If you have not yet watch the video of Introduction to Thai Script, please take a look at it to get the overview of the course contents and be ready to start with this course.

You will be learning your first set of Thai consonants!

The first thing you have to master in order to start learning how to read and write Thai is Thai consonants. As mentioned in the Introduction video, there are 44 Thai consonants in Thai alphabet. Many of them share the same initial consonant sounds therefore there are only 21 initial consonant sounds. Besides, these consonants are classified in 3 classes: Middle, Low and High classes as these classes matter for identifying tones.

In this lesson, you will master a couple essential topics as follows:

1. 9 middle class consonants: ก จ ด ต ฎ ฏ บ ป อ
2. 2 vowels which are สระอะ and สระอา
3. Read your first Thai words

Part1: Video Lesson

Key Takeaways

• Common consonants are ก จ ด ต บ ป อ
• อ is a placeholder. It's just there to represent an initial consonant but it's silent.
• สระอะ (short -a sound) / when there is an ending consonant, ะ changed to. ั (on top of the initial consonant)
• This letter ั is called ไม้หันอากาศ (mái-hǎn aa-gàad)
• สระอา (long -aa sound)

Part 2: Practice with exercises

Magic Table / Highlight Words

• Fill the magic table. Solutions for the exercise as well as Thai audio are below.
• Memorize the middle-class consonants with Quizlet flashcards or play an online game on Wordwall Activities.