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Tag Archives: tone

The Special ห Character Posted by on Apr 11, 2013

When I teach the Thai alphabet to my students, the letter ห is one of the last I teach them. It’s a bit more complicated than the average consonant, like the อ character. In Thai ห can be used in two different ways – as a consonant, or as a silent tone modifier…

How does one note Thai tones when writing Thai using the English alphabet? part 2 Posted by on Jan 23, 2013

I occasionally have readers who write in to ask me to explain what’s up with all those numbers next to all my karoke Thai words. The answer: the numbers are declaring tones. But why am I using such an unintuitive method, I’m asked? As such I will explain what all the methods I’ve seen are…

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How does one note Thai tones when writing Thai using the English alphabet? part 1 Posted by on Jan 21, 2013

I occasionally have readers who write in to ask me to explain what’s up with all those numbers next to all my karoke Thai words. The answer: the numbers are declaring tones. But why am I using such an unintuitive method, I’m asked? As such I will explain what all the methods I’ve seen are…

Continue Reading

Mnemonics to Remember Thai Classes Posted by on Nov 26, 2012

If your vocabulary level is decent, there is a mnemonic (นีโมนิค nee1moo1nik4) trick to help you remember which consonant belongs to which class. In the following sentences, the first consonant of each word is one of that class.

Low Class Consonants (LCC) Posted by on Nov 25, 2012

We will finish with the hardest consonant class – the Low class consonants (LCC). More than half of all Thai consonants are of the low class. If you had already memorized the High and Mid classes, you would automatically know that any other consonant is of the low class.

Mid Class Consonants (MCC) Posted by on Nov 20, 2012

As mentioned in the previous two posts, when considering the spelling of a word in Thai, the consonant class influences the tone of the word. There are three consonant classes: low, mid, and high. We will continue with the Mid class consonants (MCC) because I believe it is the next easiest of the three.

High Class Consonants (HCC) Posted by on Nov 16, 2012

As mentioned in the previous post, when considering the spelling of a word in Thai, the consonant class influences the tone of the word. There are three consonant classes: low, mid, and high. We will start with the High class consonants (HCC) first because I believe it is the easiest of the three.

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