About NamLingo

I'm Drew. Two years ago I met Nam. She spoke English; I spoke no Thai, and I wanted to change that.

A couple of months in, I was stuck. The romanisation I was learning from didn't sound like the audio it was meant to describe, so I was learning pronunciations that were quietly wrong — and some of what I'd been taught turned out to be word-for-word translations nobody would actually say.

Nam is why neither of those happens here. She's never taught before, but she has an ear for languages: three she speaks to a high standard, several more she gets by in. I build the lessons. She checks the translations, reviews the audio and records some of it, and makes sure a phrase means what it should in the situation you'd use it.

Where the name comes from

Almost everyone in Thailand has a nickname — a short, everyday name that gets used far more than the one on their passport. Nam's is น้ำ, nam: water. She was given it as a child because she loved water.

NamLingo is named after her. Everything else followed from that — water flows, and so should learning. That's where the droplet and the tagline come from.

Why we teach this way

We tried what everyone tries first, and kept running into the same thing: courses that start somewhere other than the beginning.

So we built from one rule — you should never meet a word you can't read. Every letter, vowel and tone mark in a word is taught before the word turns up, which means the alphabet isn't taught in its traditional order but in the order that unlocks real words fastest. You're reading real Thai by lesson seven.

Romanisation is still there, as a memory aid. It's never the thing you learn from — that was the trap I fell into, and it's why the script comes first.

Nam hears every piece of audio before it goes in. If it isn't right, it gets redone until it is.

Where we are

We're new, and the curriculum is still growing. NamLingo runs in your browser, so it works on a phone as well as a laptop — iPhone and Android apps are the next big thing on our list.

If something confuses you, if there's something you don't like, or if there's something you'd change, tell us. There are two of us, so it comes straight to us.

Contact

Email Nam and Drew at drew@namlingo.com.

NamLingo Ltd is registered in England & Wales, company number 17352540, at 71–75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9JQ. Our Terms and Privacy Policy set out the formal detail.