ล ลิง

01The sound it makes

2 of the 44 letters open a syllable with l, so the sound on its own will never tell you which one you are looking at. 6 letters close one with -n, and ล is among them.

02The tone it decides

Low class takes the same two marks high class does and means something different by them: on ล, ◌่ 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: ล is l at the front of a syllable and -n at the back. Of the 4,271 words in this app it opens 111, sits inside 661 and closes 116.

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. 53 of the 221 sentences and phrases in this app are written with ล somewhere in them — here are 4, shortest first, with every ล lit.

05The class it belongs to

ล 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 ล lit among them.