When I teach Thai to my students, they always freak out when I tell them about vowel locations. In English, words are pronounced left to right. You pronounce the first letter of the word first, and the last letter last. But not so in Thai! Vowels are written above, below, to the left, to the right, and even surrounding the consonants. For a beginner it\u2019s an unintuitive concept.<\/p>\n
Then I tell my students that sometimes the vowel isn\u2019t even written, that it\u2019s invisible. When they see a long series of consonants together with no vowels to be found, they start to question the sanity of whoever invented the Thai language . . .<\/p>\n
So how do you know how to pronounce a Thai word without visibly defined vowels?<\/p>\n
Enter: The invisible Vowel rules (Thai translation is \u0e2a\u0e23\u0e30\u0e25\u0e14\u0e23\u0e39\u0e1b sa2ra2 lod2 ruub3). These aren\u2019t official rules, however. I wrote these as they are as an easy way for beginners to remember and learn them.<\/p>\n
There are four rules to this.<\/p>\n
1) If there are two consonents, the vowel is a short \u2018o\u2019 sound such as in \u0e42\u0e2d\u0e30.<\/p>\n
2) If there are three consonents with no vowels, the first vowel is a short \u2018a\u2019 and the second is a short \u2018o\u2019such as \u0e2d\u0e30\u0e42\u0e2d\u0e30.<\/p>\n
3) If the second consonant is \u0e27, then replace \u0e27 with the \u2018uwa\u2019 sound, \u0e2d\u0e31\u0e27.<\/p>\n
4) If the first syllable is an *alone* consonant of \u0e01\/\u0e17\/\u0e18\/\u0e21\/\u0e2b, and the following syllable starts with \u0e23, the implied vowel is \u0e2d.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Examples of the first rule:<\/strong><\/p>\n \u0e25\u0e14 – lod<\/p>\n \u0e21\u0e14 – mod<\/p>\n \u0e23\u0e16 – rot<\/p>\n \u0e2a\u0e30\u0e01\u0e14 \u2013 sagod<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Examples of the second rule:<\/strong><\/p>\n \u0e1c\u0e2a\u0e21 – pasom<\/p>\n \u0e23\u0e30\u0e1a\u0e1a \u2013 rabob<\/p>\n In this example, the first vowel is known, but the second is not. Follow the rule for only the unknown vowel.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u0e2a\u0e19\u0e38\u0e01 – sanuk<\/p>\n \u0e2a\u0e23\u0e30 – sara<\/p>\n In the last two examples, the second vowel is already known but the first is not. Follow the rule for only the unknown vowel.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Examples of the third rule:<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n \u0e1a\u0e27\u0e01 \u2013 buak<\/p>\n This comes from \u0e1a\u0e31\u0e27 + \u0e01<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u0e2a\u0e27\u0e19 \u2013 suan<\/p>\n This comes from \u0e2a\u0e31\u0e27 + \u0e19<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Examples of the fourth rule:<\/strong><\/p>\n \u0e21\u0e23\u0e14\u0e01 – mawradok<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n This example also uses the 2nd rule. Words that use the fourth rule are very rarely found, so no need to sweat over it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sometimes, words use multiple rules:<\/strong><\/p>\n \u0e02\u0e1a\u0e27\u0e19 kabuan<\/p>\n 2nd rule + 3rd rule<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In English, words are pronounced left to right. You pronounce the first letter of the word first, and the last letter last. But not so in Thai! Vowels are written above, below, to the left, to the right, and even surrounding the consonants. For a beginner it\u2019s an unintuitive concept.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[10208,10341],"tags":[254573,254575,254576,11950,10177],"class_list":["post-1348","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-beginner","category-intermediate","tag-invisible-vowel-rule","tag-lod","tag-ruub","tag-sara","tag-thai"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1348","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=1348"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1352,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1348\/revisions\/1352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}