Motivation

I want to learn Thai because I like Thai girls.

In order to improve my Thai language skills, I figured I should learn to read and write Thai. Reading Thai requires learning the Thai script or alphabet. There are wonderful tools and apps for learning the Thai script but most of them have awful user experiences. That's why I've made my own: this site.

I created Learn Thai Script mostly for my own benefit but I guess it could help other Thai learners as well. The focus here is to study the Thai script. It's not a complete solution for learning how to speak Thai. Learning a language also requires knowing the culture, vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Some of these aspects are provided here in small doses.

Thai Script อักษรไทย

The Thai script or alphabet gives full information on the tones. Tones are realised in the vowels, but indicated in the script by a combination of the class of the initial consonant (high, mid or low), vowel length (long or short), closing consonant (plosive or sonorant, called dead or live) and, if present, one of four tone marks.

The Royal Thai General System of Transcription (RTGS), the official standard for the romanisation of Thai, is used here. However, you will find a bewildering variety of romanisation used in daily practice, making it difficult to know how to pronounce a word. For more precise and standard pronounciaion, an equivalent International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is given as well.

Summary

The alphabet consists of 44 basic consonants, each with an inherent vowel: [o] in medial position and [a] in final position. The [a] is usually found in words of Sanskrit, Pali or Khmer origin while the [o] is found native Thai words. The 18 other vowels and 6 diphthongs are indicated using diacritics which appear in front of, above, below of after the consonants they modify.

• Writing direction: left to right in horizontal lines.
• 8 of the letters are used only for writing words of Pali and Sanskrit origin.
• For some consonants there are multiple letters. Originally they represented separate sounds, but over the years the distinction between those sounds was lost and the letters were used instead to indicate tones.
• Thai is a tonal language with 5 tones. The tone of a syllable is determined by a combination of the class of consonant, the type of syllable (open or closed), the tone marker and the length of the vowel.