Thai Language Lessons: Thai Alphabet

[vkkmenon1]

The ordering of the consonants are same as that of all Indian languages... It even resembles many of our alphabets albeit some turned upside down or, made more cursive/artistic...

Even the word for alphabet and consonants have been corrupted from Sanskrt "Akshara" and "Vyanjana" respectively....

Its very amazing to see how our culture and religions have given a long lasting impression on the SE Asian nations daily life....

[saleep281076]

KimChampagne has a good point there. I don't understand either. Please explain the classes for us. Thanks for the useful uploads.

[NaNuTumblue]

ออกเสียง ร ได้ดีครับ ^ ^

[KinChampagne]

I still don't understand the classes for the consonants..

[thlman]

tehehehe you said dog for horse

[MrJerrelli]

Thai is a very diffucult language, and it is considered one of the most diffucult in the world to master to , read, to write, and to comprehend. For us lowly farang please being Thai, pity us our inexperience and do not make it any hardewr than it is with negative commentary. I am to immigrate to BKK very soon, and any help is greatly appreciated, and any harm to my learning process that is deliberate is quite rude. Please be polite.

[SataraYamori]

Thank you again, this really helps me a ton!

[TheTecnic08]

3.29 ม It's Mor Mharrr and raise the voice. If you do not raise the voice it will be Mor Mha and come out with different meaning

ม้า Mharrr is a horse ,but หมา Mha is a dog

[MATTBOBVV]

thanks for this video! really appreciate it!:)

[ShesThe1yup]

wait a minute that seems to be telling you the words like word for plate word for tooth etc, I thought we were learning letters? I don't understand

[bonkdonker]

@ShesThe1yup It is Kind at school we would be taught A is for Apple...B is for Butterfly except the sound and the object name become the actual name for the full Consonant...hope this makes a bit of sense

eg the letter ก=Gkor Gkai even though Gkor is the sound and Gkai means chicken...hope this makes some sense

[jaywolfie11]

I am Thai, and I thank you you for this video

[pablovezen]

Very well done Ashoka, a great help in learning,Thank you!

Accepting the fact that consonants fall into one of the three classes which affects the tone rules,do you know of any logic as to why they are attributed their certain class ?

For example,I notice that most 'Animal' words have a 'Low' class initial consonant [ with the exception of the Tiger.....Royalty ? ;) ]

Any rhyme or reason to this ?

Thanks again, I owe you a 'Chang yai ' !!

[dranojlev]

This is good but do you have other videos where how to use this Thai Alphabet in forming a word....... Thanks

[Soi169]

Thanks so much for including all the stylized fonts for each letter. It can be discouraging to learn the alphabet, then stare at a sign and not understand many of the letters.

[BlueRock68]

Thanks for this video. I've just learned all consonants and find your video a useful tool.

[mallcorekidsdie]

low class should be red: for the red-shirts!

[aloozer]

just learnt the consonants from a website. now i'm on to learning the vowels. man it gets harder and harder.

[chenjinchai]

เขมร แม่งเสือก ตลอด อ่า ต่างคนต่างอยู่ดีกว่า มา ให้ร้ายอยู่ได้ เอาเวลาไปพัฒนาตัวเองให้ดี ดีกว่าพยายาม มาฉุดคนอื่นให้ต่ำ เหมือนตัวเอง

[Tiaimo]

ม. ม้า - high tone. หมา - low tone

Anyway, thank you very much for you vid krub. ^.^

[chenjinchai]

@Tiaimo กลายเป็น ม หมา ไปและ  5555

[nishiiz]

@chenjinchai ผมว่าน่ารักดี ฝรั่งออกเสียงไทยผิดวรรณยุกต์

[chenjinchai]

@nishiiz ครับ

[plenoinarak]

I think is this not the most difficult thing in Thai Language.

The Most difficult is "The Way We Speak !!"

Thais sentence can be construct in many way.

And can have revolution by itself depend on an era.

Teenager Style, Senior Junior Style, Monk Style, King Style,

Familiar-Unfamiliar Style, Male-Female Style

And Thais create new word by themselves for this year like "เหวง" "Wheng"

[ascudellat]

this is impossible to learn.. oh my god.. it needs a lot of years...

[mix18330]

ม ม้า not หมา.

I know it's a bit difficult for foreigner, you have a very very good Thai. :)

[Marii26]

This is so great, thank you! I can finally recite the alphabet after much repetition.

I have a question, though. What is the letter/character at the end of the word for Thursday? I don't recognize it.

[LazyYogi77]

@Marii26

it's a symbol to indicate an abbreviation. The full spelling of "Thursday" in Thai has several silent letters at the end, so here it's written abbreviated.

[sardnhi]

nice video =]

farang82 => definitely yes,, now a day, we thai people like to pronouce r instead of l in some words,, eventhough the meaning might be changed.. but we still understand *-*

[farang82]

thanks :)

[farang82]

I can't pronounce the R sounds properly... because i can't roll my tongue.

Am I still able to learn and speak effective Thai?

[Qurylenko]

R(ร) is not like L(ล) I hardly toll my tongue too because I speak fast

[assons]

Good work !

[kitchenconcerts]

Thai people can usually pronounce the Rs in their vocabulary.... But the Thai Chinese of whom there are soooo many in Thailand usually have a problem between R/L as well as confusing locals as to correct pronunciation lol. Well that's my crude observation. I think this video and others by this author are just beautifully presented and so clear to the western ear. Thankyou so much! GreAt bath time viewing here in my bath tub with a glass of wine ;))

[Divadada101]

@kitchenconcerts The ability to pronounce ร เรือ correctly has nothing to do with being Thai-Chinese, more to do with being careful, or it's because, as a kid, they were not corrected at school or at home. If the teachers or parents correct them from the start, most of them would be able to pronounce ร เรือ clearly.

[peacex3ice]

thank you for doing this!

[asimov231]

nice vid man (ramakien: hanuman is not the giant though)

[jiffithebest]

the monkey is funny! lol

[jiffithebest]

good

[22poopoo]

You know there is that stereotype of Thais saying "lice" for rice and "reary" for really? Well how doeas that work? I just saw there was a letter for "r" and "l" so hoe does that work?

[markshep777]

Thai dont say Lice for rice they tend to leave off the end. So rice becomes rye and Ice becomes 'I'.

They also have trouble with Th.

[22poopoo]

Mmm, well I know a thai woman and here daughter, she called her daughter Rita, but we all thought she was called Lita! Plus I have heard other Thais do it vice versa. Confused?

[CenrionPrime]

try to speak thai or chinese and you will see you will have the same problems

[22poopoo]

Yeah I know, Ibut I just don't understand where the problem arises, I want to undersatnd WHY.

[odsca]

lol when u got to the maw ma(horse), it sounded like u called it a dog. :)

[mcv666]

That's what i thought too

[odsca]

it sounds funny ^^

[Parkmeyoung]

Thai language is very hard

[odsca]

ull get the hang of it :)

[dvdmsch]

i'm struggling with the alpahbet.

but with this i can improve.

thx for uploading.

dave :)

[ZealDaan]

The consonants are easy except for memorizing the classes (thats more like medium), the vowels are medium, the tones are ridiculous!!!

[RebelOnetimeRIH]

You should play this video audio (DJ Babu - The Beat Tape Vol. 1) in the background of your video. it sounds cool haha also good job presenting the consanants with pitch level indicator is a really important thing to know.

[spunkykyoko]

i don't really understand the different classes of consonants thing

[KhunPoo01]

Wow! Kob Khun Maak ka :-)

[ThaiLaoMediacom]

ashoka10 ...Like Give you alot of Credit for post How to 'Thai' it's was easy to learn from a western point of View or teaching...Since I myself was raised up in the western world...I have to Think N Calculated in English N translated back to Thai or Lao... Hymm Funny but it's true...

HungPang

LHK ^_^

[Chidoriluvr]

the writing looks bengali/bangla related in some way : D

so hard =-=

and i have more consonants to learn than this :\

[TheParadize]

Hi Ashoka10, I really enjoy learning Thai from your fantastic videos. Keep it up & hope to see more videos on learning Thai from you! Thanks.

[harrypotter271828]

I know that, the pronounciation of thai is like Vietnamese, Zhang language, Cantonese,etc. So the pronounciation of some thai words has different meaning in above languages. Anyway, I think thai is a funny language. There are some funny pronounciations, which have different meaning in Cantonese. Like flashlight-"fai-chaai" means "idiot, crappy people". Give-"hai" means the vagina.

[Soksabai79]

Thai tonal speaking is Tai tonal speaking group from south China. Thai alphabets, Thai vowels and Thai numerals are Khmer. Thais were Tai people running from the Mongol and they were helped by Khmers. The French created Latin alphabets and Arabic numerals for the Viets and Khmers created Khmer alphabets, Khmer vowels and Khmer numerals for Thais.

[khemaradsobai]

That is not exactly what happen, and is a bias point of view. We Khmers certainly did not help the Thais escape from the Mongols, they escaped and we subdued them. The Thai alphabet is however a simplified form of Khmer, but we also adopted several punctuations from Thai but differ in function. Something interesting is that words with an uy ួ sound in Khmer was written with the consonant vo វ in old Khmer which is still preserved in Thai. Vietnamese is actually Portuguese based.

[Soksabai79]

LOL since when the Portuguese got to do with the Viet? When a country has war, there's always people running out and searching for help, it's called "Refugee" that's the Tai people case running from Nanchao searching for the Khmer help.

Thai tonal speaking from China is a bit different from Khmer none tonal speaking in SEA but Thai writing is the same as Khmers.

[criskity]

Why does the video have to mention that? It's a lesson on how to write Thai, not on the history of Thai orthography.

When teaching how to write the English, they don't need to tell you about the Etruscan alphabet, which is the direct ancestor of the Roman alphabet we use.

[Soksabai79]

And how do you know the Etruscan? Isnt the English teacher taught you the truth? Before I learnt writing English, my English teacher

taught me that the English is basically a Germanic that forced into Latin grammatical and The English has borrowed words from the French, Italian, German, Spanish, Arabic, Greek and thats how I knew where the English writing came from.

[criskity]

The English LANGUAGE is Germanic with borrowings from Old French and other languages.

The English ALPHABET is Roman, which came from Etruscan, which came from Greek, etc.

[plus7bkk]

Khmers are very aggressive trying to post poor comments on videos related to Thai. I'm so surprised that Khmer race is so lacking but they prefer insulting others.

[ashoka10]

I know - I try and remove comments like these that attempt to incite negativity.

[tobiasguild]

that's great because someone tries to perform some negative propaganda claiming that Thai alphabet belonged to them.

[odsca]

screw khmers dont even listen to them. they are all arrogant. They think they created everything...It just goes to show how weak they are :)..thai people dont give a damn about these weaklings :)

[mallcorekidsdie]

@plus7bkk they are envious. they once had a thriving empire, but it died out. When I went to poi pet and phnom phen, they were rude, pushy and aggressive. maybe even more than china and korea.

[plus7bkk]

daydreaming?

[criskity]

And yes, the Thai alphabet was borrowed from Khmer. Nobody denies that. The people who adopted the Khmer alphabet into Thai made various modifications, such as dispensing with subscripts in consonant clusters, and adding some modified letters, like the ones to represent the F sound or the voiceless L of Pali (loh chulaa).

[criskity]

By the way, many of the Thai SPOKEN numbers (and some Khmer) are from Chinese, probably borrowed through trade around the time of the Han Dynasty.

Example: 31

Thai: Saam sip et

Cantonese: Saam sap yat

Hokkien: Sa~ tsap it

Hakka: Sam sip yit

[criskity]

> Only Thai thieves stealing Khmer alphabet

> and Khmer numerals don't care.

And the Khmers got their alphabet from southern India. And the southern Indians got theirs from the Brahmi script. And the Brahmi script came from proto-Canaanite, which is the ancestor of the Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Roman and Cyrillic scripts. So we're all stealing from the same source (except the Chinese!)

Notice how the first letter of the Thai alphabet, if turned on its side, looks kinda like a C? Now you know why!

[Soksabai79]

Khmer numerals are NOT even closed to the southern India.

Khmers have their own numbers by their own aleast 4000 years before the Indians came to intermarry with Khmers in Cambodia.

None of Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Roman and Cyrillic claimed anything belonging to them, but Thai thieves claimed Khmer alphabet, Khmer vowels and Khmer numerals belonging to Thais as you can see the video description about.

[criskity]

I said the Khmer alphabet is from southern India, not the numerals.

[reonpyr]

you have no clue and your comments defy reason.

[criskity]

In Thai, all numbers between 2 and 99, inclusive, are Chinese in origin. Words like 100, 1000, 10000, 100000 etc. are Khmer (though 10000 may ultimately be from Sino-Tibetan). The only native Tai-Kadai number in Thai is 1 (neung). Even 0 is a borrowing...from Sanskrit.

[crankysunshine]

Garn toe taung kone tee koon rak ja tham hi koon me wan dee

[plus7bkk]

hahaha..go bark, khmer rouge. it's so normal to see khmer rouge dogs barking at thai videos. you can type everything you want, the viewers would know how your race is. the inborn trait you are trying to do is called "jealousness". thais are already awake and running to develop the country to be better. how about khmer race as idiot you? coming and bark at thai videos on youtube? barking is your point, huh? if you think your trait is one of the best way to develop your nation, go bark!!

[plus7bkk]

so funny that khmers said thai language is 100 percent from khmer.

[Soksabai79]

Thai alphabet, Thai vowels ad Thai numeros are 100% Khmer. You can watch a video on my favorite.

[plus7bkk]

hahaha..100 percent means every letter is the same, every sound is the same, every vowel is the same, and so on. is thai language as same as khmer? is it 100 percent from khmer? what's your point? so many many khmers try to look for thai videos and put poor comments on. is this khmer routine?

[criskity]

The alphabet, perhaps, but not the language.

On top of its Tai base, the language borrows from Khmer, Sanskrit & Pali (some through Khmer, some directly), Chinese (ancient and modern dialects), Malay, and more recently, Portuguese and English, as well as many other languages.

[meajur]

My thai mother says you did a good job, but you mispronounced some stuff. You called the horse a dog.

[byb31]

Good video. Very useful for learning Thai. TYVM.

[battleaxebot]

ทำได้ดีมากนะครับ! ผมหวังว่าคุณคงจะทำวีดีโอที่ยอด­เยียมเหมือนอันนี้ได้อีกนะครับ! Keep up the good work! I hope you make more!

[gtehran]

Im a begginer learning Thai... And my first doubt came up when I saw this video....

Why I learnt to call an elephant just cháang and here you guys pronouce it differently?!

And also I learnt to say only máa to refer a horse... and here you add something at the begging?

Hope you can help me!

Cheers from Mexico

xx

[fosenteskotia]

only the second syllable represents the thing in the picture - the first syllable is the name of the letter - the second is a real example of a name that starts with that letter.

[okamiakuma1028]

the consonents of the thai alphabet are represented by an object...it goes ng ngoo...becuae ng is the consonant and ngoo is snake, which is tied to the consonant...its just like a, apple, b- bug...kinda thing...does that help

[gtehran]

Yeah! Thank you very much! :) Im very keen on learning thai! :D

[artissara]

Overall. This video is so awesome. I'm really curious how you learn Thai. : )

[Soksabai79]

Thai alphabet & Thai numerals are all from Khmer Civilization.

[okamiakuma1028]

actually they believe sanskrit

[swibler]

this video is one of a kind. this will be my school to learn reading thai. i've been watching those videos over and over again for 1 month now, feels like im on my way. thanks a lot for this video, the world did really need this

[BatdambangNative]

overall, this is a very good video, but i found a few mistakes worth pointing out. "f- fun" (teeth) should be in the low class instead of high class as listed in the video. one other mistake is the pronunciation of "m - horse". the way it is pronounced in this video means "dog" instead of "horse".

[ashoka10]

Yes, where ฟ is listed as High is a typo, it is still colored blue like the rest of the Low consonants. I have a corrected version made, but I can't upload it because YouTube does not allow you to replace videos, keeping the comments and ratings, etc. As for ม, I never claim to have perfect pronunciation, somehow, I am always understood when I speak.

[thaifrog]

by the letter ร เรือ you say เรื่อ instead of เรืิอ (falling tone instead of rising), which means bright or light.

there are some other slice mistakes in the pronounciation but they are not really severe ;-) .

but i like your video, i think it's a good video for learners (i myself learned it with a book 3 years ago).

good job!!

[yoram99]

my name is yoram and i been in thailad 3 years

i realy like the thai language.and i like your video.thank's.

[AreYouKiddinMelol]

Thanks a lot. I have been looking for a video like this for a week. I am lucky to be starting my thai training the same week you put this up.

The Rosetta Stone program I have does not even teach the alphabet.

[ashoka10]

Yes, I've found the Rosetta Stone method completely useless for languages that use different writing systems. I found it's much easier to learn after learning how to read and write.

[AreYouKiddinMelol]

I think it has its strong points, but I do agree with you totally on the need to learn to read and write first. It helped me a lot for Greek and Spanish to be able to read along even if I didn't know the definition of every word.

[Allagiti]

I really appreciate your putting these videos up on YouTube. It's good review. Your style and graphics are superb. ขอบคุณมากๆนะครับ

[ashoka10]

Thanks for your input... knowing that they're appreciated makes me want to do more!