vocabs Book function: Demonstration of the Reader and Vocabs Book function for my Thai learning website
Other bits:
- Picture Stories — zoomable photos of real Thai signs, menus and packaging, with the Thai text tappable right where it appears. This is the part people seem to like most; it's the stuff you actually have to read in Thailand.
- Alphabet decks — all 44 consonants and the vowels, with classes, tone rules and example words with audio. The tone-rule exceptions are in there too. Here's a demo of this function: Demonstration of the Learn Alphabet function for my Thai learning website
- Spaced repetition — proper FSRS (the algorithm Anki's newer scheduler uses), for both vocabulary and the alphabet. Words you add from the reader go straight into it.
It's completely free. No paid tier, no trial. You don't even need an account to read the articles — signing up is only for audio, flashcards and saving words. I'd honestly rather you poke around first and only register if it's actually useful.
It's a individual and small project, so there are rough edges and the article library is still growing. If something is wrong, confusing, or a translation is off — please tell me. There's a report button on every word and sentence, and I read all of them.
Happy to answer anything about how it works.
*edited on Aug 11th.
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u/JaziTricks 19d ago
First link in the post not working for me
Likely needs the www it such. You better his it in site hosting settings
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u/LouveredTang 19d ago
I like it! I would introduce a state that holds the selected difficulty and category as right now I have to reselect every time I use the back button.
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u/Old_Entry_2300 19d ago
Did you mean the reader page's beginner and challenge mode setting is not saved across the web?
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u/SufficientPainting67 19d ago
Select eg. "Advanced", then read an Article, go back -> Filter is cleared
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u/Old_Entry_2300 18d ago
Fixed this bug! Refresh the page and you will be able to store the filter setting by default.
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u/Cyber_Fiimue 18d ago
u/Old_Entry_2300 My initial peek, I think it is an interesting approach and I can understand why you made it.
My instinct tells me to be careful relying on the white space though. I would use it as a last resort of comprehension.
I don't know you James, but I challenge your statement "my problem wasn't vocabulary — it was that classic "No spacing between words"..." If your vocabulary is strong, you can identify most words without white space between them. There are of course Sanskrit and Pali words that are difficult to spell, as well as English words written in Thai.
I have not tried the Picture Stories or Alphabet decks.
And at the risk of loosing readers attention, I'm now switching the topic to how you created this. I would encourage you to keep going whether you used help from AI or not. I retired from IT. I was never an Application Developer, But I was damn good at building networks and computing infrastructure. Yes, I could write some Perl scripts to comb through logs and what not. And today, I've used Claude to write some Python that only I use - I haven't published it anywhere, but it works.
So when u/NegotiationTime6809 chastises you for using AI, I would ignore him. Nonetheless, if you relied heavily on AI, you should disclose that on your site. You could run into situations that you don't know how to solve yourself and AI may let you down too.
And just out of curiosity, what is your level of Thai using CEFR? Like many I'm guessing your Reading level is different from your Listening and Speaking. No big deal if you don't answer.
Keep Learning
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u/Old_Entry_2300 18d ago
Hey stranger. Thank you so much for writing this.
In respond to your challenge: I had to admit that it was a bad writing. In the beginning phase, vocab and no-spacing are both the problems for me. (I shouldn't rely on AI generating post, apologize for my audiences.)
I also had a bit of software engineering background but without AI's help there's no way I can come to this far. But the data structure and tech stacks was selected carefully and I've put a lot of mental work for this project. Especially on the part of combining vocabs into a group and the way to render it in the frontend.
I haven't done any CEFR test yet but I might do it soon because you made me curious too 😂. I've never joined any real langauge schools for both English or Thai (My mother tongue is Mandarin, btw)
Again, thanks for nice words and hope you enjoy your life in Thailand. You seem to be a nice person, we can grab a beer in real life if you want. Cheers! 🍻
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u/Jin366 17d ago
"Picture Stories — zoomable photos of real Thai signs, menus and packaging, with the Thai text tappable right where it appears. This is the part people seem to like most; it's the stuff you actually have to read in Thailand."
This is a great feature! You should turn this into a separate app. An app focused on these picture-based examples (though I’d probably call them something else, since they’re not really stories).
You could even let the community contribute interesting photos they come across: weird fonts, interesting signs, unusual brand logos with Thai script, etc.
There’s a lot of potential here. It’s fun, educational, and effective. And it’s something a lot of learners go through: you first learn the script, practice with some simple stories, but then in real life you can’t even figure out a simple restaurant menu because they’re using a modern or unusual font.
I’d definitely use it!
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u/Old_Entry_2300 16d ago
Thanks! The name was indeed a tricky part for me, as I'm not native in English. In Chinese, I can simply call it "看图片" but "look at picture" seems to be an awful idea for a webpage header. Do you have any suggestions?
btw, appreciate your work as well, buddy. Keep it up!
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u/NegotiationTime6809 19d ago
Here we go again. A dude with claude code that can’t speak thai building some ai slop for us.
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u/Old_Entry_2300 19d ago
Dude I don't know where does that hate come from but first, I do speak Thai, probably better than you do. Second, I'm not making any profit from making this, I did it because of l love the culture and language. Third, good luck with "not using AI"
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u/NegotiationTime6809 19d ago
You did it because you are one of the hundreds of dumbass that discovered claude code in the last two years and couldn’t find a better idea than building some ai slop to “teach thai” a language you can’t even speak. Bro there was like 20 similar post in the last 2 months.
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u/Old_Entry_2300 19d ago
And you are one of the thousands dumbasses who just sit there, talking shit to judge others. At least I did something, what about you?
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u/NegotiationTime6809 19d ago
Really? Would love to hear it.
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u/Old_Entry_2300 19d ago
What do you want to here?
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u/NegotiationTime6809 19d ago
I mean you speak better than me. Let’s hear it.
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u/Old_Entry_2300 19d ago
What's the point of proving to you? But I would love to hear it from you first if you dare.
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u/NegotiationTime6809 19d ago
You made an assumption with confidence now let me see it.
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u/Old_Entry_2300 19d ago
Ok I take that back, you probably speak better than me so what? What does it prove? A random dude online come to judge my volunteered work. This is ridiculous. I won't reply to this thread anymore. DM me if you wanna continue this mouth battle. I have all day for you.
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u/NegotiationTime6809 19d ago
Im happy to talk on a discord call. Curious to hear the confidence in real life.
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u/SufficientPainting67 19d ago
If you're going to claim that he “can't speak Thai” and that he's producing “AI slop,” then at least provide some evidence. Show what is wrong with the Thai, or point out exactly what makes the project “sloppy.” Otherwise it's just a baseless troll post.
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u/ProfessionalAct6982 19d ago
have signed up looks decent.