Thai Alphabet & Letters

Thai (ภาษาไทย, phasa thai) has its own script. Tradition credits King Ram Khamhaeng of Sukhothai with creating it in 1283, adapting the Old Khmer script, which itself goes back to the Brahmi writing of India; the Lao and Khmer alphabets are its close relatives. Like them it is an abugida: consonant letters carry each syllable and vowels are added as signs written before, after, above or below them. There are no capital and small letters, and words are written together without spaces; a space ends a phrase or a sentence instead.

The alphabet has 44 consonant letters, learned in a fixed order with a picture word for each, the way English children learn 'A for apple'. Thai children sing it as ก เอ๋ย ก ไก่: ก ko kai (ไก่ chicken), ข kho khai (ไข่ egg), ค kho khwai (ควาย buffalo), ง ngo ngu (งู snake), จ cho chan (จาน plate), ช cho chang (ช้าง elephant), and so on to อ o ang (อ่าง basin) and ฮ ho nokhuk (นกฮูก owl). The picture word is the letter's name, and it is how Thais spell aloud: 'ด เด็ก' means 'd as in child'. Unicode uses the same names, which is why the characters on this page are called Thai character ko kai, kho khai and so on.

Many sounds have several letters: kh is written ข ฃ ค ฅ ฆ, th is ฐ ฑ ฒ ถ ท ธ, s is ซ ศ ษ ส. Some of the extra letters exist to spell words borrowed from Pali and Sanskrit exactly (ฆ, ฌ, ฎ, ฏ, ฐ, ฑ, ฒ, ณ, ศ, ษ, ฬ), and two, ฃ and ฅ, are obsolete: they stay in the alphabet but modern words use ข and ค. The others matter because every letter belongs to a class that decides the tone of its syllable: middle class ก จ ฎ ฏ ด ต บ ป อ, high class ข ฃ ฉ ฐ ถ ผ ฝ ศ ษ ส ห, and low class, the remaining 24. So ข and ค both write kh, but ขาว (high class, rising tone) means 'white' and คาว (low class, mid tone) means 'fishy-smelling'.

อ is also the silent carrier for a syllable that starts with a vowel (อาหาร 'food'), and a silent ห in front of a low-class letter turns it high (หมา 'dog', หนู 'mouse'). At the end of a syllable only a few sounds are possible, so many letters change value there: ด ต ท ธ ศ ษ ส จ ช all end a word as t, as in รถ 'car' (rot) and โอกาส 'chance' (okat). ฤ (rue) and ฦ (lue) are vowel letters inherited from Sanskrit, sorted after ร and ล: ฤ appears in words like ฤดู 'season' and อังกฤษ 'English', while ฦ is obsolete.

Thai vowels: signs before, after, above and below

Thai vowels are written with about twenty signs, alone or in combination, and schoolbooks usually teach them as 32 vowel forms in short and long pairs. Each sign has a fixed place around its consonant: ะ า ำ after it (จะ 'will', มา 'come', น้ำ 'water'), ิ ี ึ ื ั above it (กิน 'eat', ดี 'good', หนึ่ง 'one', มือ 'hand', กัน 'together'), ุ ู below it (ลุง 'uncle', งู 'snake'), and เ แ โ ใ ไ in front of it (เวลา 'time', แมว 'cat', โต๊ะ 'table', ใจ 'heart', ไป 'go'). The signs in front are written first but pronounced after the consonant, so ไป reads pai, not aip.

Many vowels combine two or three signs around one consonant: เ-ีย in เรียน 'study', เ-ือ in เสือ 'tiger', เ-า in เขา 'he, she', เ-าะ in เกาะ 'island', and ั-ว in ตัว 'body'. ั (mai han-akat) writes a short a inside a closed syllable, and ำ (sara am) is one character in Unicode even though it looks like the circle ํ plus า.

ใ and ไ sound the same, ai. ไ (mai malai) is the normal one; ใ (mai muan) is used in only twenty native words, such as ใจ 'heart', ใหม่ 'new', ใคร 'who' and ใส่ 'put on', which Thai pupils memorise with a rhyme. ๅ (lakkhangyao) lengthens ฤ and ฦ, as in ฤๅษี 'hermit'; it is rare in modern writing and is not the same character as า.

Thai tone marks and the five tones

Thai has five tones: mid, low, falling, high and rising. A syllable's tone comes from three things together: the class of its first consonant, whether the syllable is 'live' (ending in a long vowel or in m, n, ng, w, y) or 'dead' (a short vowel or a final k, t, p), and the tone mark, if there is one. The marks sit above the consonant, or above its upper vowel sign: ่ mai ek, ้ mai tho, ๊ mai tri and ๋ mai chattawa. Mai tri and mai chattawa are used only on middle-class letters, giving a high and a rising tone, as in โต๊ะ 'table' and จ๋า, a sweet way to answer someone.

The marks do not name a fixed tone; the class changes their effect. Mai ek on a middle-class letter gives a low tone (ไก่ kai, 'chicken'), mai tho on a low-class letter a high tone (ม้า ma, 'horse'), and mai tho on a high-class letter a falling tone (ห้า ha, 'five'). That is how one syllable ma becomes มา 'come', ม้า 'horse' and หมา 'dog', and why the classic tongue twister ไม้ใหม่ไม่ไหม้ไหม ('doesn't new wood burn?') is five different words that all sound like mai to a beginner.

Other marks work on letters rather than tones. ็ (mai taikhu) shortens a vowel, as in เด็ก 'child' and ก็ 'also'. ์ (thanthakhat, usually called karan) silences the letter it stands on, mostly in borrowed words: ศุกร์ 'Friday' is said suk, and the ร is not sounded. ํ (nikhahit), ฺ (phinthu, a dot that cancels the inherent vowel) and ๎ (yamakkan) are used for writing Pali in Thai letters, in Buddhist chants and scripture.

Thai numbers, punctuation and the baht sign ฿

Thailand has its own digits: ๐ ๑ ๒ ๓ ๔ ๕ ๖ ๗ ๘ ๙, said ศูนย์ sun, หนึ่ง nueng, สอง song, สาม sam, สี่ si, ห้า ha, หก hok, เจ็ด chet, แปด paet, เก้า kao; ten is ๑๐ สิบ sip. They are used on official documents, banknotes and coins, temple plaques and formal writing, while prices, phone numbers and most everyday text use 0 to 9.

Thai otherwise uses the ordinary space, full stop, comma, question mark and quotation marks, but it has a few marks of its own. ๆ (mai yamok) repeats the word before it: เด็กๆ 'the kids', เร็วๆ 'quickly'. ฯ (paiyannoi) shortens a long name, most famously กรุงเทพฯ for the full ceremonial name of Bangkok, and ฯลฯ means 'et cetera'. ๏ (fongman), ๚ (angkhankhu) and ๛ (khomut) are traditional marks for the start of a verse, the end of a stanza or section, and the end of a whole text; they appear in classical poetry and old manuscripts.

฿ is the baht sign, the currency of Thailand (บาท, THB). It is part of the Thai block of Unicode at U+0E3F, a B with a vertical stroke, and in Thai text the price is usually written with the word บาท after the number (100 บาท) while ฿ appears in front on menus, receipts and price tags (฿100). It is not the bitcoin sign, which is ₿ (U+20BF), although the two look alike.

How to type Thai letters on a keyboard and phone

On Windows, add Thai under Settings, Time & language, Language & region; on a Mac, add Thai under System Settings, Keyboard, Input Sources; switch with Windows + Space or the input menu. The standard Thai layout is Kedmanee; Pattachote is an older alternative. On computers set up in Thailand, the ` key (grave accent, left of 1) usually switches between Thai and English. On iPhone and Android, add Thai to the keyboard list (Gboard on Android) and tap the globe to switch.

Thai is typed in the order it is written, not the order it is said: the vowel in front first, then the consonant, then any vowel above or below, then the tone mark. So ไก่ is typed ไ + ก + ่, and น้ำ is น + ้ + ำ. Some vowel signs and all tone marks are combining signs attached to a consonant; preposed vowels such as ไ are placed before it.

For a single character without a Thai keyboard, copy it here, or in Microsoft Word type its code and press Alt+X: 0E01 Alt+X gives ก and 0E3F Alt+X gives ฿. In HTML, write ฿ for ฿. Use a font with Thai support (Tahoma, Leelawadee UI and Noto Sans Thai all have it), and let the browser or the system break lines, because Thai has no spaces between words.

Where Thai is spoken, and its neighbours

Thai is the national and official language of Thailand 🇹🇭, and CLDR estimates that about 55 million people there speak it, out of a population of around 70 million. Standard Thai is the Central Thai of Bangkok, used in schools, government, newspapers and television. Many Thais also speak a regional language at home: Isan in the northeast, which is very close to Lao, Kham Mueang in the north, which once had its own Lanna script, and Southern Thai in the south. All of them are written in Thai letters today.

Across the Mekong, Lao is written in its own, rounder script with 27 consonants; see the Lao Alphabet & Letters page, the Khmer Alphabet & Letters page for the script Thai grew from, the Lanna Script (Northern Thai) and Southern Thai Language pages for Thailand's regional languages, and Thailand Emoji & Symbols for the flag, food, elephants and festival emoji people send about the country.