Thai Script
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The Thai script ( th, อักษรไทย, ) is the
abugida An abugida (, from Ge'ez language, Ge'ez: ), sometimes known as alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, is a segmental Writing systems#Segmental writing system, writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units; ...
used to write
Thai Thai or THAI may refer to: * Of or from Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia ** Thai people, the dominant ethnic group of Thailand ** Thai language, a Tai-Kadai language spoken mainly in and around Thailand *** Thai script *** Thai (Unicode block ...
,
Southern Thai Southern Thailand, Southern Siam or Tambralinga is a southernmost cultural region of Thailand, separated from Central Thailand region by the Kra Isthmus. Geography Southern Thailand is on the Malay Peninsula, with an area of around , bounded t ...
and many other
languages Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
spoken in
Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...
. The Thai alphabet itself (as used to write Thai) has 44 consonant symbols ( th, พยัญชนะ, ''phayanchana''), 16 vowel symbols ( th, สระ, ''sara'') that combine into at least 32 vowel forms and four tone diacritics ( th, วรรณยุกต์ or วรรณยุต, or ) to create characters mostly representing syllables. Although commonly referred to as the "Thai alphabet", the script is in fact not a true
alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syll ...
but an
abugida An abugida (, from Ge'ez language, Ge'ez: ), sometimes known as alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, is a segmental Writing systems#Segmental writing system, writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units; ...
, a writing system in which the full characters represent consonants with diacritical marks for vowels; the absence of a vowel diacritic gives an implied 'a' or 'o'. Consonants are written horizontally from left to right, and vowels following a consonant in speech are written above, below, to the left or to the right of it, or a combination of those.


History

The Thai alphabet is derived from the Old
Khmer script Khmer script ( km, អក្សរខ្មែរ, )Huffman, Franklin. 1970. ''Cambodian System of Writing and Beginning Reader''. Yale University Press. . is an abugida (alphasyllabary) script used to write the Khmer language, the official la ...
( th, อักษรขอม, ''akson khom''), which is a southern
Brahmi Brahmi (; ; ISO 15919, ISO: ''Brāhmī'') is a writing system of ancient South Asia. "Until the late nineteenth century, the script of the Aśokan (non-Kharosthi) inscriptions and its immediate derivatives was referred to by various names such ...
c style of writing derived from the south Indian
Pallava alphabet The Pallava script or Pallava Grantha, is a Brahmic script, named after the Pallava dynasty of South India, attested since the 4th century AD. As epigrapher Arlo Griffiths makes clear, however, the term is misleading as not all of the relevant s ...
( th, ปัลลวะ). According to tradition it was created in 1283 by
King Ramkhamhaeng the Great Ram Khamhaeng ( th, รามคำแหง, ) or Pho Khun Ram Khamhaeng Maharat ( th, พ่อขุนรามคำแหงมหาราช, ), also spelled Ramkhamhaeng, was the third king of the Phra Ruang Dynasty, ruling the Sukhoth ...
( th, พ่อขุนรามคำแหงมหาราช). The earliest attestation of the Thai script is the Ram Khamhaeng Inscription dated to 1292, however some scholars question its authenticity. The script was derived from a cursive form of the Old Khmer script of the time. It modified and simplified some of the Old Khmer letters and introduced some new ones to accommodate Thai phonology. It also introduced tone marks. Thai is considered to be the first script in the world that invented tone markers to indicate distinctive tones, which are lacking in the Mon-Khmer (
Austroasiatic languages The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are t ...
) and
Indo-Aryan languages The Indo-Aryan languages (or sometimes Indic languages) are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. As of the early 21st century, they have more than 800 million speakers, primarily ...
from which its script is derived. Although Chinese and other
Sino-Tibetan languages Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese languages. ...
have distinctive tones in their phonological system, no tone marker is found in their orthographies. Thus, tone markers are an innovation in the Thai language that later influenced other related Tai languages and some
Tibeto-Burman languages The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non-Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people speak ...
on the Southeast Asian mainland. Another addition was consonant clusters that were written horizontally and contiguously, rather than writing the second consonant below the first one. Finally, the script wrote vowel marks on the main line, however this innovation fell out of use not long after.


Orthography

There is a fairly complex relationship between spelling and sound. There are various issues: #For many consonant sounds, there are two different letters that both represent the same sound, but which cause a different tone to be associated. This stems from a major change (a
tone split The Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area is a sprachbund including languages of the Sino-Tibetan, Hmong–Mien (or Miao–Yao), Kra–Dai, Austronesian and Austroasiatic families spoken in an area stretching from Thailand to China. Neighbou ...
) that occurred historically in the phonology of the Thai language. At the time the Thai script was created, the language had three tones and a full set of contrasts between
voiced Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer ...
and unvoiced consonants at the beginning of a syllable (e.g. ''b d g l m n'' vs. ''p t k hl hm hn''). At a later time, the voicing distinction disappeared, but in the process, each of the three original tones split in two, with an originally voiced consonant (the modern "low" consonant signs) producing a lower-variant tone, and an originally unvoiced consonant (the modern "mid" and "high" consonant signs) producing a higher-variant tone. #Thai borrowed a large number of words from
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
and
Pali Pali () is a Middle Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist ''Pāli Canon'' or ''Tipiṭaka'' as well as the sacred language of ''Theravāda'' Buddhism ...
, and the Thai alphabet was created so that the original spelling of these words could be preserved as much as possible. This means that the Thai alphabet has a number of "duplicate" letters that represent separate sounds in Sanskrit and Pali (e.g. the breathy voiced sounds ''bh, dh, ḍh, jh, gh'' and the
retroflex A retroflex ( /ˈɹɛtʃɹoːflɛks/), apico-domal ( /əpɪkoːˈdɔmɪnəl/), or cacuminal () consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the ha ...
sounds ''ṭ ṭh ḍ ḍh ṇ'') but which never represented distinct sounds in the Thai language. These are mostly or exclusively used in Sanskrit and Pali borrowings. #The desire to preserve original Sanskrit and Pali spellings also produces a particularly large number of duplicate ways of spelling sounds at the end of a syllable (where Thai is strictly limited in the sounds that can occur but Sanskrit allowed all possibilities, especially once former final /a/ was deleted), as well as a number of silent letters. Moreover, many consonants from Sanskrit and Pali loanwords are generally silent. The spelling of the words resembles Sanskrit or Pali orthography: #* Thai (spelled ''sǎamaarth'' but pronounced ''sa-mat'' with a silent r and a plain t that is represented using an aspirated consonant) "to be able" (Sanskrit समर्थ ''samartha'') #* Thai (spelled ''chanthr'' but pronounced ''chan'' because the th and the r are silent) "moon" (Sanskrit चन्द्र ''chandra'') #Thai phonology dictates that all syllables must end in a
vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
, an
approximant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a ...
, a nasal, or a
voiceless In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies v ...
plosive In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lips ...
. Therefore, the letter written may not have the same pronunciation in the initial position as they do in the final position. See Alphabet listing below for more detail. #Even though the high class letter ''ho hip'' ห is used to write the sound /h/, if the letter comes before a low class letter in a syllable, it will become the silent ''ho nam'' and turn the initial consonant into high class. See Tones below for more detail. Thai letters do not have upper- and lower-case forms like
Latin letters The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...
do. Spaces between words are not used, except in certain linguistically motivated cases.


Punctuation

Minor pauses in sentences ''may'' be marked by a comma ( th, จุลภาค or , ''chunlaphak'' or ''luk nam''), and major pauses by a period ( th, มหัพภาค or , ''mahap phak'' or ''chut''), but most often are marked by a blank space ( th, วรรค, ''wak''). Thai writing also uses quotation marks ( th, อัญประกาศ, ''anyaprakat'') and parentheses (round brackets) ( th, วงเล็บ, ''wong lep'' or th, นขลิขิต, ''nakha likhit''), but not square brackets or braces. A ''paiyan noi'' ฯ ( th, ไปยาลน้อย) is used for abbreviation. A ''paiyan yai'' ฯลฯ ( th, ไปยาลใหญ่) is the same as "etc." in English. Several obsolete characters indicated the beginning or ending of sections. A bird's eye ๏ ( th, ตาไก่, ''ta kai'', officially called , ''fong man'') formerly indicated paragraphs. An ''angkhan kuu'' ๚ ( th, อังคั่นคู่) was formerly used to mark the end of a chapter. A ''kho mut'' ๛ ( th, โคมูตร) was formerly used to mark the end of a
document A document is a written, drawn, presented, or memorialized representation of thought, often the manifestation of non-fictional, as well as fictional, content. The word originates from the Latin ''Documentum'', which denotes a "teaching" or ...
, but is now obsolete.


Alphabet listing

Thai (along with its sister system, Lao) lacks conjunct consonants and independent vowels, while both designs are common among Brahmic scripts (e.g., Burmese and Balinese). In scripts with conjunct consonants, each consonant has two forms: base and conjoined.
Consonant cluster In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fie ...
s are represented with the two styles of consonants. The two styles may form typographical ligatures, as in
Devanagari Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental syste ...
. Independent vowels are used when a syllable starts with a vowel sign.


Consonants

There are 44 consonant letters representing 21 distinct consonant sounds. Duplicate consonants either correspond to sounds that existed in Old Thai at the time the alphabet was created but no longer exist (in particular,
voiced Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer ...
obstruent An obstruent () is a speech sound such as , , or that is formed by ''obstructing'' airflow. Obstruents contrast with sonorants, which have no such obstruction and so resonate. All obstruents are consonants, but sonorants include vowels as well as ...
s such as ''b d g v z''), or different
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
and
Pali Pali () is a Middle Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist ''Pāli Canon'' or ''Tipiṭaka'' as well as the sacred language of ''Theravāda'' Buddhism ...
consonants pronounced identically in Thai. There are in addition four consonant-vowel combination characters not included in the tally of 44. Consonants are divided into three classes — in alphabetical order these are middle (, ''klang''), high (, ''sung''), and low (, ''tam'') class — as shown in the table below. These class designations reflect phonetic qualities of the sounds to which the letters originally corresponded in Old Thai. In particular, "middle" sounds were
voiceless In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies v ...
unaspirated
stops Stop may refer to: Places *Stop, Kentucky, an unincorporated community in the United States * Stop (Rogatica), a village in Rogatica, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina Facilities * Bus stop * Truck stop, a type of rest stop for truck dri ...
; "high" sounds, voiceless aspirated stops or voiceless
fricatives A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in t ...
; "low" sounds, voiced. Subsequent sound changes have obscured the phonetic nature of these classes.Modern Thai sounds /b/ and /d/ were formerly — and sometimes still are — pronounced /ʔb/ and /ʔd/. For this reason, they were treated as voiceless unaspirated, and hence placed in the "middle" class; this was also the reason they were unaffected by the changes that devoiced most originally voiced stops. Today, the class of a consonant without a tone mark, along with the short or long length of the accompanying vowel, determine the base accent (, ). Middle class consonants with a long vowel spell an additional four tones with one of four tone marks over the controlling consonant: ''mai ek, mai tho, mai tri'', and ''mai chattawa''. High and low class consonants are limited to ''mai ek'' and ''mai tho'', as shown in the . Differing interpretations of the two marks or their absence allow low class consonants to spell tones not allowed for the corresponding high class consonant. In the case of digraphs where a low class follows a higher class consonant, often the higher class rules apply, but the marker, if used, goes over the low class one; accordingly, ''ho nam'' and ''o nam'' may be considered to be digraphs as such, as explained below the Tone table.Only low class consonants may have a base accent determined by the syllable being both ''long'' and ''dead''. ;Notes To aid learning, each consonant is traditionally associated with an acrophonic Thai word that either starts with the same sound, or features it prominently. For example, the name of the letter ข is ''kho khai'' (ข ไข่), in which ''kho'' is the sound it represents, and ''khai'' (ไข่) is a word which starts with the same sound and means "egg". Two of the consonants, ฃ (''kho khuat'') and ฅ (''kho khon''), are no longer used in written Thai, but still appear on many keyboards and in character sets. When the first Thai typewriter was developed by
Edwin Hunter McFarland Samuel Gamble McFarland (December 11, 1830 – April 26, 1897) was an American Presbyterian missionary who worked mainly in Siam (Thailand) during the latter half of the 19th century. He and his wife settled in Phetchaburi, establishing churches ...
in 1892, there was simply no space for all characters, thus two had to be left out. Also, neither of these two letters correspond to a Sanskrit or Pali letter, and each of them, being a modified form of the letter that precedes it (compare ข and ค), has the same pronunciation and the same consonant class as the preceding letter (somewhat like the European
long s The long s , also known as the medial s or initial s, is an archaism, archaic form of the lowercase letter . It replaced the single ''s'', or one or both of the letters ''s'' in a 'double ''s sequence (e.g., "ſinfulneſs" for "sinfulness" ...
). This makes them redundant. Equivalents for
romanisation Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and ...
are shown in the table below. Many consonants are pronounced differently at the beginning and at the end of a syllable. The entries in columns ''initial'' and ''final'' indicate the pronunciation for that consonant in the corresponding positions in a syllable. Where the entry is '-', the consonant may not be used to close a syllable. Where a combination of consonants ends a written syllable, only the first is pronounced; possible closing consonant sounds are limited to 'k', 'm', 'n', 'ng', 'p' and 't'. Although official standards for romanisation are the
Royal Thai General System of Transcription The Royal Thai General System of Transcription (RTGS) is the official system for rendering Thai words in the Latin alphabet. It was published by the Royal Institute of Thailand. It is used in road signs and government publications and is the cl ...
(RTGS) defined by the Royal Thai Institute, and the almost identical defined by the
International Organization for Standardization The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ) is an international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Membership requirements are given in Ar ...
, many publications use different romanisation systems. In daily practice, a bewildering variety of romanisations are used, making it difficult to know how to pronounce a word, or to judge if two words (e.g. on a map and a street sign) are actually the same. For more precise information, an equivalent from the
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
(IPA) is given as well.


Alphabetic

; Notes


Phonetic

The consonants can be organised by
place Place may refer to: Geography * Place (United States Census Bureau), defined as any concentration of population ** Census-designated place, a populated area lacking its own Municipality, municipal government * "Place", a type of street or road ...
and manner of articulation according to principles of the
International Phonetic Association The International Phonetic Association (IPA; French: ', ''API'') is an organization that promotes the scientific study of phonetics and the various practical applications of that science. The IPA's major contribution to phonetics is the Interna ...
. Thai distinguishes among three voice/aspiration patterns for plosive consonants: *unvoiced, unaspirated *unvoiced, aspirated *voiced, unaspirated Where English has only a distinction between the voiced, unaspirated and the unvoiced, aspirated , Thai distinguishes a third sound which is neither voiced nor aspirated, which occurs in English only as an allophone of , approximately the sound of the ''p'' in "spin". There is similarly an alveolar , , triplet. In the velar series there is a , pair and in the postalveolar series the , pair. In each cell below, the first line indicates
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
(IPA), the second indicates the Thai characters in initial position (several letters appearing in the same box have identical pronunciation). Note how the conventional alphabetic order shown in the table above follows roughly the table below, reading the coloured blocks from right to left and top to bottom. Pronunciation of Thai characters in initial position Although the overall 44 Thai consonants provide 21 sounds in case of initials, the case for finals is different. Note how the consonant sounds in the table for initials collapse in the table for final sounds. At the end of a syllable, all plosives are unvoiced, unaspirated, and have no audible release. Initial affricates and fricatives become final plosives. The initial trill (ร), approximant (ญ), and lateral approximants (ล,ฬ) are realized as a final nasal . Only 8 ending consonant sounds, as well as no ending consonant sound, are available in Thai pronunciation. Among these consonants, excluding the disused ฃ and ฅ, six (ฉ ผ ฝ ห อ ฮ) cannot be used as a final. The remaining 36 are grouped as following. Pronunciation of Thai characters in final position


Vowels

Thai vowel sounds and diphthongs are written using a mixture of vowel symbols on a consonant base. Each vowel is shown in its correct position relative to a base consonant and sometimes a final consonant as well. Note that vowels can go above, below, left of or right of the consonant, or combinations of these places. If a vowel has parts before and after the initial consonant, and the syllable starts with a consonant cluster, the split will go around the whole cluster. Twenty-one vowel symbol elements are traditionally named, which may appear alone or in combination to form compound symbols. The
inherent vowel An inherent vowel is part of an abugida (or alphasyllabary) script. It is a vowel sound which is used with each unmarked or basic consonant symbol. For example, if the Latin alphabet used 'i' as an inherent vowel, "Wikipedia" could be rendered as "W ...
s are in
open syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "b ...
s (CV) and in
closed syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...
s (CVC). For example, transcribes "road". There are a few exceptions in Pali loanwords, where the inherent vowel of an open syllable is . The
circumfix A circumfix (abbreviated ) (also confix or ambifix) is an affix which has two parts, one placed at the start of a word, and the other at the end. Circumfixes contrast with prefixes, attached to the beginnings of words; suffixes, attached at t ...
vowels, such as , encompass a preceding consonant with an inherent vowel. For example, is written , and "only" is written . The characters ฤ ฤๅ (plus ฦ ฦๅ, which are obsolete) are usually considered as vowels, the first being a short vowel sound, and the latter, long. The letters are based on vocalic consonants used in Sanskrit, given the one-to-one letter correspondence of Thai to Sanskrit, although the last two letters are quite rare, as their equivalent Sanskrit sounds only occur in a few, ancient words and thus are functionally obsolete in Thai. The first symbol 'ฤ' is common in many Sanskrit and Pali words and 'ฤๅ' less so, but does occur as the primary spelling for the Thai adaptation of Sanskrit 'rishi' and ''treu'' ( th, ตฤๅ or ), a very rare Khmer loan word for 'fish' only found in ancient poetry. As alphabetical entries, ฤ ฤๅ follow ร, and themselves can be read as a combination of consonant and vowel, equivalent to รึ (short), and รือ (long) (and the obsolete pair as ลึ, ลือ), respectively. Moreover, ฤ can act as ริ as an integral part in many words mostly borrowed from
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
such as กฤษณะ (''kritsana'', not ''kruetsana''), ฤทธิ์ (''rit'', not ''ruet''), and กฤษดา (''kritsada'', not ''kruetsada''), for example. It is also used to spell อังกฤษ ''angkrit'' England/English. The word ฤกษ์ (''roek'') is a unique case where ฤ is pronounced like เรอ. In the past, prior to the turn of the twentieth century, it was common for writers to substitute these letters in native vocabulary that contained similar sounds as a shorthand that was acceptable in writing at the time. For example, the conjunction 'or' ( th, หรือ ''reu'', cf. lo, ຫຼຶ/ຫລື ''lu'') was often written th, ฤ. This practice has become obsolete, but can still be seen in Thai literature. The pronunciation below is indicated by the
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
and the Romanisation according to the Royal Thai Institute as well as several variant Romanisations often encountered. A very approximate equivalent is given for various regions of English speakers and surrounding areas. Dotted circles represent the positions of consonants or consonant clusters. The first one represents the initial consonant and the latter (if it exists) represents the final. ''Ro han'' (ร หัน) is not usually considered a vowel and is not included in the following table. It represents the ''sara a'' vowel in certain Sanskrit loanwords and appears as ◌รร◌. When used without a final consonant (◌รร), is implied as the final consonant, giving .


Tone


Central Thai

Thai is a
tonal language Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey empha ...
, and the script gives full information on the tones. Tones are realised in the vowels, but indicated in the script by a combination of the class of the initial consonant (high, mid or low),
vowel length In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, f ...
(long or short), closing consonant (
plosive In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lips ...
or
sonorant In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels are ...
, i.e., ''dead'' or ''live'') and, if present, one of four tone marks, whose names derive from the names of the digits 1–4 borrowed from Pali or Sanskrit. The rules for denoting tones are shown in the following chart: "None", that is, no tone marker, is used with the base accent (พื้นเสียง, ). ''Mai tri'' and ''mai chattawa'' are only used with mid-class consonants. Two consonant characters (not diacritics) are used to modify the tone: *ห นำ ''ho nam'', leading ho. A silent, high-class ห "leads" low-class nasal stops (ง, ญ, น and ม) and non-plosives (ว, ย, ร and ล), which have no corresponding high-class phonetic match, into the tone properties of a high-class consonant. In polysyllabic words, an initial mid- or high-class consonant with an implicit vowel similarly "leads" these same low-class consonants into the higher class tone rules, with the tone marker borne by the low-class consonant. *อ นำ ''o nam'', leading o. In four words only, a silent, mid-class อ "leads" low-class ย into mid-class tone rules: อย่า (''ya'', don't) อยาก (''yak'', desire) อย่าง (''yang'', kind, sort, type) อยู่ (''yu'', stay). Note all four have long-vowel, low-tone ''siang ek''; อยาก, a dead syllable, needs no tone marker, but the three live syllables all take ''mai ek''. In some dialects where words are spelled with one tone but pronounced with another often occur in informal conversation (notably the pronouns ฉัน ''chan'' and เขา ''khao'', which are both pronounced with a high tone rather than the rising tone indicated by the script). Generally, when such words are recited or read in public, they are pronounced as spelled.


Southern Thai

Spoken
Southern Thai Southern Thailand, Southern Siam or Tambralinga is a southernmost cultural region of Thailand, separated from Central Thailand region by the Kra Isthmus. Geography Southern Thailand is on the Malay Peninsula, with an area of around , bounded t ...
can have up to seven tones. When Southern Thai is written in Thai script, there are different rules for indicating spoken tone.


Diacritics

Other diacritics are used to indicate short vowels and silent letters: * means "stick that climbs and squats". It is a miniature Thai numeral 8 ๘. is often used with ''sara e'' (เ) and ''sara ae'' (แ) in closed syllables. *''Thanthakhat'' means "capital punishment". ''Fan nu'' means "rat teeth" and is thought as being placed in combination with short ''sara i'' and ''fong man'' to form other characters.


Numerals

For numerals, mostly the standard
Hindu-Arabic numerals Arabic numerals are the ten numerical digits: , , , , , , , , and . They are the most commonly used symbols to write decimal numbers. They are also used for writing numbers in other systems such as octal, and for writing identifiers such as c ...
( th, เลขฮินดูอารบิก, ''lek hindu arabik'') are used, but Thai also has its own set of
Thai numerals Thai numerals ( th, เลขไทย, , ) are a set of numerals traditionally used in Thailand, although the Arabic numerals are more common due to extensive westernization of Thailand in the modern Rattanakosin period. Thai numerals follow th ...
that are based on the Hindu-Arabic numeral system ( th, เลขไทย, ''lek thai''), which are mostly limited to government documents, election posters, license plates of military vehicles, and special entry prices for Thai nationals.


Other symbols

''Pai-yan noi'' and ''angkhan diao'' share the same character. ''Sara a'' (–ะ) used in combination with other characters is called ''wisanchani''. Some of the characters can mark the beginning or end of a sentence, chapter, or episode of a story or of a stanza in a poem. These have changed use over time and are becoming uncommon.


Summary charts

colour codes red: dead green: alive * If the syllable contains no ending consonants, it is considered alive if the vowel is long and dead if it is short. colour codes pink: long vowel, shortened by add "ะ"(no ending consonant) or "-็"(with ending consonant) green: long vowel, has a special form when shortened


Sanskrit and Pali

The Thai script (like all
Indic scripts The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India ...
) uses a number of modifications to write Sanskrit and related languages (in particular, Pali).
Pali Pali () is a Middle Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist ''Pāli Canon'' or ''Tipiṭaka'' as well as the sacred language of ''Theravāda'' Buddhism ...
is very closely related to Sanskrit and is the liturgical language of Thai Buddhism. In Thailand, Pali is written and studied using a slightly modified Thai script. The main difference is that each consonant is followed by an implied short a (อะ), not the 'o', or 'ə' of Thai: this short a is never omitted in pronunciation, and if the vowel is not to be pronounced, then a specific symbol must be used, the อฺ (a solid dot under the consonant). This means that ''sara a'' (อะ) is never used when writing Pali, because it is always implied. For example, ''namo'' is written นะโม in Thai, but in Pali it is written as นโม, because the อะ is redundant. The Sanskrit word 'mantra' is written มนตร์ in Thai (and therefore pronounced ''mon''), but is written มนฺตฺร in Sanskrit (and therefore pronounced ''mantra''). When writing Pali, only 33 consonants and 12 vowels are used. This is an example of a Pali text written using the Thai Sanskrit orthography: อรหํ สมฺมาสมฺพุทฺโธ ภควา . Written in modern Thai orthography, this becomes อะระหัง สัมมาสัมพุทโธ ภะคะวา ''arahang sammasamphuttho phakhawa''. In Thailand, Sanskrit is read out using the Thai values for all the consonants (so ค is read as ''kha'' and not a, which makes Thai spoken Sanskrit incomprehensible to sanskritists not trained in Thailand. The Sanskrit values are used in transliteration (without the
diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
s), but these values are never actually used when Sanskrit is read out loud in Thailand. The vowels used in Thai are identical to Sanskrit, with the exception of ฤ, ฤๅ, ฦ, and ฦๅ, which are read using their Thai values, not their Sanskrit values. Sanskrit and Pali are not tonal languages, but in Thailand, the Thai tones are used when reading these languages out loud. In the tables in this section, the Thai value (transliterated according to the Royal Thai system) of each letter is listed first, followed by the
IAST The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is a transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanisation of Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that emerged during ...
value of each letter in square brackets. Remember that in Thailand, the IAST values are never used in pronunciation, but only sometimes in transcriptions (with the diacritics omitted). This disjoint between transcription and spoken value explains the romanisation for Sanskrit names in Thailand that many foreigners find confusing. For example, สุวรรณภูมิ is romanised as
Suvarnabhumi ( sa, सुवर्णभूमि; Pali: '); my, သုဝဏ္ဏဘူမိ, ; km, សុវណ្ណភូមិ, ''Sovannaphoum''; and th, สุวรรณภูมิ, . is a toponym, that appears in many ancient Indian literary s ...
, but pronounced ''su-wan-na-phum''. ศรีนครินทร์ is romanised as
Srinagarindra Princess Srinagarindra ( th, ศรีนครินทรา; ; 21 October 1900 – 18 July 1995) née Sangwan Talapat ( th, สังวาลย์ ตะละภัฏ; ) was a member of the Royal Thai Family and the House of Mahidol, whi ...
but pronounced ''si-nakha-rin''.


Plosives (')

Plosives (also called stops) are listed in their traditional Sanskrit order, which corresponds to Thai alphabetical order from ก to ม with three exceptions: in Thai, high-class ข is followed by two obsolete characters with no Sanskrit equivalent, high-class ฃ and low-class ฅ; low-class ช is followed by sibilant ซ (low-class equivalent of high-class sibilant ส that follows ศ and ษ.) The table gives the Thai value first, and then the IAST (International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration) value in square brackets. None of the Sanskrit plosives are pronounced as the Thai voiced plosives, so these are not represented in the table. While letters are listed here according to their class in Sanskrit, Thai has lost the distinction between many of the consonants. So, while there is a clear distinction between ช and ฌ in Sanskrit, in Thai these two consonants are pronounced identically (including tone). Likewise, the Thai phonemes do not differentiate between the retroflex and dental classes, because Thai has no retroflex consonants. The equivalents of all the retroflex consonants are pronounced identically to their dental counterparts: thus ฏ is pronounced like ต, ฐ is pronounced like ถ, ฑ is pronounced like ท, ฒ is pronounced like ธ, and ณ is pronounced like น. The Sanskrit unaspirated unvoiced plosives are pronounced as unaspirated unvoiced, whereas Sanskrit aspirated voiced plosives are pronounced as aspirated unvoiced.


Non-plosives (')

''
Semivowel In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. Examples of semivowels in English are the ...
s'' (กึ่งสระ ''kueng sara'') ''and
liquids A liquid is a nearly incompressible fluid that conforms to the shape of its container but retains a (nearly) constant volume independent of pressure. As such, it is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, gas, an ...
'' come in Thai alphabetical order after ม, the last of the plosives. The term อวรรค ''awak'' means "without a break"; that is, without a plosive.


Sibilants

''Inserted sounds'' (เสียดแทรก ''siat saek'') follow the semi-vowel ว in alphabetical order. Like Sanskrit, Thai has no voiced sibilant (so no 'z' or 'zh'). In modern Thai, the distinction between the three high-class consonants has been lost and all three are pronounced 'sà'; however, foreign words with a sh-sound may still be transcribed as if the Sanskrit values still hold (e.g., ''ang-grit'' อังกฤษ for ''English'' instead of อังกฤส). :ศ ศาลา (so sala) leads words, as in its example word, ศาลา. The digraph ศรี (Indic ''
sri Shri (; , ) is a Sanskrit term denoting resplendence, wealth and prosperity, primarily used as an honorific. The word is widely used in South and Southeast Asian languages such as Marathi, Malay (including Indonesian and Malaysian), Javanes ...
'') is regularly pronounced สี (si), as in Sisaket Province, Thai: ศรีสะเกษ. :ษ ฤๅษี (so rue-si) may only lead syllables ''within'' a word, as in its example, ฤๅษี, or to end a syllable as in ศรีสะเกษ ''Sisaket'' and อังกฤษ ''Angkrit'' English. :ส เสือ (so suea) spells native Thai words that require a high-class /s/, as well as
naturalized Naturalization (or naturalisation) is the legal act or process by which a non-citizen of a country may acquire citizenship or nationality of that country. It may be done automatically by a statute, i.e., without any effort on the part of the in ...
Pali/Sanskrit words, such as สารท (สาท) in Thetsakan Sat: เทศกาลสารท (เทด-สะ-กาน-สาท), formerly ศารท (สาท). :ซ โซ่ (so so), which follows the similar-appearing ช in Thai alphabetical order, spells words requiring a low-class /s/, as does ทร + vowel. :ทร, as in the heading of this section, เสียดแทรก (pronounced เสียดแซก ''siat saek''), when accompanied by a vowel (implicit in ทรง (ซง ''song'' an element in forming words used with royalty); a semivowel in ทรวง (ซวง ''suang'' chest, heart); or explicit in ทราย (ซาย ''sai'' sand). Exceptions to ทร + vowel = /s/ are the prefix โทร- (equivalent to ''tele-'' far, pronounced โทระ ''to-ra''), and phonetic re-spellings of English tr- (as in the phonetic respelling of ''trumpet'': ทรัมเพ็ท.) ทร is otherwise pronounced as two syllables ทอระ-, as in ทรมาน (ทอระมาน ''to-ra-man'' to torment).


Voiced h

ห, a high-class consonant, comes next in alphabetical order, but its low-class equivalent, ฮ, follows similar-appearing อ as the last letter of the Thai alphabet. Like modern Hindi, the voicing has disappeared, and the letter is now pronounced like English 'h'. Like Sanskrit, this letter may only be used to start a syllable, but may not end it. (A popular beer is romanized as
Singha Singha ( th, สิงห์; RTGS: ''Sing'') is a pale lager beer manufactured in Thailand by the Singha Corporation Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of its parent company, Boon Rawd Brewery. Singha was first brewed in 1933, and in 1939 officially endo ...
, but in Thai is สิงห์, with a ''karan'' on the ห; correct pronunciation is "
sing Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...
", but foreigners to Thailand typically say "sing-ha".)


Voiced lla

This represents the retroflex liquid of Pali and Vedic Sanskrit, which does not exist in Classical Sanskrit.


Vowels

All consonants have an inherent 'a' sound, and therefore there is no need to use the ะ symbol when writing Sanskrit. The Thai vowels อื, ไอ, ใอ, and so forth, are not used in Sanskrit. The
zero consonant In orthography, a zero consonant, silent initial, or null-onset letter is a consonant letter that does not correspond to a consonant sound, but is required when a word or syllable starts with a vowel (i.e. has a null onset). Some abjads, abugidas, ...
, อ, is unique to the Indic alphabets descended from Khmer. When it occurs in Sanskrit, it is always the zero consonant and never the vowel ''o'' . Its use in Sanskrit is therefore to write vowels that cannot be otherwise written alone: e.g., อา or อี. When อ is written on its own, then it is a carrier for the implied vowel, ''a'' (equivalent to อะ in Thai). The vowel sign อำ occurs in Sanskrit, but only as the combination of the pure vowels ''sara a'' อา with ''nikkhahit'' อํ.


Other non-Thai symbols

There are a number of additional symbols only used to write Sanskrit or Pali, and not used in writing Thai.


Nikkhahit (anusvāra)

In Sanskrit, the
anusvāra Anusvara (Sanskrit: ') is a symbol used in many Indic scripts to mark a type of nasal sound, typically transliterated . Depending on its location in the word and the language for which it is used, its exact pronunciation can vary. In the context ...
indicates a certain kind of nasal sound. In Thai this is written as an open circle above the consonant, known as ''nikkhahit'' (), from Pali ''niggahīta''. Nasalisation does not occur in Thai, therefore, a nasal stop is always substituted: e.g. ตํ , is pronounced as ตัง ''tang'' by Thai Sanskritists. If nikkhahit occurs before a consonant, then Thai uses a nasal stop of the same class: e.g. สํสฺกฺฤตา is read as สันสกฤตา ''san-sa-krit-ta'' (The ส following the nikkhahit is a dental-class consonant, therefore the dental-class nasal stop น is used). For this reason, it has been suggested that in Thai, nikkhahit should be listed as a consonant. Also, traditional Pali grammars describe nikkhahit as a consonant. ''Nikkhahit'' นิคหิต occurs as part of the Thai vowels ''sara am'' อำ and ''sara ue'' อึ.


Phinthu (virāma)

อฺ Because the Thai script is an
abugida An abugida (, from Ge'ez language, Ge'ez: ), sometimes known as alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, is a segmental Writing systems#Segmental writing system, writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units; ...
, a symbol (equivalent to virāma in
devanagari Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental syste ...
) needs to be added to indicate that the implied vowel is not to be pronounced. This is the , which is a solid dot (also called 'Bindu' in Sanskrit) below the consonant.


Yamakkan

อ๎ Yamakkan () is an obsolete symbol used to mark the beginning of consonant clusters: e.g. พ๎ราห๎มณ ''phramana'' . Without the yamakkan, this word would be pronounced instead. This is a feature unique to the Thai script (other Indic scripts use a combination of ligatures, conjuncts or virāma to convey the same information). The symbol is obsolete because may be used to achieve the same effect: พฺราหฺมณ.


Visarga

The means of recording
visarga Visarga ( sa, विसर्गः, translit=visargaḥ) means "sending forth, discharge". In Sanskrit phonology ('' ''), ' (also called, equivalently, ' by earlier grammarians) is the name of a phone voiceless glottal fricative, , written as: ...
(final voiceless 'h') in Thai has reportedly been lost, although the character ◌ะ which is used to transcribe a short /a/ or to add a glottal stop after a vowel is the closest equivalent and can be seen used as a visarga in some Thai-script Sanskrit text.


Unicode

Thai script was added to the
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
Standard in October 1991 with the release of version 1.0. The Unicode block for Thai is U+0E00–U+0E7F. It is a verbatim copy of the older
TIS-620 Thai Industrial Standard 620-2533, commonly referred to as TIS-620, is the most common character set and character encoding for the Thai language. The standard is published by the Thai Industrial Standards Institute (TISI), an organ of the Min ...
character set which encodes the vowels เ, แ, โ, ใ and ไ before the consonants they follow, and thus Thai, Lao,
Tai Viet The Tai Viet script (Tai Dam: ("Tai script"), Vietnamese: Chữ Thái Việt) ( th, อักษรไทดำ, ) is a Brahmic script used by the Tai Dam people and various other Thai people in Vietnam and Thailand.New Tai Lue are the only
Brahmic scripts The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India ...
in Unicode that use visual order instead of logical order.


Keyboard layouts

Thai characters can be typed using the Kedmanee layout and the Pattachote layout.


See also

* Thai language * Thai typography *
Thai numerals Thai numerals ( th, เลขไทย, , ) are a set of numerals traditionally used in Thailand, although the Arabic numerals are more common due to extensive westernization of Thailand in the modern Rattanakosin period. Thai numerals follow th ...
*
Thai braille Thai Braille () and Lao Braille () are the braille alphabets of the Thai language and Lao language. Thai Braille was adapted by Genevieve Caulfield, who knew both English and Japanese Braille. Unlike the print Thai alphabet, which is an abugida ...
*
Thai literature 300px, ''Samut Thai'', a traditional medium for recordation and transmission of Thai and other literature in mainland Southeast Asia Thai literature is the literature of the Thai people, almost exclusively written in the Thai language (althoug ...
*
Thai honorifics Honorifics are a class of words or grammatical morphemes that encode a wide variety of social relationships between interlocutors or between interlocutors and referents.Foley, William. ''Anthropological Linguistics: An Introduction''. Oxford: Blac ...
*
Thai spelling reform of 1942 The Thai spelling reform of 1942 was initiated by the government of Prime Minister Field Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkhram. The prime minister's office announced a simplification of the Thai alphabet on 29 May 1942. The announcement was published in t ...
– simplified spelling system in use from 1942 to 1944


References


External links


Comprehensive free Thai alphabet resource


* ttp://www.omniglot.com/writing/thai.htm Omniglot - Thai
Thai consonants

Thai vowels
* Transliterations fo
Thai VowelsThai Consonants

Phonetic Organization of the Thai Consonants
by Richard Wordingham

Freeware for the Windows operating system
Insert Zero-Width Space Character
nbsp;– This utility prepares Thai text by inserting the Unicode "Zero-Width Space Character" between detected word breaks. {{Authority control Brahmic scripts Thai language Writing systems without word boundaries