According to Wikipedia, a diphthong “refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel.”

Thai has quite a few diphthongs. It’s not entirely clear to me whether all qualify, as I’m not into linguistics, but they all follow the same basic concept of multiple combined sounds. My students have asked me to review these on several occasions, so I felt it a good idea to list them out for my readers:

Letters ฦ and ฦๅ are basically obsolete and so you’ll never run across them.

ฤ is an odd letter in that it can be pronounced in one of three different ways. You will just have to memorize which way for each word. But no need to worry, it’s a very rare letter you will only see in a handful of words.

Examples of the three ways to pronounce ฤ:

ฤษี is pronounced as รึษี

ฤทธ์ is pronounced as ริก

ฤกษ์ is pronounced as เริก