Introduction to Thai Language

Spelling Thai words with Roman letters (a, b, c, etc) is a notoriously difficult task. Here’s a short explanation of the difficulties, with some information about the unique system that we use here at ITS4Thai.

But before we start, please note that this article is not intended to be read by linguists, but instead by the average English speaker. So we hope that the linguistic experts forgive us for using common language and therefore incorrect academic terminology at times! (But please feel free to contact us if you have any recommendations for improvements to this page.)

Let’s start at the very beginning. The Thai script has no relation to any Western languages, such as English. It is based on the Khmer (Cambodian) alphabet, which in turn is modeled on the Brahmic Indic script. Modern Thai language looks like this:

But unlike languages like Chinese and Japanese, Thai is phonetic. That means that it has letters that correspond (more or less) to Roman letters. In the example above, we have 6 characters: s-w-a-t-d-e. There are a few rules to learn how to pronounce the Thai letters, but again, you can definitely learn how to read Thai if you want to. And if you are serious about learning to speak Thai, learning to read and write will definitely help you in your quest. We encourage you to learn more about our innovative Thai Script Course at ITS4Thai.

Thai is also a tonal language, and has five distinct tones. Note the tone marks in the first two syllables of sà-wàt-dee shown above. Both of the syllables sà and wàt are spoken with a low tone.

Different tones for the same word will have different meanings. For example, the Thai word “mai” can be written in five different tones as:

• mai : no meaning
• mài : new
• mâi : no, burn
• mái : wood, or not?
• mǎi : silk