ซ โซ่

01The sound it makes

4 of the 44 letters open a syllable with s, so the sound on its own will never tell you which one you are looking at. 18 letters close one with -t, and ซ is among them.

02The tone it decides

Low class takes the same two marks high class does and means something different by them: on ซ, ◌่ gives falling rather than low and ◌้ gives highrather than falling. A dead syllable then turns on the vowel’s length.

03Where it sits in a word

The same letter is two sounds: ซ is s at the front of a syllable and -t at the back. Of the 4,271 words in this app it opens 29, sits inside 71 and closes 1.

Position here is orthographic — where the letter is written, not where it is said. The five leading vowels เ แ โ ใ ไ are skipped when deciding what comes first, so ไก่ counts as a word that starts with ก.

04Text it turns up in

A word list is a specimen jar. 8 of the 221 sentences and phrases in this app are written with ซ somewhere in them — here are 4, shortest first, with every ซ lit.

05The class it belongs to

ซ is one of 24 low-class consonants. That membership is the single fact the ladder in 02 is built on — change the class and every tone in it changes. Here they all are, with ซ lit among them.