 Last Call : Thai Group Lessons in May 2025
As many of you are celebrating the New Year and spending quality time with family and loved ones in Thailand, I would love to teach you how to say âHappy New Year!â in Thai. You will also learn some common phrases to wish your Thai friends, colleagues, and family during this joyful time.
Christmas and New Year are coming. You might wonder what to buy for your Thai friends, colleagues, and family. Here are the tips with the 5 common gift ideas for New Year that Thai people enjoy.
Great news! I am launching a new podcast series “Farangs Talk Thai” and The special guest for October is Dr.Donna Robinson from MedConsult. She will share her experiences of living in Thailand for more than 30 years, as well as the experience of learning Thai in order to pass Thai exams for a medical license. Let’s get to know her.
I am now Traveling in Phuket for 2 weeks and it’s been an amazing time here. The city started to feel more alive. I also enjoyed the beaches, hiking, coconut, and of course, the hotel I am staying in.
One thing I recognized is that the staffs are so well trained and polite. They speak such a nice and polite Thai here, even though it’s might be too polite to talk to friends. In this post, I would like to give you example sentences of extra polite Thai.
Whether you’re attending a Thai language class or just learning Thai on your own, being curious or being enthusiastic to learn more is a great personality to have as a student.
In This blog post, I gathered 10 sentences for you to use in order to expand your Thai knowledge and to ask important questions.
You might already know the word āļĄāļēāļāļāļ§āđāļē (mÃĒak-gwà a) as “more than” but there are more to learn. Listen to my Thai podcast and learn from this blog post.
Many people started learning Thai scripts but gave up because of a few painful challenges. BUT, no worries. I will help you go through all of them and give you useful tips and techniques in this blog post, just step-by-step.
In the last blog post, I introduced you to 44 Thai consonants in which there are 21 initial consonant sounds (as some of them share the same initial consonant sound), today we will still be around the topic of Thai consonants as I will be talking about ending consonant sounds.Â
To start learning Thai script, the first thing you need to learn is “Thai consonants” in which there are in total unique 44 consonants in Thai language.
For some Thai learners, the 44 consonants in Thai language sound like a very big number and quite challenging to overcome. However, in this blog post, I will introduce you to all the essential knowledge including tips and techniques regarding Thai consonants. Let’s begin!
In Thai language, there are in total of 44 Thai consonants. However, there are 2 consonants that are obsolete or no longer used which are āļ (khoor-khuad) and āļ (khoor-khon). You cannot even find these two on Thai keyboard.
Many of them round have a head. You normally start writing from head to tail. However, there are in total 2 consonants without a head which are āļ and āļ (start writing from left to right).
To call each Thai consonant, there are 2 parts in a consonant name:
1. Initial consonant sound + -oor sound
2. Example word that represent the consonant
For example
This āļ consonant letter is called goor-gai as the initial consonant is g sound and gai āđāļāđ means chickening as an example word.
Question 1:
Is the consonant always -oor sound?
Answer: Yes, always -oor sound!
Question 2:
Can I use other example words instead of “gai” or chicken? Like goor-gin (to eat) instead?
Answer:Â No, there is only one specific example word of each Thai consonant. We have learned to call consonants in the same way for more than 100 of years.
Question 3:
Can I only call it “goor” without “gai”?
Answer: Yes, you can. However, I would not recommend it as there are some consonants that share the same initial consonant sounds. (I will talk about it in the session below)
Even though there are 44 Thai consonants in Thai alphabet, there are only 21 consonant sounds. It means that some consonants share the same initial consonant sound!
Photo by Ultimate Guide to Thai Reading
Per examples in the photo above, the three consonants āļŠ, āļĐ and āļĻ share the same -s initial consonant sound. That’s why you need to call the name of each consonant with the specific example word. If you say ‘soor’, it can be āļŠ, āļĐ and āļĻ.
Photo by Ultimate Guide to Thai Reading Course
As you can see from the photo above, consonants are grouped by initial consonant sounds with a special color. For example:
photo by Ultimate Guide to Thai Reading Course
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For example
Both āļŠ and āļĐ have -s initial consonant sound when are with a vowel -āļē (āļŠāļĢāļ°āļāļē -aa sound) then both āļŠāļē and āļĐāļē are pronounced exactly the same as “saa”. It’s because both of them share the same initial consonant sound. However, āļŠ is more commonly used than āļĐ.
One important thing that you have to learn from the beginning is that the 44 Thai consonants are classified into 3 classes which are High Class, Middle Class and Low Class.
Since Thai is a tonal language which means words can be pronounced with 5 different tones with totally different meanings. Classes of consonants are one of the things that determine the tones of a word.Â
Different classes of consonants = different tones = different meanings. That’s why it’s important to learn consonants based on 3 classes of consonants.Â
Let me show you!
Let’s say āļ (goor-gai) is a middle-class consonant while āļŠ (soor-suea) is a high-class consonant.
As you can see, they are in different classes of consonants and have different tone rules. So learning consonants by each class is the easiest way to master Thai consonants.
That’s it for an overview of basic Thai consonants. I hope I answered the questions you had and made you feel more comfortable with Thai consonants. If you still have any other questions about Thai consonants, please feel free to comment below. I will get back to you shortly.
In the next blog post, I will go deeper into the topic of Thai consonants, as I will be talking about ending consonants because there are only 7 ending consonant sounds in the Thai language. Curious? Just stay tuned!
Ending consonant sounds
https://www.bananathaischool.com/blog/blog-ending-consonants/
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I have uploaded a few lessons from my reading Thai course (Ultimate Guide to Thai Reading) to help you with Thai script on Youtube.
This video below will teach you the Middle-Class consonants and how to write them. Please enjoy!
Unlike Tom Yam Kung and Pad Thai, Isan food is famous for herby and spicy dishes eaten together with fresh greens and sticky rice.
