To speak Thai clearly and make local people understood, it is not only getting the tones right it is also pronouncing the vowels correctly.
There are in total 32 vowel sounds in Thai language, 14 of them are long vowel sounds and 18 are short vowel sounds.
Similar to pronouncing Thai tones, when the vowel changes the meaning changes too. So you should make sure you are saying a word with a short or long vowel.
For example; ข้าว /kâao/ means ‘rice’ but when we change the pronunciation to a short sound เข้า /kâo/ means ‘to go in’.
“Vowel” in Thai is สระ /sà-rà/. Long vowel is called สระเสียงยาว /sà-rà sǐang yaao/ and short vowel is called สระเสียงสั้น /sà-rà sǐang sân/.
I always suggest my students to start learning the long vowels first and then move on to the short vowels because the short vowels are just pronounced with half of the length of the long ones. So when you learn to pronounce the long vowel sounds properly,working on the short vowel sounds is just a piece of cake! 🙂
Alright, let’s start with the long vowel sounds
Once you feel comfortable with pronouncing the long vowel sounds,now it is time to continue to the short ones. 🙂
Please note: There are seven more short vowels that teacher Pear didn’t include in the video. Three of them are rarely used เอียะ /ia/ เอือะ /uea/ อัวะ /ua/. Four of these vowels can be pronounced either short or long อำ/am/, ไอ/ai/, ใอ/ai/, เอา/ao/.
For example;
น้ำ /náam/ which means ‘water’ is pronounced with long sound. จำ /jam/ (remember) is pronounced with short sound.
ไป/bpai/ (to go) is pronounced with short sound. ได้ /dâai/ (can or receive) is pronounced with long sound.
เก้า /gâao/ which means ‘nine’ is pronounced with long sound, but เก้า in the word เก้าอี้ /gâo-îi/ which means ‘chair’ is pronouced with short sound.
Thai Vowels with a Final Consonants
The table below shows you both long vowels and short vowels that change the appearance when adding a final consonant (FC). They are in the orange color. Yes, you heard me right, some vowels change the form when there is a final consonant in the word so please be careful. 🙂
Hi Mod
I was wondering if you could post some more info on thai vowels and there position ie live and dead ending words and tone rules and why the word is in a certain tone i think the lesson would be more for reading and writing and very helpfull.
Big thanks for your help so far.
Dear Khun.Mod,
I am an Indian expatriate working in Thailand. I find your lessons are very easy to understand. I appreciate that you give so many free lessons on you tube which are very much useful to me in my daily life in Thailand.
I wish to express my sincere thanks to you and Kru.Pear.
Sawatdee ka Khun Sakthi, thank you for your kind message. We are happy to hear that you found our lessons useful in your Thai learning.
great. nice job mod. i would have love to study with you but being from india your lessons are very costly for me
Thank you for your kind comment. We are happy to hear that you found our lessons useful in your Thai learning. We have many free videos on our YouTube channel for you to learn from if it is not convenient for you to sign up to our lessons. 🙂
I’m vietnamess and i want to learn Thai, but I can hear English but not very well, so sad
We would like to encourage you to keep practicing, make your learning process fun and don’t be afraid to make mistakes. 🙂
great as always, but Pear’s phonetic English makes little sense
Thank you for your comment. It is quite difficult to find English characters to represent all Thai vowels. Some vowel sounds in Thai have no equivalent in English.
I teach a little English to Thai’s. I found khun Pears English to be quite understandable.
Maybe not perfect English, but it is very rare to hear really good English in Thailand.
Also note that the “phonetic English” used here appears to be the same as that defined by the different Romanized versions of Thai language (in other words, standardized translations of Thai characters into Latin ones):
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Thai_General_System_of_Transcription
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_11940-2
So if it doesn’t make sense, don’t blame ครูแพร!
It’s overwhelming but exciting! Thank you so much for this video 😀
Thank you for your comments. Just learn them slowly first and you will get them all easily very soon.
Excellent, thank you!
Thank You, Very Helpful !
I will always sound like a Farang. 555
Hi Mod,
So only those vowels in the orange color will change their form when they are followed by final consonants, aren’t they?
lots of vowels we have not in english and neither in french. Your exemples of thaï words are very welcome and allow us to review a little bit of vocabulary. Thank you!
I think your learning thai very useful and easy to understand to make me step by step learn thai and clear about your video…i’m so happy find learn thai with mod