My Favourite Apps to Learn Thai Language

This is by far the best Thai-English dictionary app out there, hands-down. It does what it needs to do best, without any frills or distractions.

You can search for words in English, Thai (transliteration), or Thai script. The search results will give you the words you’re potentially searching for, and when you click into the search result, you can see the definitions and sentence examples (super useful!!!).

This app has been a game changer in my Thai language learning journey. Every Thai language learner needs this app.

I shared in my 2025 January Progress Update that I set up a Thai folder in Anki and had 150 words in my 2025 Jan deck.

AnkiApp is a really popular digital flashcard app that you can use for basically anything. I’ve heard that I lot of medicine students like to use it to memorise their complicated terms and concepts.

AnkiApp has been super useful in helping me revise and retain all the new words I’m learning daily. It’s only 9th Feb and I have 75 new words that I’ve already put in in the 2025 Feb deck!

I’ve been using it for Thai and Vietnamese. I like that the app segregates your words into different grade buckets based on how well you remember them. When testing yourself, you can either run though all the cards in the deck, just a random set of 10/25/50/100/etc., or just the cards within a specific grade bucket. I love that feature a lot because it allows me to target my weaker words without having to run through the entire deck to get to them.

I invested in the Pro version of this app (one-time lifetime subscription) because I wanted to be able to revise the words an unlimited amount of times throughout the day. In the free version, you only get to revise 100 words – but since subscribing to the Pro version, I’ve been revising around 200 words a day. It really doesn’t feel like it though, because it’s so fun.

I like reviewing the decks in pockets of time while I’m commuting or sometimes I do it before I sleep.

If you want to see what words I’ve learned and will be studying over the next few months, join my Thai Bridgies Study Group in Anki! For more information, check out my resources page.

Google Translate has been around for ages and I love that it has really stood the test of time. I love all the nifty tools that it has like the Conversation feature, microphone/speaking function, and the camera OCR tool. Super innovative – I remember everyone fawning over it a few years back.

How I’ve been using Google Translate for Thai is: whenever I think of a sentence in Thai, I want to be able to check if the meaning is correct. Or perhaps I want to see if my Thai script is correct. In these cases, I’ll use Google Translate to check my spelling and sentence. I know Google Translate isn’t completely accurate sometimes, which is when I turn to ChatGPT.

I don’t use ChatGPT too often but I think I’m missing out because it’s such a powerhouse AI teacher for learning a language. With the right prompts, I’m sure there’s a lot that ChatGPT can do for you.

So far, I’ve only been using it to check on my translations. I love the ChatGPT doesn’t just churn out the right answer for you. Like a good teacher, it actually explains why certain grammar or words are inappropriate, and how it can be improved to sound more natural.

I’ve heard of people asking ChatGPT for sentence examples – I might do that more! I might also use ChatGPT when I want to ask for useful sentences or phrases surrounding certain topics of interest such as sharing The Gospel or making friends, etc.

Memrise is basically Duolingo, but less gamified – and there are video clips of real Thai people speaking the words, making it much more realistic and helpful.

I would use Duolingo if Thai was on it, but unfortunately Duolingo doesn’t have Thai – which is why I explored Memrise and I must say, I think I prefer this app for learning.

I also like the Conversations tab which shares useful phrases and resources on how to approach real-life scenarios such as ordering coffee or asking if there’s Wifi etc.

Memrise is also great because you can learn a variety of languages on it. Other languages that I’m hoping to explore on Memrise are Arabic, Hindi, and maybe Mongolian. I made the decision to invest in the Pro version (one-time lifetime subscription) of this app because I see myself using it a lot, especially for the languages that I’m completely new to!