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กำลังโหลด
กำลังโหลด
44 letters · 33 vowel patterns · 25 clusters · 8 final sounds · 4 tone marks
Floats over the consonant, never touching the reading order.
Sits above the base, to the right of an above-vowel if there is one. It is read last and never changes a sound — only the pitch.
Written to the left of the consonant and pronounced after it. This is the one that breaks English reading habits.
Read the consonant first, whatever else is on the page. Its class is one of the three inputs to the tone.
The base can be two letters: 25 pairs, of two different kinds.
True clusters — both spoken · 3 of 18Leading pairs — first is silent, and sets the class · 3 of 7Follows the consonant, the way English writes a vowel.
Hangs beneath the consonant.
36 spellings converge on 8 sounds. Stops are unreleased; sonorants ring out.
Parts of one vowel land on both sides of the consonant at once — and often above and after as well.
The sound can be held. A live syllable can carry any of the five tones its class allows.
The sound is cut off, and the choice of tone narrows with it. In the standard rule table a dead syllable on a high- or low-class letter carries no tone mark at all — its tone is already fixed by class and vowel length.
Modern spelling writes past that. ค่ะ — low class, dead·short, mai ek — is the commonest polite particle in the language.
A garan mark over a consonant cancels it. Common in Pali, Sanskrit and English loans.
ร can also go unspoken with no mark at all: สร้าง (saang), สามารถ (saa-maat).
The commonest irregular reading in the language. Not thr- — just s-.
ไม้ไต่คู้ ◌็ shortens the vowel; ไม้ยมก ๆ repeats the word before it. Neither touches the tone.
Borrowed words keep letters they no longer pronounce, and stack marks the native system rarely needs.