Thai is the official language of Thailand. Standard Thai, the variant we will learn in this course, is spoken throughout the country and is based on the dialect spoken in Central Thailand . The Thai script contains 44 consonant symbols, 32 vowel symbols, and 4 tone diacritics. Mastering all these symbols and their corresponding spelling rules is the key to reading in Thai. Let's take a look at each symbol.

There are 44 consonant letters in Thai, but only 21 consonant sounds. That means you'll see several different letters representing the same sound. In this section, we'll be learning 42 consonant letters, since two of the letters are no longer used.

As you can see in the chart below, each consonant letter has two transcriptions. The transcription on the left indicates its sound as an initial at the start of a word, and the one on the right indicates its sound as a final at the end of a word.

Each consonant letter has a "name", which consists of two parts: 1. a combination of the consonant and the vowel sound /o/; and 2. a word with the consonant. For instance, the letter ก represents the /k/ sound, and its letter name is "ก ไก่/ko kai". The first part "ก/ko" is the combination of /k/ and the vowel sound /o/; the second part "ไก่/kai", meaning "chicken", is a word that contains the consonant ก.

Thai vowel letters may be positioned above, below, or to the left or right of a consonant. In the vowel chart below, we use a dashed circle "◌" to indicate the position where a consonant letter would be located.

There are short vowel and long vowel pairs in Thai. Please pay special attention to the length of each vowel.

There are 5 tones in Thai.

Pay attention to "Mmm" in blue. It helps you simulate tones in Thai.