Intro

VOWELS

CONSONANTS with Interactive Audio

FIVE TONES with Interactive Audio

OTHER CHARACTERS with Interactive Audio

INTERACTIVE TABLES - CLICK ON THE VOWELS TO HEAR THEIR DEFINITION

The horizontal dash represents a generic consonant preceding the vowel. Read below to know more about how to use the tables.

TYPES OF VOWELS

In truth, they aren't exactly vowels (at least not in the way we are used to consider them). It should be better to refer at them with the Thai term "Sa-rah". How many of them? Well.. about 30!!!! You have read right, but don't get frightened. Rather, let try to make appear the subject a bit less hostile. Try to imagine the exclamation expressing surprise "Ohhh!", and then the word "Snow". In both cases we have pronounced an "O", but in the exclamation we have a long "O", while in "snow" the "O" is rather short. For us, it's just a "O" pronounced in two different way, but in Thai language they would be considered as two distinct "Sa-rah". VERIFY: in the first table, click on the first character of the second line, then click on the equivalent vowel of the second table. Did you hear the difference? It's clear, therefore, that in Thai language there are at least two kind of "O" characterized by a different "length". These differences will become more clear and evident with the practice and after having heard them repetitively. Well, now you know that there are two kind of vowels: "short" and "long". That helps to make the scenario a bit less confused. There are also four vowels that can be phonetically long or short, and four more characters that may be considered both as vowels or consonants, even if some of them have become almost obsolete in modern Thai language. The following table shows these eight "special" vowels.

To recap there are.. 12 short vowels 12 long vowels 8 "particular" vowels"

WRITING SYSTEM

Thai vowels seem to behave in a really weird way to a westerner's eyes when it come to read or write them. An important rule to know is that a Thai syllable always begins with a consonant (even if in some cases it will be a mute consonant). This rule is valid phonetically, but it does not find application in the writing system. A vowel can be written after the consonant (same as we would expect), but also before, or above or under the consonant!!!! Let take as example the generic syllables "TA, TE, TI, TO, TU". Do not get surprised to find the equivalent of the "E" written at the left of the consonant (in this case it will look written "ET" but, since we have said that a syllable must phonetically start with a consonant, it will still sounds as "TE"). At the same way, you will probably find the "U" written under the consonant, while the "I" of "TI" will be likely written above the "T". What a big mess!!! How to get out of that confusion?? The trick is start thinking at the Thai words as a composition of syllables, rather than single characters. If you get used to this, everything will become simpler. The trick to identify the syllables becomes mandatory when the vowels are composed by more than just one character. Oh, yes... some vowels are identified by multiple characters. Those that you believed to be four separate characters, actually could be instead a single vowel!!! So, what is the position of a vowel respect the consonant when it is identified by multiple characters?? In this case the consonant shows the tendency to occupy a "middle position", surrounded by the multiple characters of the vowel. It's quite clear, at this point, that a foreigner studend may easily feel lost in the fen represented by Thai vowels.. To get rid of that feeling, the solution is start thinking by syllables. EXAMPLE: to better understand the concept, take a look to the fourth vowel in the second line of the first table. The consonant, represented by the dash, has a character on its left, two on its right and also one above. This group of four character defines the short vowel "Sa-rah-ia". NOTE: if you visually compare the first two tables, you will notice that there are 8 short vowels written in a very similar way to their correspondent "long" versions (in the long counterpart it is missing one character (Sa-rah-a). I hope that the interactive tables may help you to make more clear the concepts above expressed. Next Page - THE CONSONANTS

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