About Thai Signs
Thai Signs is a language learning project built around a simple idea: the best way to learn a language is through the words you actually see around you. Street signs, shop fronts, temple notices, warning boards. These are the texts of everyday life in Thailand.
Each sign on this site comes with:
- The original Thai script
- Romanized pronunciation (with tone marks)
- An English translation
- Context notes: grammar tips, cultural background, or just a fun story
The signs are styled to look like their real-world counterparts: blue government road signs, green expressway direction boards, vivid shop signs, and ornate temple notices.
A note on romanization
Thai romanization is a tricky business. There are several competing systems. We use a simplified tonal romanization where tones are marked with diacritics (e.g. mâak, sòng, hǎi). It's not perfect, but it's readable.
Contribute a sign
Spotted a great sign in Thailand? A funny mistranslation? A beautiful temple sign? We'd love to add it. Get in touch or browse what we have so far.
Another tool for Thai language learners: Thai Word Splitter
One of the biggest hurdles in reading Thai is that words are written without spaces. Every sentence is a continuous stream of characters with no visual clue about where one word ends and the next begins. Even when you know the vocabulary, a long sentence can feel impenetrable. Thai Word Splitter solves this by automatically inserting spaces between words and providing a full sentence translation. Paste any Thai text (a sign, a menu, a message from a Thai friend) and it breaks it into readable, pronounceable pieces:
ผมอยู่แถวนี้ไม่ไกลจากร้านกาแฟที่เราไปเมื่อวาน
ผม อยู่ แถวนี้ ไม่ ไกล จาก ร้านกาแฟ ที่ เรา ไป เมื่อวาน
I'm near here, not far from the café we went to yesterday.
It runs entirely in your browser using Google's BudouX machine learning model. No text is sent to any server for word splitting. A Chrome extension is also available: select any Thai text on any webpage, right-click, and a floating panel appears instantly with the split words and translation.
Great for decoding signs you see in the wild that aren't in this collection yet. Try Thai Word Splitter →
Built with ❤️ by Keith at Fat Frog Media