A Consonant Table

[klons]

I have a Scholar VCD which may be a little over my head.

It looks very promising to help with pronunciation even if

I only comprehend 50% of it or so. Could someone give me

a head start by giving a brief explanation of the table which

I will affix??

The lead into this table is 3 consonant classes.

พยัญชนะต้น Upper?

พยัญชนะควบ Mixed ?

พยัญชนะตัวสะกด Final ?

For the table labels in red, the best translation I can do is:

นาสิก nose

คอ neck throat collar

เพดาน ceiling

ปุ่มเหงีอก turn knob ??

ฟัน tooth

ริมฝีปาก lip

เศษวรรค leftover space

อรรธสระ sound halfway between vowel & consonant

อุสุม alveolar fricative consonant

นาสิก nose

สั่น totter, sway, be unsteady

Scholartable.tiff

[Richard W]

I have a Scholar VCD which may be a little over my head.

It looks very promising to help with pronunciation even if

I only comprehend 50% of it or so. Could someone give me

a head start by giving a brief explanation of the table which

I will affix??

The lead into this table is 3 consonant classes.

พยัญชนะต้น Upper?

พยัญชนะควบ Mixed ?

พยัญชนะตัวสะกด Final ?

The attachment lacks any table for the above.

Quote deleted because bastard forum software complains of too much quoting.

นาสิก = 'nasal' (made through the noise) as a column heading.

คอ = velar in this context. The old term was 'guttural', which works well enogh for Indic languages, but is very confusing in languages with several consonants made futher back, e.g. Arabic.

เพดาน palatal

ปุ่มเหงีอก retroflex (the usual term มุทธชะ, or rather its Sanskrit equivalent, murd.ana, used to be traslated as 'cerebral'!)

ฟัน dental

ริมฝีปาก labial

The five rows above are the 'vargas'. The Indian grammarians left out the semivowels and sibilants (see below), and modern Thai /b/ and /d/ were another type of stop.

" เศษวรรค leftover space" is also known as อวรรค - not in any of the (regular) vargas.

อรรธสระ sound halfway between vowel & consonant

The English term is semivowel. The Sanskrit set is ย ร ล ว. Pali ฬ spoils the pattern - it started as the intervocalic form of ฑ (and ฬห of ฒ). However, they should have a column of their own.

อุสุม alveolar fricative consonant

= sibilant. In Sanskrit they are palatal, retroflex and dental.

นาสิก nose

สั่น totter, sway, be unsteady

The last two are distictly odd. ว is definitely misplaced. อ ห ฮ could be arranged as a glottal varga, using positions 1, 2 and 3 or 4 - I can't see any way to decide between 3 and 4. In Indic languages, ห can occur as a variant of consonants in position 4.

Edited July 25, 2009 by Richard W

[DavidHouston]

Richard,

Why are น and ณ in separate categories of "ฟัน" and "ป่มเหงียก"? Similarly, why are "ฎ/ฏ" and "ด/ต" separated the way they are? Do not the first and second elements in these sets have the same sound in Thai?

Thanks.

[Richard W]

Why are น and ณ in separate categories of "ฟัน" and "ป่มเหงียก"? Similarly, why are "ฎ/ฏ" and "ด/ต" separated the way they are? Do not the first and second elements in these sets have the same sound in Thai?

Because they represent different sounds in Indic languages. The retroflex set is totally redundant for native words in Indospheric SE Asian languages. Tho montho (ฑ) has been re-used for modern /d/ (or the implosive) in the Lanna script (for Tai languages) and in the Cambodian script for Thai (as 'Khom') and Khmer, and I presume it is from one of these sources that it is actually a mid consonant in words such as บัณฑิต cf. pandit. Khmer also reuses the unsplit ฎ/ฏ letter and ณ.

There is the same difference between Pali and Vedic Sanskrit ล (dental) and ฬ (retroflex). ฬ messes up the nice assignment of semivowels that one can do for Sanskrit:

			consonant	  vowel
palatal		 ย			อิ
retroflex	   ร			ฤ
dental		  ล			ฦ
labial		  ว			อุ

I'm pretty sure this explains the alphabetic order of ย ร ล ว.

The table Klons posted was set up on the principle of Indic languages, which is why it uses the short-from periodic table of the Thai consonants rather then the long form. (I'd really like to draw up a table with a 'call-out' for the semivowels and sibilants, rather like call-out for the lanthanides and actinides.)

Edited July 25, 2009 by Richard W

[Richard W]

The lead into this table is 3 consonant classes.

พยัญชนะต้น Upper?

พยัญชนะควบ Mixed ?

พยัญชนะตัวสะกด Final ?

These refer to roles that consonants can play.

พยัญชนะต้น = initial consonant(s) (includes true clusters, like the คว of ความ).

พยัญชนะควบ = consonants in a cluster. Chiefly used of the initial clusters, but occasionally of the final thanthakhat-free clusters, e.g. กร in จักร and รถ in สามารถ.

พยัญชนะตัวสะกด = final consonant, as deduced. I've only come across it used for the final sounded cluster, but presumably it can be used for all the consonants not affected by a thanthakat. If you're dabbling in older forms of Thai, thanthakhat should not be confused with the visually identical วัญฌการ [M]wan[H]cha[M]kaan, which only silences a vowel, usually an implicit vowel.