It seems quite straightforward to read, although there's a bit of complication over the tones. There are different classes of vowels and consonants and a set of rules to tell you which combinations give which tones, then another set of characters that modify those tones if what you want isn't the default for that combination.
I had a look into learning it when I had a project involving Thai raise its head at work; I thought it would help me to check the text was correct, even if I couldn't understand it. I gave up, though, when I realised the alphabet was not merely a couple of dozen characters that could be learned in an hour or two, like Latin or Hebrew.
I've got a few weeks, so I'll take things slowly and just learn a few characters at a time (hopefully, that will also help me remember which class each consonant belongs to). The first time I went to Thailand, I decided to skip learning to read, but I'm already finding it pretty useful. There are so many different conflicting romanizations that I find I'm already looking at the Thai script to work out how a word is supposed to be pronounced.
Ha! Glad to know I was paying enough attention to still recognize the alphabet. And I'll have you know, your post made me feel guilty about not yet having started with the Arabic alphabet. It's almost midnight now, though. Too late. But tomorrow is another day, a day with learning in it!
This is the first time I've tried learning the script. It's been quite helpful because there are so many different romanizations and very few of them include the tones. (I also had a Thai related adventure yesterday, but it's too early to post about it - the matter is not yet complete.)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2012-08-09 08:53 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2012-08-09 12:43 pm (UTC)I want to learn too. (And visit one day)
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Date: 2012-08-09 08:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-09 08:21 pm (UTC)... intriguing....
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Date: 2012-08-09 04:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-09 08:08 pm (UTC)