And now for the Thai phonemes. But what is a phoneme? A phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound used to form a meaningful contrast between utterances, from which words in that language or dialect can be created. Fortunately, most phonemes (sounds) that are used in Thai can be also found in English, so I\u2019ll keep this post simple and won\u2019t go over those. But, there are a few tricky ones of which I\u2019ll describe below:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u0e15<\/strong><\/p>\n This letter is best transliterated as \u2018dt\u2019. Some authors write it as \u2018t\u2019, but this is incorrect as it sounds nothing like it. To make this sound, put the tip of your tongue between your teeth. Now, as you say the word \u2018dog\u2019 out loud, slide your tongue back into your mouth. It will sound like \u2018dtog\u2019. It should only take you about an hour of practice to have this down.<\/p>\n Note: some linguists will make the claim that \u0e15\u00a0isn’t\u00a0one single phoneme but two combined. I disagree.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u0e07<\/strong><\/p>\n This is by far the hardest phoneme in Thai for an English speaker, and is best transliterated as \u2018ng\u2019. It\u2019s just like the \u2018ng\u2019 found in \u2018Nguyen\u2019 so often found in Vietnamese. It sounds somewhat like the Spanish \u00f1, except that the \u00f1 is pronounced at the front of the mouth whereas ng is pronounced deep in the throat. Through teaching experience I find it generally takes 1 to 2 years of practice before a foreigner can pronounce it correctly. So find a Thai friend to help and don\u2019t give up!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u0e2d\u0e36, \u0e2d\u0e37<\/strong> <\/p>\n \u0e1b<\/strong><\/p>\n Another hard consonant, and best transliterated as \u2018bp\u2019. Some authors will write it as either \u2018b\u2019 or \u2018p\u2019 \u2013 stay away from those authors. This letter is neither a \u2018b\u2019 nor a \u2018p\u2019, but something in between. Prepare your mouth to say the word \u2018bad\u2019, but curl your upper and lower lips inwards as you say \u2018b\u2019.<\/p>\n Note:\u00a0<\/span>Just like with \u0e15, some linguists would argue this isn\u2019t one single phoneme but two combined. I disagree.<\/span><\/p>\n to be continued . . .<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound used to form a meaningful contrast between utterances, from which words in that language or dialect can be created. Fortunately, most phonemes (sounds) that are used in Thai can be also found in English, but there are a few tricky ones of which I\u2019ll describe.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[10208],"tags":[8244,192207,10177],"class_list":["post-1192","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-beginner","tag-alphabet","tag-phoneme","tag-thai"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1192"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1197,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192\/revisions\/1197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThis vowel (both short and long versions) can also take a few months to master. I don\u2019t speak French, but I\u2019ve been told it\u2019s exactly like the French \u2018eu\u2019 sound. The sound should come from the back of the mouth, near the throat.<\/p>\n