Learn to read Thai - Tutorial 22

Implied Vowels

I have touched briefly on this already, but now I want to do a bit more on this tricky subject of vowels that are pronounced but not written. Written English doesn't have this concept and it is still the biggest problem for me with Thai words that I'm not familiar with.

I don't fully understand the rules but as I find out more I will update this page. I will give some examples which will enable you to read most words.

Many single syllable Thai words consist of just two consonants. When you see this you need to insert an 'o' sound in the middle. That's quite a simple thing to remember.

ลด

The word above has just two syllables - lor ling (Tutorial 8) and dor dek (Tutorial 6).

The word therefore starts with an 'l' sound and finishes with an unreleased 't' sound. There is no written vowel so you add an implied 'o'.

The Thai word lot means to reduce, to decrease, to discount. This is a word that you see often in shops, often followed by a percentage.

Tone: Low-class initial consonant, dead syllable, short vowel = High tone (Tutorial 14)

Sometimes you will see words with three consonants and no vowels. In that case you add a short 'uh' between consonants 1 and 2, and an 'o' between consonants 2 and 3.

ขนม

This word consists of kor kai (Tutorial 5), nor noo (Tutorial 8) and mor maa (Tutorial 8).

The Thai word kanom is a very generic word for sweet, dessert, snack, confectionery.

The next word is similar:

ถนน

The word above has three consonants and no written vowels. The first consonant is tor tuung (Tutorial 15) and it is followed by two instances of nor noo (Tutorial 8).

We have 't n n' and as there are no written vowels we need to add 'uh' and 'o'. We therefore get tuh-non which is Thai for street or road. The photo below shows a real life example.

Some words have no written vowel in the first syllable but include a written vowel for the second syllable. In that case you add a short 'uh' for the first syllable.

สนามบิน

This is actually two words. The first word consists of sor seua (Tutorial 10), nor noo (Tutorial 8), sara aa (Tutorial 7) and mor maa (Tutorial 8).

There is no written vowel between the first two consonants but there is a written vowel in the second syllable. We therefore add 'uh' in the first syllable.

The Thai word suh-naam is a generic word for field or course.

The second word consists of bor bai mai (Tutorial 3) sara i (Tutorial 6) and nor noo (Tutorial 8).

The Thai word bin is the verb 'to fly'. When these two words are combined the meaning is 'airport'.

Some words are pronounced with three syllables but only have a written vowel in the final syllable.

ปกติ

In the word above we have bpor bplaa (Tutorial 3), gor gai (Tutorial 1), dtor dtao (Tutorial 3) and sara i (Tutorial 6) - three consonants and a short vowel.

The first syllable starts with a 'bp' sound and finishes with an unreleased 'k' sound. There is no written vowel so we add 'o' to get bpok. Bear in mind that the unreleased 'k' sound is barely audible.

The second syllable uses the final consonant of the first syllable as a starting consonant. This time gor gai makes a hard 'g' sound. The final consonant is dtor dtao and so it is pronounced as an unreleased 't' sound. Again, there is no written vowel so we add an 'uh'.

The final syllable has a written vowel. The initial consonant of the third syllable is the final consonant from the second syllable which makes a 'dt' sound and the vowel is a short 'i'.

The word sounds something like bpok-gut-dti and means 'normal' or 'normally' in Thai.

In words of the spoken form 'Consonant-Vowel-Consonant/Consonant-Vowel-Consonant' sometimes there is an implied 'uh' between the first and second syllables and sometimes not.

โทรศัพท์

The first syllable consists of sara or (Tutorial 19), tor tuh-haan (Tutorial 15) and ror reua (Tutorial 2). The vowel used here is written before the initial consonant so we get tor.

At the end of the word you can see another tor tuh-haan but you should have spotted gaa-run above it meaning we can ignore this consonant (Tutorial 21).

The final syllable consists of the fairly rare 's' consonant sor saa-laa (Tutorial 10), mai-hun-aagaat (Tutorial 2) and por paan (Tutorial 17) so we get sup.

Our first syllable is tor and our final syllable is sup but we need to add an implied 'uh' between these two syllables.

The Thai word tor-ruh-sup means telephone.

Here's a real sign. For the other words in the sign, see Tutorial 27

Some words, even longer than the examples above, have no written vowels. With a word that consists of four consonants we add an 'o' between consonants 1 and 2, and 3 and 4. We add an 'uh' between consonants 2 and 3.

This sounds really confusing but with enough practice it starts to become clearer.

ชนบท

This word consists of chor chaang (Tutorial 19), nor noo (Tutorial 8), bor bai mai (Tutorial 3), and tor tuh-haan (Tutorial 15). It's a three syllable word but it is written simply with four consonants and no vowels.

Using the above rule, we get chon-nuh-bot which is Thai for countryside.

Remember that when one consonant is used to end a syllable and start the next, the sound of the consonant can change.

ผลไม้

The first syllable consists of por peung (Tutorial 17) and lor ling which becomes an 'n' sound if used as a final consonant (Tutorial 8). There is no written vowel so we add an 'o' to get pon.

We use the final consonant of syllable 1 as the initial consonant of syllable 2. As an initial consonant lor ling has an 'l' sound. We now need to add an 'uh' between the first and third syllables so we get luh.

The final syllable is quite straightforward. It has a written vowel - sara ai mai-muh-laay (Tutorial 8) - and the consonant is mor maa (Tutorial 8) so we get mai.

When we put all this together we get pon-luh-mai which is Thai for fruit.

บริ

Quite a few Thai words begin with these three letters: bor bai mai, ror reua and sara i. However, the first two consonants do not form a consonant cluster so we do not get the prefix 'bri'.

When you see this combination you need to add an 'o' between the consonants so that it becomes bori.

บริการ

We know that the first part of this word is bori. The second part consists of gor gai (Tutorial 1), the long 'aa' vowel (Tutorial 7) and ror reua which, as a final consonant makes an 'n' sound (Tutorial 2).

We therefore get borigaan which means service in Thai. The photo below shows a real-life example but notice how ror reua is written like an English 's'. This is extremely common with fonts used to write signs in Thailand.

The word before service is:

เปิด (bpert)

This means 'open' in Thai (Tutorial 16). The sign means 'open for service'.

บริษัท

You will see that the first part of this word is the same. The second part consists of one of the fairly rare 's' characters (Tutorial 10), mai-hun-aagaat (Tutorial 2) and tor tuh-haan (Tutorial 15).

We therefore get borisut which means 'company' in Thai (as in a firm or organisation).

ตู้รับบริจาค

There are no spaces between words in Thai but once you start to familiarise yourself with the written language you can see where words begin and end. There are three words in this sign.

The first word dtoo is a general word for cabinet/cupboard/enclosure - dtoo yen (cold cupboard) = fridge, dtoo seu-uh paa (clothes cupboard) = wardrobe, etc.

The Thai word rup has many meanings but in this context it means 'to receive'.

The third word is one of the bori- words, in this case borijaak which means 'to donate' in Thai. The word can be used for money, goods or blood.

This is a cupboard to receive donations, in other words a donation box.

This next sign isn't related to this tutoral but because of its similarity to the photo above I have included it here for reading practice. It's another box to receive something. But what?

The Thai prefix kwaam turns a verb or adjective into a noun. Sometimes the prefix garn is used for the same thing. For example, roo is the verb 'to know' and kwaam-roo is 'knowledge'.

kit is 'to think' and hen is 'to see'. Sometimes Thai is a bit clumsy and instead of a simple, single word the word is really a definition consisting of several words. This is a suggestion box.

Hopefully, your pronunciation was something like dtoo rup kwaam kit hen

บริเวณ

This word starts the same way - boriwane - and it means zone, area, region, vicinity, etc.

haam (don't) ting (throw away) ka-ya (rubbish) boriwane nee (in this area)

Here's another sign with haam (don't do something) and boriwane (area). After boriwane comes wut (temple), so the sign is telling people not to do something in the vicinity of the temple. What?

A vowel has fallen off the sign. Can you see what and where it should be? The Thai word look is the prefix for 'offspring'. look-maa offspring of a dog is a puppy and look-maew is a kitten.

The Thai word bploy means 'to release'. The sign is telling people not to release unwanted puppies and kittens at the temple.

Thais have strange attitudes towards animals. They believe it is a sin to sterilise animals and therefore dogs and cats breed unchecked. No one wants to take care of them but the animals are pitied at the same time.

The Thai solution is just to dump unwanted animals at the local temple where the monks and other people will feed them. This causes big problems for the temples so many temples have signs telling people not to do it.

Hopefully, you should be able to fully translate this sign using the information in these tutorials. There is enough information if you look and have enough motivation to learn.

If you really get stuck, send me an e-mail.

Unfortunately, there are times when it gets a lot worse than the examples I've given above! I will try to explain.

A Thai word might be pronounced: consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel. In English it would be written the same way, so no problem.

In Thai some of the vowels consists of three separate characters and these can surround both consonants but they only make one vowel sound which is voiced after the second consonant.

In between the two consonants is a vowel sound but (just to simplify things for foreigners learning to read Thai) it is implied so it isn't written!

The following word is an example:

เฉพาะ (especially, particularly, restricted)

If the implied vowel was written it would be quite a straightforward word to read:

ฉะเพาะ (this is the phonetic spelling but it's not how the word is written)

See Tutorial 24 for this vowel combination.

There's not much you can do about this kind of spelling. You learn the same way you learn English words that are pronounced completely differently to how they are written.

Don't worry. If you can follow what I am trying to explain in this example you are doing very well. When I first encountered this word I didn't know how to pronounce it so I asked my girlfriend at the time.

Living in Thailand I read signs constantly and I still run into words that I'm not sure how to pronounce. When I do so I ask my wife. I'm not ashamed to ask and neither should you be. Thais love foreigners taking an interest in their language and they love to help.

Here's the word in a real sign. The Thai word jao-naa-tee means 'person in charge'. Room 2 is restricted to the person in charge and therefore off-limits to everyone else.

Summary

Written Thai is both easy and difficult. The previous tutorials were easy to write and - I think - easy to follow. It's actually very logical most of the time and a lot less ambiguous than written English.

However, the subject today is one of those areas where written Thai starts to get difficult. As I was writing I realised that I didn't fully understand implied vowels. I know enough most of the time but unfamiliar words can still catch me out.

I am constantly trying to plug the gaps in my knowledge so when (or if) I get more information about this I will make some updates. However, what I have written above should be enough for you to get by with many words that you see.

Recommended books

If you are serious about learning how to read Thai, I highly recommend the following two books. These two books taught me almost everything I know and I still use them almost every day for reference purposes.

Most of the phrase books and text books for beginners that I have bought sit on my bookshelf accumulating dust. They are next to useless and good only to fuel the fire, except that it is never cold enough here to need a fire. However, if a sudden cold snap happens to descend, I will be grateful to Lonely Planet.

If you want to learn how to speak Thai, learning to read Thai will assist your pronunciation enormously. If you are trying to learn to speak Thai from books that use hopeless transliteration systems you are wasting your time because Thais won't be able to understand you.