Thai Alphabet: All 44 Consonants and How They Sound
All 44 consonants of the Thai alphabet in traditional order, each with its name, sound and example word, and why 44 letters boil down to about 20 sounds.
·Thai Trainer·Reading Thai
The Thai alphabet has 44 consonants, around 30 vowel signs and four tone marks. Here are all 44 consonants, in the order Thai children learn them, each with its name, the sound it makes at the start of a syllable and the word it is named after.
Two of them, and , are no longer used. And although there are 44 letters, they only stand for about 20 sounds: several letters sound the same. Further down you will see why, and how to use that.
How to read each card
Every consonant has a two-part name: its sound followed by a word that starts with it. is called ko kai because (kai) means chicken, the way an English speaker might say "A for apple". Learn the letters by their full names: it is how every Thai person refers to them, and it gives you the sound and a picture at once.
The o in every name (ko, kho, ngo) is not part of the sound. It is just the vowel the alphabet is recited with.
All 44 consonants, from to
This is the order Thai dictionaries use, so it is the one you need to look words up. (kho khuat) and (kho khon) fell out of use in the 20th century: recognising them is enough.
Spaced repetition schedules each letter for the day you need it. Free, no card, no time limit.
Practise this in the app44 letters, about 20 sounds
Group the consonants by how they sound and the list shrinks a lot:
| Sound | Letters |
|---|---|
| k | |
| kh | |
| ng | |
| ch | |
| s | |
| y | |
| d | |
| t | |
| th | |
| n | |
| b | |
| p | |
| ph | |
| f | |
| m | |
| r | |
| l | |
| w | |
| h | |
| (silent) |
Two things about the romanisation that trip people up:
- The h means a puff of air, not another letter. kh, th and ph are k, t and p with a breath after them, as in English kit, top, pin. th is never the th of think, and ph is never f. Without the h, k, t and p have no puff at all, like the k in skin or the p in spin.
- is silent. It carries a vowel at the start of a syllable, as in (ang), basin.
On top of that, many letters change at the end of a syllable: , and sound n, and , , or sound t. The table is for the start of a syllable, which is where you will learn them.
Why some letters repeat
The letters that sound alike are not spare. Many come from Sanskrit and Pali loanwords and keep their spelling for the same reason English keeps the k in knight. More importantly, each one belongs to a class (high, middle or low), and the class decides the tone of the syllable. and both sound kh, but they do not give the same tone.
That is why learning only "which sound each letter makes" leaves you with half the information. Thai consonant classes explains the three groups and how to remember them.
Try it yourself
Answer without scrolling back. The letters below are the ones this article just covered.
Keep going with the full alphabet, audio for every character and quizzes that come back when you are about to forget.
Create a free accountWhere to start
Do not learn them in table order. Start with the letters that show up most in real text, about twenty of them: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and . With those you can read plenty of everyday words as soon as you know a few vowels.
Rare letters such as , , , , , , , or appear mostly in words of Sanskrit origin. Leave them for last. How to read the Thai alphabet covers the full order: consonants, vowels, then tones.
Thai Trainer teaches the 44 consonants this way, with recorded audio for each, its example word, and spaced repetition that brings back the ones you miss. The whole alphabet is free.
