Thai vs Chinese
Learn Thai and Chinese at the same time
Thai and Chinese are unrelated, but both are tonal and analytic with subject-verb-object order. Thai has borrowed some words from Teochew and other southern Chinese varieties, but its learned vocabulary comes from Pali and Sanskrit.
The short answer
Possible, and less confusing than it sounds, because vocabulary rarely overlaps. Both are tonal, so the challenge is keeping two tone systems apart. Build one to a conversational base first, then add the other, and drill tones with minimal pairs in each language separately.
The verdict
No strong order effect; tone awareness from one helps with the other.
Closeness score
6 / 30
Mutually intelligible?
no
Shared vocabulary
Small: mostly Teochew loans for food, kinship and trade
Which first?
No strong order effect; pick by where you live.
Kungfucius says: Both sing; they just learnt different songs.
Side by side
phasa thai中文
ZhōngwénThai uses an abugida derived from the Khmer script, written left to right with no spaces between words.