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The Invisible Vowel Rules

The document discusses the invisible vowel rules in Thai. It explains that in Thai, vowels can be written above, below, to the left, or right of consonants, and sometimes are not written at all. It then provides four main rules for determining the implied vowels when strings of consonants appear without vowels. Examples are given for each rule. The rules help learners pronounce Thai words even when the vowels are not visually defined.

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enri
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912 views6 pages

The Invisible Vowel Rules

The document discusses the invisible vowel rules in Thai. It explains that in Thai, vowels can be written above, below, to the left, or right of consonants, and sometimes are not written at all. It then provides four main rules for determining the implied vowels when strings of consonants appear without vowels. Examples are given for each rule. The rules help learners pronounce Thai words even when the vowels are not visually defined.

Uploaded by

enri
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The Invisible Vowel Rules

When I teach Thai to my students, they always freak out when I tell
them about vowel locations. In English, words are pronounced left to
right. You pronounce the first letter of the word first, and the last letter
last. But not so in Thai! Vowels are written above, below, to the left, to
the right, and even surrounding the consonants. For a beginner it’s an
unintuitive concept.
Then I tell my students that sometimes the vowel isn’t even written, that it’s invisible.
When they see a long series of consonants together with no vowels to be found, they
start to question the sanity of whoever invented the Thai language . . .

So how do you know how to pronounce a Thai word without visibly defined vowels?

Enter: The invisible Vowel rules (Thai translation is สระลดรูป sa2ra2 lod2 ruub3). These
aren’t official rules, however. I wrote these as they are as an easy way for beginners to
remember and learn them.

There are four rules to this.

1) If there are two consonents, the vowel is a short ‘o’ sound such as in โอะ.

2) If there are three consonents with no vowels, the first vowel is a short ‘a’ and the
second is a short ‘o’such as อะโอะ.

3) If the second consonant is ว, then replace ว with the ‘uwa’ sound, อัว.

4) If the first syllable is an *alone* consonant of ก/ท/ธ/ม/ห, and the following syllable
starts with ร, the implied vowel is อ.
Examples of the first rule:
ลด – lod

มด – mod

รถ – rot

สะกด – sagod

Examples of the second rule:


ผสม – pasom

ระบบ – rabob

In this example, the first vowel is known, but the second is not. Follow the rule for only
the unknown vowel.

สนุ ก – sanuk

สระ – sara

In the last two examples, the second vowel is already known but the first is not. Follow
the rule for only the unknown vowel.

Examples of the third rule:


บวก – buak
This comes from บัว + ก

สวน – suan

This comes from สัว + น

Examples of the fourth rule:


มรดก – mawradok

This example also uses the 2nd rule. Words that use the fourth rule are very rarely
found, so no need to sweat over it.

In the first part, I showed how strings of consonants can be


pronounced despite not having any visibly defined vowels. I had
simplified it as just four easy to remember rules.
In this part, I’ll show how the visible appearance of vowels can change when a syllable
requires two consonants.

1) โอะ
This is pronounced as a short ‘o’ sound. For example:

โกะ go

โบะ bo

โฟะ fo
So what if you wanted two consonants as one syllable using the short vowel โอะ? If you
put both inside the vowel, you’d get this:

โบกะ boo-ga

โคทะ koo-ta

โพบะ poo-ba

As you can see, that isn’t working. It created a long ‘oo’ sound and added another short
‘a’ sound at the end.

Instead, you follow rule #1 from part 1 and just remove the vowel.

บก bok = โบะ + ก

คท kot = โคะ + ท

พบ pob = โพะ + บ

2) เอะ
This vowel is a short ‘eh’ sound. For example:

เกะ geh

เบะ beh

เฟะ feh
So what if you wanted two consonants as one syllable using the short vowel เอะ? If you
put both inside the vowel, you’d get this:

เกทะ geh-ta

เบบะ beh-ba

เฟถะ feh-ta

As you can see, that isn’t working. It created a long ‘eeh’ sound and added another
short ‘a’ sound at the end.

Instead, you add the อ็ character while removing the อะ.

เก็ท geht = เกะ + ท

เบ็บ behb = เบะ + บ

เฟ็ ถ feht = เฟะ + ถ

This rule applies the same for the vowel แอะ. For example:
แก็ท gaet = แกะ + ท

แบ็บ baeb = แบะ + บ

แฟ็ ถ faet = แฟะ + ถ


This following children’s TV program can help you practice. The first half of the episode
is a children’s story of why chickens lay eggs. The second half is what you want to
watch to practice what you’ve learned here.

https://youtu.be/OZgKOOOwSQA

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