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Hobby project, no client

GorGai

A free web app for learning to read and write the Thai alphabet.

Visit gorgai.net Read the full write-up on the blog
GorGai interface
Year
2026
Status
Live, free, and actively maintained
Built with
Astro, Vanilla JavaScript, Canvas API, Vercel

Why it exists

I wanted to read Thai. Not the taxi-and-restaurant survival kit, the actual reading: the menu without pictures, the sign that isn’t also in English.

Everyone gives the same advice. Start with the alphabet, write it out by hand, let repetition do the rest. So I found a worksheet PDF, printed it, and traced letters until the page was full. Then I printed another one.

Somewhere in there I noticed the problem. I had no idea whether any of it was right. My ฐ looked like my ฎ. Both looked like a small bird that had given up. There was nothing to check against and nobody sitting next to me to ask, so I was practising being wrong, very neatly, in pen.

That’s a solvable problem, and a canvas with a guide layer solves it. So I built the thing I wanted instead of printing a third worksheet.

What it does

  • Trace it, write it, then read it

    Knowing a letter turns out to be three separate skills, so there are three ways to practise each one. You trace over a faint guide, you write it from memory and mark yourself, then you see it cold and try to name it. A printed worksheet only ever gets you through the first.

  • All 44 consonants and 32 vowel forms

    Plus tone classes colour coded, a full alphabet chart, the tone rules, and word-reading flashcards for when individual letters stop being the hard part.

  • Practise only what you keep getting wrong

    Filter the set down to the eight letters you always mix up. That’s where most of the value is once you’re a couple of weeks in.

  • Works on a phone, with no download

    Fifteen minutes a day beats two hours on a Sunday for memorisation, and fifteen minutes a day realistically happens on a phone, standing up, somewhere inconvenient.

How it works

Every section runs the same three stages, because knowing a letter well enough to trace it, to write it blind and to recognise it in the wild are three different things.

  1. Practice mode

    Learn: trace it until your hand knows the shape

    A faint guide character sits on the canvas and you draw straight over it, with a finger, a stylus or a mouse. That’s the stage where you don’t know the letter yet, and it’s the only one a printed worksheet really helps with. The flashcard beside it carries the mnemonic (ก is gor gai, chicken), the romanisation, the tone class, and audio so you hear it while you draw it.

    GorGai Learn mode with a faint Thai consonant guide on the tracing canvas

  2. Test mode

    Write: blank canvas, from memory, then mark yourself

    The guide disappears and so does the letter. You get the emoji hint, the romanised name and a question mark where the character should be, and you draw it from memory before revealing the answer and marking yourself right or wrong. This is the mode that actually builds recall, because being wrong and seeing it is the part that sticks. It’s also the thing I couldn’t do on paper, which is why the app exists at all.

    GorGai Write mode showing an emoji hint and a blank canvas with the letter hidden

  3. Test mode

    Read: see the letter cold and name it

    The reverse test. You are shown the character with nothing else, you try to recall its name and sound, then you reveal the name, the tone class and the mnemonic to check. Writing and reading turn out to be different skills, and you can absolutely draw a letter you’d never recognise on a sign. This is the mode that matters when you’re standing in front of one.

    GorGai Read mode showing a Thai consonant flashcard before the answer is revealed

  4. Vowels

    Vowels: 32 forms, and the harder problem of where they sit

    Thai vowels don’t politely queue up after the consonant the way Latin ones do. A vowel can sit after it, before it, above it, below it, or wrap around it in more than one position at once, and that placement is most of the difficulty. All 32 forms get the same three modes as the consonants, tagged by position and paired up short against long, including the awkward ones like ฤ and อำ.

    GorGai vowels practice showing Thai vowel forms and their positions

  5. Words

    Words: read a real word, then take it apart

    Letters in isolation only get you so far. Here you get a whole Thai word, Thai first and meaning second, and you work out what it says before revealing it. Then the word breaks into tappable syllables so you can see which character did what, including compound vowels that wrap around a consonant. Sixty-seven words across eight everyday categories: animals, food, greetings, numbers, colours, body parts, places and daily life.

    GorGai word reading flashcard showing the Thai word for cat

Decisions worth explaining

With no client, every constraint on this project was a choice I made.

  • No account, ever

    Progress saves in the browser, so it’s instant, it’s yours, and I never see it. An account would have meant a backend, a privacy policy and a login screen sitting between someone and their first letter.

  • No client-side framework

    Astro renders the page shells at build time and every interactive part is plain JavaScript. The whole app is a canvas, some state and a lot of letter data. A framework would have added a bundle to download before anything appeared, and the single most important property here is opening instantly on a mid-range phone.

  • Nothing turns red if you skip a day

    There are optional practice reminders and that’s about it. Miss a Tuesday and the app won’t hold it against you. Plenty of learning apps monetise the guilt, and I didn’t want to build one of those.

  • Free, and staying free

    Ads cover the hosting and stay out of the practice area itself. There’s no premium tier waiting in a drawer for when enough people show up.

A look at it

  • GorGai running on a mobile phone
    Built for a phone first, because fifteen minutes a day realistically happens standing up, somewhere inconvenient.
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