Thai script

Thai
Script type	Abugida
Creator	Ramkhamhaeng the Great
Time period	1283–present
Direction	Left-to-right
Languages	Standard form: Thai, Southern Thai Non-standard form: Lanna, Isan, Pattani Malay and others
Related scripts
Parent systems	Proto-Sinaitic alphabet Phoenician alphabet Aramaic alphabet Brāhmī Tamil-Brahmi Pallava Khmer Thai
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Thai (352), ​Thai
Unicode
Unicode alias	Thai
Unicode range	U+0E00–U+0E7F

The Thai script (Template:Lang-th; RTGS: akson thai) is the abugida used to write Thai, Southern Thai and many other languages spoken in Thailand. The Thai alphabet itself (as used to write Thai) has 44 consonant symbols (Template:Lang-th, phayanchana), 16 vowel symbols (Template:Lang-th, sara) that combine into at least 32 vowel forms, and four tone diacritics (Template:Lang-th, wannayuk or wannayut) to create characters mostly representing syllables.

Although commonly referred to as the "Thai alphabet", the script is in fact not a true alphabet but an abugida, 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, with vowels arranged above, below, to the left, or to the right of the corresponding consonant, or in a combination of positions.

Thai has its own set of Thai numerals that are based on the Hindu-Arabic numeral system (Template:Lang-th, lek thai), but the standard Hindu-Arabic numerals (Template:Lang-th, lek hindu arabik) are mainly used except for government documents and the license plates of military vehicles.

History

The Thai alphabet is derived from the Old Khmer script (Template:Lang-th, akson khom), which is a southern Brahmic style of writing derived from the south Indian Pallava alphabet (Template:Lang-th).

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) and Indo-Aryan languages from which its script is derived. Although Chinese and other Sino-Tibetan 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 on the Southeast Asian mainland.

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 clusters are represented with the two styles of consonants. The two styles may form typographical ligatures, as in Devanagari. Independent vowels are used when a syllable starts with a vowel sign.

Thai tradition attributes the creation of the script to King Ramkhamhaeng the Great (Template:Lang-th) in 1283, though this has been challenged.

Ram Khamhaeng Inscription, the oldest inscription using proto-Thai script (Bangkok National Museum)

Orthography

There is a fairly complex relationship between spelling and sound. There are various issues:

1. 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) 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 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.
2. Thai borrowed a large number of words from Sanskrit and Pali, 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 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.
3. 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 สามารถ (spelled sǎamaarth but pronounced sa-mat [sǎːmâːt] with a silent r and a plain t that is represented using an aspirated consonant) "to be able" (Sanskrit समर्थ samartha)
   • Thai จันทร์ (spelled chanthr but pronounced chan [tɕan] because the th and the r are silent) "moon" (Sanskrit चन्द्र chandra)

Thai letters do not have small and capital forms like the Roman alphabet. Spaces between words are not used, except in certain linguistically motivated cases.

Punctuation

Minor pauses in sentences may be marked by a comma (Template:Lang-th or ลูกน้ำ, chunlaphak or luk nam), and major pauses by a period (Template:Lang-th or จุด, mahap phak or chut), but most often are marked by a blank space (Template:Lang-th, wak). A bird's eye ๏ (Template:Lang-th, ta kai, officially called ฟองมัน, fong man) formerly indicated paragraphs, but is now obsolete.

A kho mut ๛ (Template:Lang-th) can be used to mark the end of a chapter or document.

Thai writing also uses quotation marks (Template:Lang-th, anyaprakat) and parentheses (round brackets) (Template:Lang-th, wong lep or Template:Lang-th, nakha likhit), but not square brackets or braces.

Alphabet listing

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 obstruents such as b d g v z), or different Sanskrit and Pali 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 alphabetic order these are middle (กลาง, klang), high (สูง, sung), and low (ต่ำ, 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 unaspirated stops; "high" sounds, voiceless aspirated stops or voiceless fricatives; "low" sounds, voiced. Subsequent sound changes have obscured the phonetic nature of these classes. 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 (พื้นเสียง, pheun siang). 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 Tone table. 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, the higher class rules apply, but the marker, if used, goes over the low class one; accordingly, ห นำ ho nam and อ นำ o nam may be considered to be digraphs as such, as explained below the Tone table.

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 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). This makes them redundant. Set in 1890s Siam, a 2006 film titled in Thai: ฅนไฟบิน Flying Fire Person (in English: Dynamite Warrior), uses ฅ kho khon to spell ฅน Person. Compare entry for ฅ in table below, where person is spelled คน.

Equivalents for romanisation 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 (RTGS) defined by the Royal Thai Institute, and the almost identical ISO 11940-2 defined by the International Organization for Standardization, 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 (IPA) is given as well.

Alphabetic

Symbol	Name			RTGS		IPA		Class
	Thai	RTGS	Meaning	Initial	Final	Initial	Final
ก	ก ไก่	ko kai	chicken	k	k	[k]	[k̚]	mid
ข	ข ไข่	kho khai	egg	kh	k	[kʰ]	[k̚]	high
ฃ	ฃ ขวด	kho khuat	bottle (obsolete)	kh	k	[kʰ]	[k̚]	high
ค	ค ควาย	kho khwai	buffalo	kh	k	[kʰ]	[k̚]	low
ฅ	ฅ คน	kho khon	person (obsolete)	kh	k	[kʰ]	[k̚]	low
ฆ	ฆ ระฆัง	kho ra-khang	bell	kh	k	[kʰ]	[k̚]	low
ง	ง งู	ngo ngu	snake	ng	ng	[ŋ]	[ŋ]	low
จ	จ จาน	cho chan	plate	ch	t	[tɕ]	[t̚]	mid
ฉ	ฉ ฉิ่ง	cho ching	cymbals	ch	–	[tɕʰ]	–	high
ช	ช ช้าง	cho chang	elephant	ch	t	[tɕʰ]	[t̚]	low
ซ	ซ โซ่	so so	chain	s	t	[s]	[t̚]	low
ฌ	ฌ เฌอ	cho choe	tree	ch	–	[tɕʰ]	–	low
ญ	ญ หญิง	yo ying	woman	y	n	[j]	[n]	low
ฎ	ฎ ชฎา	do cha-da	headdress	d	t	[d]	[t̚]	mid
ฏ	ฏ ปฏัก	to pa-tak	goad, javelin	t	t	[t]	[t̚]	mid
ฐ	ฐ ฐาน	tho than	pedestal	th	t	[tʰ]	[t̚]	high
ฑ	ฑ มณโฑ	tho montho	Montho, character from Ramayana	th	t	[tʰ]	[t̚]	low
ฒ	ฒ ผู้เฒ่า	tho phu-thao	elder	th	t	[tʰ]	[t̚]	low
ณ	ณ เณร	no nen	samanera	n	n	[n]	[n]	low
ด	ด เด็ก	do dek	child	d	t	[d]	[t̚]	mid
ต	ต เต่า	to tao	turtle	t	t	[t]	[t̚]	mid
ถ	ถ ถุง	tho thung	sack	th	t	[tʰ]	[t̚]	high
ท	ท ทหาร	tho thahan	soldier	th	t	[tʰ]	[t̚]	low
ธ	ธ ธง	tho thong	flag	th	t	[tʰ]	[t̚]	low
น	น หนู	no nu	mouse	n	n	[n]	[n]	low
บ	บ ใบไม้	bo baimai	leaf	b	p	[b]	[p̚]	mid
ป	ป ปลา	po pla	fish	p	p	[p]	[p̚]	mid
ผ	ผ ผึ้ง	pho phueng	bee	ph	–	[pʰ]	–	high
ฝ	ฝ ฝา	fo fa	lid	f	–	[f]	–	high
พ	พ พาน	pho phan	phan	ph	p	[pʰ]	[p̚]	low
ฟ	ฟ ฟัน	fo fan	teeth	f	p	[f]	[p̚]	low
ภ	ภ สำเภา	pho sam-phao	Junk	ph	p	[pʰ]	[p̚]	low
ม	ม ม้า	mo ma	horse	m	m	[m]	[m]	low
ย	ย ยักษ์	yo yak	giant, yaksha	y	– or n	[j]	– or [n]	low
ร	ร เรือ	ro ruea	boat	r	n	[r]	[n]	low
ล	ล ลิง	lo ling	monkey	l	n	[l]	[n]	low
ว	ว แหวน	wo waen	ring	w	–	[w]	–	low
ศ	ศ ศาลา	so sala	pavilion, sala	s	t	[s]	[t̚]	high
ษ	ษ ฤๅษี	so rue-si	hermit	s	t	[s]	[t̚]	high
ส	ส เสือ	so suea	tiger	s	t	[s]	[t̚]	high
ห	ห หีบ	ho hip	chest, box	h	–	[h]	–	high
ฬ	ฬ จุฬา	lo chu-la	kite	l	n	[l]	[n]	low
อ	อ อ่าง	o ang	basin	–	–	[ʔ]	–	mid
ฮ	ฮ นกฮูก	ho nok-huk	owl	h	–	[h]	–	low

Notes

Phonetic

The consonants can be organised by place and manner of articulation according to principles of the International Phonetic Association. 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 /b/ and the unvoiced, aspirated /pʰ/, Thai distinguishes a third sound which is neither voiced nor aspirated, which occurs in English only as an allophone of /p/, approximately the sound of the p in "spin". There is similarly an alveolar /t/, /tʰ/, /d/ triplet. In the velar series there is a /k/, /kʰ/ pair and in the postalveolar series the /tɕ/, /tɕʰ/ pair.

In each cell below, the first line indicates International Phonetic Alphabet (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

	Bilabial			Labio- dental	Alveolar			Alveolo- palatal		Palatal	Velar			Glottal
Nasal			[m] ม				[n] ณ,น						[ŋ] ง
Plosive	[p] ป	[pʰ] ผ,พ,ภ	[b] บ		[t] ฏ,ต	[tʰ] ฐ,ฑ,ฒ,ถ,ท,ธ	[d] ฎ,ด				[k] ก	[kʰ] ข,ฃ,ค,ฅ,ฆ		[ʔ] อ
Affricate								[tɕ] จ	[tɕʰ] ฉ, ช, ฌ
Fricative				[f] ฝ,ฟ	[s] ซ,ศ,ษ,ส									[h] ห,ฮ
Trill							[r] ร
Approximant			[w] ว							[j] ญ,ย
Lateral approximant							[l] ล,ฬ
Notes

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 /n/.

Only 8 ending sounds, as well as no ending 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

	Bilabial		Alveolar		Palatal	Velar		Glottal
Nasal		[m] ม		[n] ณ,น,ญ,ร,ล,ฬ			[ŋ] ง
Plosive	[p̚] บ,ป,พ,ฟ,ภ		[t̚] จ,ช,ซ,ฌ,ฎ,ฏ,ฐ,ฑ,ฒ, ด,ต,ถ,ท,ธ,ศ,ษ,ส			[k̚] ก,ข,ค,ฆ		[ʔ]
Approximant		[w] ว			[j] ย
Notes

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.

Symbol	Name		Combinations
	Thai	RTGS
ะ	วิสรรชนีย์	Wisanchani (from Sanskrit visarjanīya)	◌ะ; ◌ัวะ; เ◌ะ; เ◌อะ; เ◌าะ; เ◌ียะ; เ◌ือะ; แ◌ะ; โ◌ะ
◌ั	ไม้หันอากาศ	Mai han a-kat	◌ั◌; ◌ัว; ◌ัวะ
◌็	ไม้ไต่คู้	Mai tai khu	◌็; ◌็อ◌; เ◌็◌; แ◌็◌
า	ลากข้าง	Lak khang	◌า; ◌า◌; ำ; เ◌า; เ◌าะ
◌ิ	พินทุอิ	Phinthu i	◌ิ; เ◌ิ◌; ◌ี; ◌ี◌; เ◌ีย; เ◌ียะ; ◌ื◌; ◌ือ; เ◌ือ; เ◌ือะ
◌̍	ฝนทอง	Fon thong	◌ี; ◌ี◌; เ◌ีย; เ◌ียะ
◌̎	ฟันหนู	Fan nu	◌ื◌; ◌ือ; เ◌ือ; เ◌ือะ
◌ํ	นิคหิต	Nikkhahit	◌ึ; ◌ึ◌; ◌ำ
◌ุ	ตีนเหยียด	Tin yiat	◌ุ; ◌ุ◌
◌ู	ตีนคู้	Tin khu	◌ู; ◌ู◌
เ	ไม้หน้า	Mai na	เ◌; เ◌◌; เ◌็◌; เ◌อ; เ◌อ◌; เ◌อะ; เ◌า; เ◌าะ; เ◌ิ◌; เ◌ีย; เ◌ีย◌; เ◌ียะ; เ◌ือ; เ◌ือ◌; เ◌ือะ; แ◌; แ◌◌; แ◌็◌; แ◌ะ
โ	ไม้โอ	Mai o	โ◌; โ◌◌; โ◌ะ
ใ	ไม้ม้วน	Mai muan	ใ◌
ไ	ไม้มลาย	Mai malai	ไ◌
อ	ตัว อ	Tua o	◌อ; ◌็อ◌; ◌ือ; เ◌อ; เ◌อ◌; เ◌อะ; เ◌ือ; เ◌ือะ
ย	ตัว ย	Tua yo	เ◌ีย; เ◌ีย◌; เ◌ียะ
ว	ตัว ว	Tua wo	◌ัว; ◌ัวะ
ฤ	ตัว ฤ	Tua rue	ฤ
ฤๅ	ตัว ฤๅ	Tua rue	ฤๅ
ฦ	ตัว ฦ	Tua lue	ฦ
ฦๅ	ตัว ฦๅ	Tua lue	ฦๅ
Notes

The inherent vowels are /a/ in open syllables (CV) and /o/ in closed syllables (CVC). For example, ถนน transcribes /tʰànǒn/ "road". There are a few exceptions in Pali loanwords, where the inherent vowel of an open syllable is /o/. The circumfix vowels, such as เ–าะ /ɔʔ/, encompass a preceding consonant with an inherent vowel. For example, /pʰɔʔ/ is written เพาะ, and /tɕʰapʰɔʔ/ "only" is written เฉพาะ.

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. 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 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.

The pronunciation below is indicated by the International Phonetic Alphabet 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 /a/ vowel in certain Sanskrit loanwords and appears as ◌รร◌. When used without a final consonant (◌รร), /n/ is implied as the final consonant, giving [an].

Short vowels								Long vowels
Name		Symbol	IPA	RTGS	Variants	Similar Sound (English RP pronunciation)		Name		Symbol	IPA	RTGS	Variants	Similar Sound (English RP pronunciation)
Simple vowels
สระอะ	Sara a	◌ะ ◌ ◌ั◌	a	a	u	u in "nut"		สระอา	Sara a	◌า ◌า◌	aː	a	ah, ar, aa	a in "father"
สระอิ	Sara i	◌ิ ◌ิ◌	i	i		y in "greedy"		สระอี	Sara i	◌ี ◌ี◌	iː	i	ee, ii, y	ee in "see"
สระอึ	Sara ue	◌ึ ◌ึ◌	ɯ	ue	eu, u, uh	Can be approximated by pronouncing the oo in "look" with unrounded lips German: the ü in Mücke		สระอือ	Sara ue	◌ือ ◌ื◌	ɯː	ue	eu, u	Can be approximated by pronouncing the oo in RP "goose" with unrounded lips
สระอุ	Sara u	◌ุ ◌ุ◌	u	u	oo	oo in "look"		สระอู	Sara u	◌ู ◌ู◌	uː	u	oo, uu	oo in "too"
สระเอะ	Sara e	เ◌ะ เ◌็◌	e	e		e in "neck"		สระเอ	Sara e	เ◌ เ◌◌	eː	e	ay, a, ae, ai, ei	a in "lame"
สระแอะ	Sara ae	แ◌ะ แ◌็◌	ɛ	ae	aeh, a	a in "at"		สระแอ	Sara ae	แ◌ แ◌◌	ɛː	ae	a	a in "ham"
สระโอะ	Sara o	โ◌ะ ◌◌	o	o		oa in "boat"		สระโอ	Sara o	โ◌ โ◌◌	oː	o	or, oh, ô	o in "go"
สระเอาะ	Sara o	เ◌าะ ◌็อ◌	ɔ	o	o, aw	o in "not"		สระออ	Sara o	◌อ ◌อ◌ ◌◌ ◌็	ɔː	o	or, aw	aw in "saw"
สระเออะ	Sara oe	เ◌อะ	ɤʔ	oe	eu	e in "the"		สระเออ	Sara oe	เ◌อ เ◌ิ◌ เ◌อ◌	ɤː ɤ	oe	er, eu, ur	u in "burn"
Diphthongs
สระเอียะ	Sara ia	เ◌ียะ	iaʔ	ia	iah, ear, ie	ea in "ear" with glottal stop		สระเอีย	Sara ia	เ◌ีย เ◌ีย◌	ia	ia	ear, ere, ie	ea in "ear"
สระเอือะ	Sara uea	เ◌ือะ	ɯaʔ	uea	eua, ua	ure in "pure"		สระเอือ	Sara uea	เ◌ือ เ◌ือ◌	ɯa	uea	eua, ua, ue	ure in "pure"
สระอัวะ	Sara ua	◌ัวะ	uaʔ	ua		ewe in "sewer"		สระอัว	Sara ua	◌ัว ◌ว◌	ua	ua	uar	ewe in "newer"
Phonetic diphthongs
สระอิ + ว	Sara i + wo waen	◌ิว	iu; iw	io	ew	ew in "new"
สระเอะ + ว	Sara e + wo waen	เ◌็ว	eu; ew	eo	eu, ew			สระเอ + ว	Sara e + wo waen	เ◌ว	eːu; eːw	eo	eu, ew	ai + ow in "rainbow"
								สระแอ + ว	Sara ae + wo waen	แ◌ว	ɛːu; ɛːw	aeo	aew, eo	a in "ham" + ow in "low"
สระเอา	Sara ao	เ◌า	au; aw	ao	aw, au, ow	ow in "cow"		สระอา + ว	Sara a + wo waen	◌าว	aːu	ao	au	ow in "now"
								สระเอีย + ว	Sara ia + wo waen	เ◌ียว	iau; iaw	iao	eaw, iew, iow	io in "trio"
สระอะ + ย	Sara a + yo yak	◌ัย	ai; aj	ai	ay	i in "hi"		สระอา + ย	Sara a + yo yak	◌าย	aːi; aːj	ai	aai, aay, ay	ye in "bye"
สระไอ	Sara ai	ใ◌, ไ◌ ไ◌ย
สระเอาะ + ย	Sara o + yo yak	◌็อย	ɔi; ɔj	oi	oy			สระออ + ย	Sara o + yo yak	◌อย	ɔːi; ɔːj	oi	oy	oy in "boy"
								สระโอ + ย	Sara o + yo yak	โ◌ย	oːi; oːj	oi	oy
สระอุ + ย	Sara u + yo yak	◌ุย	ui; uj	ui	uy
								สระเออ + ย	Sara oe + yo yak	เ◌ย	ɤːi; ɤːj	oei	oey	u in "burn" + y in "boy"
								สระอัว + ย	Sara ua + yo yak	◌วย	uai; uaj	uai	uay	uoy in "buoy"
								สระเอือ + ย	Sara uea + yo yak	เ◌ือย	ɯai; ɯaj	ueai	uai
Extra vowels
สระอำ	Sara am	ำ	am	am	um	um in "sum"
ฤ	Rue	ฤ	rɯ ri rɤː	rue, ri, roe	ru, ri	rew in "grew", ry in "angry"		ฤๅ	Rue	ฤๅ	rɯː	rue	ruu
ฦ	Lue	ฦ	lɯ	lue	lu, li	lew in "blew"		ฦๅ	Lue	ฦๅ	lɯː	lue	lu

Central Thai

Thai is a tonal language, 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 (long or short), closing consonant (plosive or sonorant, i.e., dead or live) and, if present, one of four tone marks, whose name derive from the name of the digits 1–4 borrowed from Pali or Sanskrit. The rules for denoting tones are shown in the following chart:

Tone type top to bottom: high, rising, mid, falling, low. Initial consonant class left to right: low (blue), middle (green), high (red). Syllable type: live (empty circle), dead (full circle), dead short (narrow ellipse), dead long (wide ellipse).

Symbol	Name		Syllable composition and initial consonant class
	Thai	RTGS	Vowel and final	Low	Mid	High
	(ไม่มี)	(none)	live long vowel or vowel plus sonorant	mid	mid	rising
	(ไม่มี)	(none)	dead short short vowel at end or plus plosive	high	low	low
	(ไม่มี)	(none)	dead long long vowel plus plosive	falling	low	low
่	ไม้เอก	mai ek	any	falling	low	low
้	ไม้โท	mai tho	any	high	falling	falling
๊	ไม้ตรี	mai tri	any	-	high	-
๋	ไม้จัตวา	mai chattawa	any	-	rising	-

Thai language tone chart

Flowchart for determining the tone of a Thai syllable. Click to enlarge

"None", that is, no tone marker, is used with the base accent (พื้นเสียง, pheun siang). Mai tri and mai chattawa are only used with mid-class consonants.

Tone Modifiers

Some consonants (not diacritics) are preceded by silent tone modifiers:

• 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.

Low consonant	High consonant	IPA
ง	หง	[ŋ]
ญ	หญ	[j]
น	หน	[n]
ม	หม	[m]
ย	หย	[j]
ร	หร	[r]
ล	หล	[l]
ว	หว	[w]
Low consonant	Middle consonant	IPA
ย	อย	[j]

Some dialect 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 can have up to seven tones. When Southern Thai is written in Thai script, there are different rules for indicating spoken tone.

Tones	Nakhon Si Thammarat accent rules			IPA
First tone	An initial consonant class "high" with long sound, and an initial consonant class "low" after the word.			[˦˥˧]
	An initial consonant class "high" with short sound, and an initial consonant class "low" with [k̚], [t̚], [p̚] finals after the word.			[˨˦]
Second tone	An initial consonant class "high" both short long sound, and an initial consonant class "low" after the word.			[˦]
Third tone	An initial consonant class "middle" long sound.			[˧˦˧]
	An initial consonant class "middle" short sound with [k̚], [t̚], [p̚] finals.			[˧˦]
Fourth tone	An initial consonant class "middle" both short long sound.			[˧]
Fifth tone	An initial consonant class "low" with head word.			[˨˧˨]
Sixth tone	An initial consonant class "low" long sound.			[˨˦]
Seventh tone	An initial consonant class "low" short sound.			[˨˩]

Diacritics

Other diacritics are used to indicate short vowels and silent letters:

• Mai taikhu means "stick that climbs and squats". It is a miniature Thai numeral 8 ๘. Mai taikhu is often used with sara e (เ) and sara ae (แ) in closed syllables.
• Thanthakhat means "killing as punishment".

Symbol	Name		Meaning
	Thai	RTGS
◌็	ไม้ไต่คู้	mai taikhu	shortens vowel
◌์	ทัณฑฆาต or การันต์	thanthakhat or karan	indicates silent letter

Fan nu means "rat teeth" and is thought as being placed in combination with short sara i and fong man to form other characters.

Symbol	Name		Use
	Thai	RTGS
"	ฟันหนู	fan nu	combined with short sara i (◌ิ) to make long sara ue (◌ื)
			combined with fong man (๏) to make fong man fan nu (๏")

Numerals

Main article: Thai numerals

The Thai script contains decimal numerical digits.

Hindu-Arabic	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
Thai	๐	๑	๒	๓	๔	๕	๖	๗	๘	๙

Other symbols

Symbol	Name		Meaning
	Thai	RTGS
ฯ	ไปยาลน้อย	pai-yan noi	marks formal phrase shortened by convention (abbreviation)
ฯลฯ	ไปยาลใหญ่	pai-yan yai	et cetera
ๆ	ไม้ยมก	mai ya-mok	preceding word or phrase is reduplicated
๏	ฟองมัน, ตาไก่	fong man, ta kai	previously marked beginning of a sentence, paragraph, or stanza (obsolete); now only marks beginning of a stanza in a poem; now also used as bullet point
๏"	ฟองมันฟันหนู, ฟันหนูฟองมัน, ฝนทองฟองมัน	fong man fan nu, fan nu fong man, fon tong fong man	previously marked beginning of a chapter (obsolete)
๐"	ฟองดัน	fong dan
ฯ	อังคั่นเดี่ยว, คั่นเดี่ยว, ขั้นเดี่ยว	angkhan diao, khan diao, khan diao	previously marked end of a sentence or stanza (obsolete)
๚	อังคั่นคู่, คั่นคู่, ขั้นคู่	angkhan khu, khan khu, khan khu	marks end of stanza; marks end of chapter or long section
ฯะ	อังคั่นวิสรรชนีย์	angkhan wisanchani	marks end of a stanza in a poem
๚ะ
๛	โคมูตร, สูตรนารายณ์	khomut, sutnarai	marks end of a chapter or document; marks end of a story
๚ะ๛	อังคั่นวิสรรชนีย์โคมูตร	angkhan wisanchani khomut	marks the very end of a written work
฿	บาท	bat	baht (the currency of Thailand)

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.

Sanskrit and Pali

The Thai script (like all Indic scripts) uses a number of modifications to write Sanskrit and related languages (in particular, Pali). Pali 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 pinthu 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 [arahaṃ sammāsambuddho bhagavā]. 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 [ga]), which makes Thai spoken Sanskrit incomprehensible to sanskritists not trained in Thailand. The Sanskrit values are used in transliteration (without the diacritics), 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 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, but pronounced su-wan-na-phum. ศรีนครินทร์ is romanised as Srinagarindra but pronounced si-nakha-rin.

Plosives (vargaḥ)

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 value in square brackets.

class	unaspirated unvoiced	aspirated	voiced	aspirated voiced	nasal
velar	ก kà [ka]	ข khà [kha]	ค khá [ga]	ฆ khá [gha]	ง ngá [ṅa]
palatal	จ cà [ca]	ฉ chà [cha]	ช chá [ja]	ฌ chá [jha]	ญ yá [ña]
retroflex	ฏ tà [ṭa]	ฐ thà [ṭha]	ฑ thá [ḍa]	ฒ thá [ḍha]	ณ ná [ṇa]
dental	ต tà [ta]	ถ thà [tha]	ท thá [da]	ธ thá [dha]	น ná [na]
labial	ป pà [pa]	ผ phà [pha]	พ phá [ba]	ภ phá [bha]	ม má [ma]
tone class	M	H	L	L	L

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, and ฐ is pronounced like ถ, and so forth.

The Sanskrit unaspirated unvoiced plosives are pronounced as unaspirated unvoiced, whereas Sanskrit aspirated voiced plosives are pronounced as aspirated unvoiced.

Non-plosives (avargaḥ)

Semivowels (กึ่งสระ kueng sara) and liquids 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.

series	symbol	value	related vowels
palatal	ย	yá [ya]	อิ and อี
retroflex	ร	rá [ra]	ฤ and ฤๅ
dental	ล	lá [la]	ฦ and ฦๅ
labial	ว	wá [va]	อุ and อู

Sibilants

Inserted sound(s) (เสียดแทรก siat saek) follow the semi-vowel ว in alphabetical order.

series	symbol	value
palatal	ศ	sà [śa]
retroflex	ษ	sà [ṣa]
dental	ส	sà [sa]

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 an 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) 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 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

symbol	value
ห	hà [ha]

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, but in Thai is สิงห์, with a karan on the ห; correct pronunciation is "sing", but foreigners to Thailand typically say "sing-ha".)

Voiced lla

symbol	value
ฬ	llá [ḷa]

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

Vowels

symbol	value
อะ	a [a]
อา	a [ā]
อิ	i [i]
อี	i [ī]
อุ	u [u]
อู	u [ū]
เอ	e [e]
โอ	o [o]
ฤ	ru [ṛ]
ฤๅ	ru [ṝ]
ฦ	lu [ḷ]
ฦๅ	lu [ḹ]

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, 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 [ɔː]. 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 [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 symbols

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

Nikkhahit (anusvāra)

Symbol	IAST
อํ	ṃ

In Sanskrit, the anusvāra indicates a certain kind of nasal sound. In Thai this is written as an open circle above the consonant, known as nikkhahit (นิคหิต), from Pali niggahīta. Nasalisation does not occur in Thai, therefore, a nasal stop is always substituted: e.g. ตํ taṃ, 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 [saṃskṛta] 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. 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, a symbol (equivalent to virāma in devanagari) needs to be added to indicate that the implied vowel is not to be pronounced. This is the phinthu, which is a solid dot (also called 'Bindu' in Sanskrit) below the consonant.

Yamakkan

อ๎

Yamakkan (ยามักการ) is an obsolete symbol used to mark the beginning of consonant clusters: e.g. พ๎ราห๎มณ phramana [brāhmaṇa]. Without the yamakkan, this word would be pronounced pharahamana [barāhamaṇa] 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 pinthu may be used to achieve the same effect: พฺราหฺมณ.

Visarga

The means of recording visarga (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

Main article: Thai (Unicode block)

Thai script was added to the Unicode 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 character set which encodes the vowels เ, แ, โ, ใ and ไ before the consonants they follow, and thus Thai, Lao, Tai Viet and New Tai Lue are the only Brahmic scripts in Unicode that use visual order instead of logical order.

Thai[1][2] Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

U+0E0x

ก

ข

ฃ

ค

ฅ

ฆ

ง

จ

ฉ

ช

ซ

ฌ

ญ

ฎ

ฏ

U+0E1x

ฐ

ฑ

ฒ

ณ

ด

ต

ถ

ท

ธ

น

บ

ป

ผ

ฝ

พ

ฟ

U+0E2x

ภ

ม

ย

ร

ฤ

ล

ฦ

ว

ศ

ษ

ส

ห

ฬ

อ

ฮ

ฯ

U+0E3x

ะ

ั

า

ำ

ิ

ี

ึ

ื

ุ

ู

ฺ

฿

U+0E4x

เ

แ

โ

ใ

ไ

ๅ

ๆ

็

่

้

๊

๋

์

ํ

๎

๏

U+0E5x

๐

๑

๒

๓

๔

๕

๖

๗

๘

๙

๚

๛

U+0E6x

U+0E7x

Notes 1.^ As of Unicode version 16.0 2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

Keyboard Layouts

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

See also

• Thai language
• Thai literature
• Thai language: Script: Transliteration
  • Royal Thai General System of Transcription
  • ISO 11940
  • ISO 11940-2
• Thai numerals
• Thai braille

External links

• Comprehensive free Thai alphabet resource
• Comparing Thai script with Devanagari, Khmer, Burmese, and Tai Tham
• Omniglot - Thai
• Thai consonants
• Thai vowels
• Transliterations for Thai Vowels, Thai Consonants
• Phonetic Organization of the Thai Consonants, by Richard Wordingham
• Virtual Thai Keyboard Freeware for the Windows operating system
• Insert Zero-Width Space Character – This utility prepares Thai text by inserting the Unicode "Zero-Width Space Character" between detected word breaks.