Learn to read Thai - Tutorial 24

Longer Vowels

Firstly, I need to define what I mean by longer vowels.

In previous tutorials we looked at long and short versions of simple Thai vowels. These are vowels consisting of a single syllable, but which are voiced for long or short durations. They are written using a maximum of two characters.

By longer vowels, I mean vowels that are written using more than two characters. Some have a long multi-syllabic sound, but vowels written using more than two characters can actually have a very short sound.

The multiple characters that are used to make up the vowel surround the consonant (or consonant cluster). The easiest way to demonstrate is by example.

เกาะสมุย

This is two words. The first word is:

เกาะ

You should see that there is only one consonant - gor gai (Tutorial 1). The other characters are all vowels and in this combination make a single vowel sound.

We have covered all of these vowels in isolation before but here they aren't in isolation. Despite the vowel using lots of characters, the sound is a very short 'o'. The initial (only) consonant makes a hard 'g' sound. If you say the English word 'got' but leave off the final 't' you will be pretty close.

If I write 'go' you will pronounce it wrong because it will rhyme with 'blow'. This word is normally transliterated as 'koh' and therefore farangs normally pronounce it wrong. They pronounce it 'koe', as in Sebastian Coe.

Think of 'got' without the 't' and you will be a lot closer. It means 'island'. The second word is:

สมุย

The first two letters are consonants that make 's' (Tutorial 10) and 'm' (Tutorial 8) sounds but they aren't a consonant cluster. We therefore have to add an implied 'uh'.

Under mor maa we have the 'uu' vowel (Tutorial 18) and the word ends with yor yuk (Tutorial 7). yor yuk is one of the Thai consonants that can also function like a vowel and with sara uu it makes an 'uu-i' sound.

When we put all this together we get goh suh-muu-i, other known as Koh Samui.

Here's our next word:

เปลี่ยน

I am hoping now that you will be able to pick out vowels, consonants and tone marks quite quickly. The first two consonants are the fish bpor bplaa (Tutorial 3) and the monkey lor ling (Tutorial 8). These two consonants do form a consonant cluster so we get a 'bpl' sound.

Above the second consonant in the consonant cluster is sara ee (Tutorial 3), and above it is the first tone mark.

Before the consonant cluster is sara ay (Tutorial 16) but in this word it isn't used on its own. It forms part of a longer vowel combination.

Next is yor yuk - as in the example above - and again it is used more as a vowel here. Combined with sara ay and sara ee this combination of letters makes an 'ee-uh' sound. The final consonant is nor noo (Tutorial 8).

When we put this all together we get something that sounds a little like bplee-un which is the Thai verb meaning 'change'. Can you find this word in the sign at the top of the page for a money changer? If you can find it and read the rest of the sign you are doing very well.

เรียน

You should have been able to work out quite easily that this word makes a sound like ree-un which is the Thai verb to learn.

If we add rong (which means building in Thai) before ree-un we get rong ree-un which means 'school':

โรงเรียน

It is not only yor yuk that can function as a consonant and a vowel; the Thai letter wor wairn can also do this. Used at the end of a word, wor wairn makes a kind of 'l' sound but in mid-position it makes an 'oo-uh' sound. As you may remember, the common 'l' consonant lor ling makes an 'n' sound if used as a final consonant.

Take a look at these two words:

ข้าวเหนียว

The first word consists of kor kai (Tutorial 5), the long 'aa' vowel (Tutorial 7), and wor wairn (Tutorial 9). It also uses the second tone mark.

The word kaaw pronounced with a falling tone is one of the most common in Thailand. It means rice. Let's take a look at the second word. Remember that the grammar structure of Thai is noun-adjective, and not adjective-noun as in English.

We have hor heep (Tutorial 9) followed by nor noo (Tutorial 8). In this word, hor heep is only used for tone purposes and it isn't voiced (Tutorial 12).

Above nor noo you will see sara ee again (Tutorial 3) and it is followed by yor yuk (Tutorial 7) and wor wairn (Tutorial 9).

This combination makes a kind of 'ee-owl' sound. Once again, I have to remind you that it is impossible to transcribe Thai words accurately using the English alphabet. What you need to do is listen to native speakers.

The end result is something like kaaw nee-owl which means 'sticky rice'. Another adjective you might here is kee nee-owl which means 'stingy'.

I will give you more practice later. Make sure you compare the font used on these pages with the writing used on the various signs I have included, and that you can recognise handwritten characters, as well as the typical fonts used on signs.

I'm only planning to do a couple more of these tutorials but I am also planning to add more photos to the ones I have already written when I get some free time. The objective wasn't to provide a complete course but to convince people that learning basic Thai isn't very difficult.

By making things easy here I hope to encourage a few more people to start learning on their own.

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.