I wanted to learn Thai properly, not the taxi-and-restaurant survival kit, the actual reading. Everyone tells you the same thing: start with the alphabet, write it out by hand, repetition does the rest.
So I did. I found a worksheet PDF, printed it, traced the letters, filled the page. Then I filled another. And somewhere around the third page of ฐ I noticed the problem: I had no idea if any of it was correct. My ฐ looked like my ฎ. Both looked like a small bird that had given up. There was nothing to check against and nobody to ask, so I was essentially practising being wrong, very neatly, in pen.
Handwriting practice with no feedback isn't practice. It's just drawing.
The rest of it was friction too. The printer was out of ink about as often as it wasn't. Worksheets don't make a sound, so I was guessing at pronunciation from romanisation, which for Thai is a bit like navigating by rumour. And I couldn't practise on the train, or in a queue, or in the ten minutes before bed, which, realistically, is when learning a language actually happens for anyone with a job.
What I wanted was small and specific: a page where the letter appears, I trace it with my finger, I hear how it sounds, and I get to try again immediately. No printer. No stack of paper. No wondering.
That didn't exist in the shape I wanted, so I built it. First for me, on a phone, in the evenings. Trace mode came first, then writing from memory once tracing got too easy, then reading flashcards because recognising a letter and drawing it turn out to be two different skills. Then vowels. Then tone rules, because I'd been quietly avoiding them. Then words, because letters on their own get boring fast.
Now it's here, it's free, and it stays free. GorGai is the name of the first consonant you learn, ก ไก่, "gor gai", the chicken one. Everyone starts there. That felt about right.
