Thai Letter Tho Phuthao

It is a Thai consonant, not a word with its own meaning. Tho phuthao is the letter name; ผู้เฒ่า (“elderly person”) is the Thai memory word paired with it.

The ฒ pronunciation changes with position: at a syllable’s start it is an aspirated t, a t followed by a small puff of air; at the end it is unreleased, with no audible burst. ฒ is also a low-class consonant, one of the categories Thai uses in tone rules.

Where did ฒ come from?

Its script lineage runs through Old Khmer into early Thai writing.

Thai writing developed from Old Khmer, whose roots reach a South Indian script tradition known as Pallava. An inscription from Sukhothai, an early Thai kingdom, known as the Ram Khamhaeng inscription, is generally dated 1292. The letter set reconstructed from the Ram Khamhaeng inscription leaves ฒ out, so that inscription does not date this letter’s first appearance. ฒ preserves the Indic value ḍh—a voiced d made with the tongue curled back and a breathy release—in Pali and Sanskrit spellings. Modern Thai no longer keeps that sound contrast, so ฒ overlaps in sound with ท, ธ, and ฑ.

How do you type ฒ?

The key depends on the Thai keyboard layout you have selected.

On Kedmanee, hold Shift and press , for ฒ; Pattachote assigns it to a different key. In เฒ่า, the vowel เ is written before ฒ but pronounced after it, a normal Thai spelling pattern.