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Learn to read Thai - Tutorial 7

Today is about increasing our knowledge of Thai consonants and vowels. The ones we have covered so far are essential but we need more.

I am going to group together three vowels and two consonants. As you continue reading, it should be clear why I have done it this way.

า

This vowel (sara aa) is a long 'aa' sound. It is also written in English as 'ar' or 'ah'. Any of these are OK - it's the kind of sound the doctor asks you to make if you have a bad throat. Just like written English, it is always written after the preceding consonant.

อำ

When you see something that looks like sara aa, make sure that there isn't a small disc above the preceding consonant. If there is, it isn't sara aa but sara um.

Thai vowels can be written above, below, after and before consonants. They can also be written using a combination of these positions and this is our first example. The vowel sara um is in two parts that are written above and after the consonant.

When I need a consonant to write vowels above or below, I will use the zero consonant.

It makes an 'um' sound as in 'yum'. Often, it is transliterated into English as 'am' but when you hear the Thai word for 'remember' you will hear that it sounds like 'jum' and not 'jam'. Jam is the stuff you put on toast in the mornings.

Because it ends with an 'm' sound it always ends a syllable or word and there is never a following consonant. It is a short vowel but as it ends with an 'm' sound the syllable is live. There is one anomaly in that when it is used in the Thai word for water/liquid it is pronounced as a long 'aa' - 'naam' and not 'num'.

เอา

Our third vowel today is one that is written before and after the consonant, as above. It makes an 'ao' sound, sort of like 'cow'. Be aware that the first character in this vowel combination is also used on its own and in many other vowel combinations so if you see it written before a consonant you need to look at what is written after the consonant. All will become clear later as we learn more vowels.

Now on to a couple of new consonants.

ย

Name in Thai: ย ยักษ์
Name in English: Yor Yuk (giant)
Initial: y
Final: y
Class: Low
Usage: Very common
Comments: This is a commonly used 'y' sound, both as an initial and final consonant.

ญ

Name in Thai: ญ ญิง
Name in English: Yor Ying (woman)
Initial: y
Final: n
Class: Low
Usage: Fairly common
Comments: I see this fairly often but it isn't as common as the other 'y' sound consonant.

Using today's newly learnt characters and combining them with previously learnt ones, let's do some more reading practice. From the previous tutorials you should know all of these characters and you should be able to read each word quite easily. Don't worry about tones and tone marks at the moment.

Reading practice

เก่า

As you look at this word you should notice that the only consonant is gor gai - the hard 'g' sound, and that it is surrounded by the 'ao' vowel. The word is gao which means 'old' in Thai when talking about things, not people.

Tone: Mid-class initial consonant and first tone mark = Low tone (Tutorial 14)

เรา

Here's another example using this vowel but this time it surrounds the 'r' consonant. The Thai word rao means 'we' or 'us'. There is no tone mark used this time.

Tone: Low-class initial consonant, live syllable = Mid tone (Tutorial 14)

ยำ

This word consists of a consonant and vowel we learnt today. The Thai word yum is a very popular menu item and means spicy salad. Take a glance through a Thai menu and you will see this word a lot.

Tone: Low-class initial consonant, live syllable = Mid tone (Tutorial 14)

ตา

The initial consonant is the sound that comes between an unaspirated 'd and an aspirated 't'. It is followed by the long 'aa' vowel. The Thai word dtaa means eye.

Tone: Mid-class initial consonant, live syllable = Mid tone (Tutorial 14)

You can see how easy this is. Who said reading basic Thai was difficult? There is difficult material later but this level of reading can be learnt in a couple of weeks. This is why I can never understand why people who have been living in Thailand for years can't read Thai. What do they do?

ญาติ

The yor ying consonant does appear fairly regularly, but not often as an initial consonant. It's difficult to find examples because most words that use it also contain letters we haven't covered yet and I don't want to confuse you. For that reason, the word in this example is unusual and it isn't one I knew. It's OK for the purpose of this exercise, though.

Special note: There are certain things about written Thai that don't seem to make any sense and this word gives us our first example! You should have noticed that this word ends with the short 'i' vowel.

However, this vowel isn't pronounced. There are other words in Thai that are the same; the vowel is written after the final consonant but not pronounced. Why?

Many words have entered the Thai language from other languages and the Thais have made an attempt to preserve the spelling of the original word even if it makes the pronunciation wrong if pronounced. Sometimes a special character (that we shall cover later) is used to indicate that the letter isn't voiced. But sometimes not. It's like English - some things don't make any sense but you just have to know.

When Thais transliterate English words into Thai script they also preserve unnecessary letters, for example, the final 'r' consonant. The 'r' isn't necessary but they will write the ror reua character and then put the special consonant killer symbol above it.

According to David Smyth's 'Thai - An essential grammar', silent short final vowels occur in Thai words because the word is of Indic origin. Now, back to our example:

The first letter is yor ying, a 'y' sound, followed by the long 'aa' vowel. Next is the letter that as an initial consonant is 'dt'. However, as a final consonant it just becomes 't'. As I have described already, the final short 'i' vowel can be ignored.

The Thai word yaat means relative or relation.

Tone: Low-class initial consonant, dead syllable, long vowel = Falling tone (Tutorial 14)

ขาย

The initial consonant is one of the 'k' sounds (kor kai). It is followed by the long 'aa' vowel and the final consonant is yor yuk, a 'y' sound. There are short 'ai' vowels in Thai (that we haven't covered yet) but this one is a longer 'aay'.

The word kaay in Thai is the verb 'to sell' and is very commonly seen.

Tone: High-class initial consonant, live syllable = Rising tone (Tutorial 14)

This next word is a little trickier but it demonstrates some good points. It's another unusual word but it only uses characters that we have already covered so you should be able to read it. The funny business with the final short vowel not being pronounced applies again. This must therefore be another word of Indic origin.

บัญญัติ

You should recognise the initial consonant as bor bai mai which has a 'b' sound, and above it is mai-hun-aagaat, the 'uh' sound (Tutorial 2). Next, we have two yor ying characters.

What is important to realise now is that the first yor ying ends the first syllable and so it has an 'n' sound, but the second yor ying begins the second syllable and so it has a 'y' sound. In Thai it is perfectly normal to have two identical characters together in the same word but they make a different sound.

Above the second yor ying is another mai-hun-aagaat and this is followed by dtor dtao which makes a 't' sound when used as a final consonant. Once again, we can ignore the short 'i' vowel at the end.

The Thai word bun-yut is defined by my Thai-English dictionary as meaning to prescribe, to provide, to decree, to enact, to ordain, to regulate. It can also be used as a noun - law, decree, ordinance, regulation, regal act, instruction, enactment, commandment. Take your pick.

With poly-syllabic words we need to work out the tone of each syllable separately. However, there is some confusion here as Benjawan Poomsan Becker says that with poly-syllabic words the tone of the first syllable is normally mid. If the tone is mid according to the tone rules it makes no difference. However, if the tone rules tell you something else it is probably safer just to use a mid-tone.

Tone first syllable: Mid-class initial consonant, live syllable = Mid tone (Tutorial 14)

Tone second syllable: Low-class initial consonant, dead syllable, short vowel = High tone (Tutorial 14)

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.