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Learn to read Thai - Tutorial 20

Remaining Consonants

Today, I simply want to wrap up the remaining consonants. Some of the consonants I have covered already are used very rarely and that is the case for the ones that remain.

My original intention was for anyone trying to learn to read Thai to make or obtain a wall chart (link opens pop-up image) and then to annotate it with the information I have provided. This tutorial will enable you to finish the wall chart.

For each Thai consonant you should have written down the initial and final sounds, the consonant class, and the usage. Displaying the wall chart in a prominent position will help you to remember each consonant.

ฎ

Name in Thai: ฎ ชฎา
Name in English: Dor Chadaa (crown)
Initial: d
Final: t
Class: Mid
Usage: Very rare
Comments: Seldom seen.

ฏ

Name in Thai: ฏ ปฏัก
Name in English: Dtor Bpa-dtuk (spear)
Initial: dt
Final: t
Class: Mid
Usage: Very rare
Comments: Seldom seen. This character is written very similarly to the one above except there is a little more detail in the squiggly stuff at the bottom.

ณ

Name in Thai: ณ เณร
Name in English: Nor Nane (novice monk)
Initial: n
Final: n
Class: Low
Usage: Fairly rare
Comments: This is another 'n' consonant but used a lot less than nor noo (Tutorial 8). It does come up but not that often. It is written similarly to chor cher (Tutorial 19) so be careful.

ฬ

Name in Thai: ฬ จุฬา
Name in English: Lor Juulaa (kite)
Initial: l
Final: n
Class: Low
Usage: Very rare
Comments: Seldom seen. I think the only words I know that use this consonant are the Thai words for sport (gee-laa) and the word for a watch or clock (naa-li-gaa). The other 'l' consonant lor ling (Tutorial 8) is much more common.

Watch repair centre

Sports stadium

ฮ

Name in Thai: ฮ นกฮูก
Name in English: Hor Nokhook (owl)
Initial: h
Final: -
Class: Low
Usage: Very rare
Comments: Another 'h' consonant but used very rarely, whereas hor heep (Tutorial 9) is used all the time. Like hor heep, this consonant is never used as a final consonant.

Summary

I have now covered all the Thai consonants. We started off with 44 but quickly saw that two are now obsolete. The consonants in this tutorial, as well as several others in previous tutorials, are used only rarely.

My reason for including an indication of usage with each consonant was to let you know how often you might expect to see each one.

If you just concentrate at first on those characters that are very common, or fairly common, it shouldn't take you long to memorise them as they are only a fairly small subset of the original 44.

Then, by memorising a few simple vowels and rules you will find that you can read lots of things in Thailand. It's really not that difficult. If I can do it, anyone can.

Thai Alphabet Soundboard

To hear the sound of the Thai alphabet, click on individual consonants using the Thai Alphabet Soundboard. Thanks to David Tang for creating this.

Recommended books

If you are serious about learning how to read Thai, I highly recommend the following two books. These two books taught me almost everything I know and I still use them almost every day for reference purposes.

Most of the phrase books and text books for beginners that I have bought sit on my bookshelf accumulating dust. They are next to useless and good only to fuel the fire, except that it is never cold enough here to need a fire. However, if a sudden cold snap happens to descend, I will be grateful to Lonely Planet.

If you want to learn how to speak Thai, learning to read Thai will assist your pronunciation enormously. If you are trying to learn to speak Thai from books that use hopeless transliteration systems you are wasting your time because Thais won't be able to understand you.