How To Learn Consonant Classes

[JimShortz]

I can read Thai (like a young child!), so long as you ignore the tones. This is, of course, fairly useless!

I am now taking one on one lessons to develop my reading and writing, but in doing this it is essential to know the class of each consonant. What I'm looking for is a resource that I can carry around in my pocket to help me to memorise the classes. I printed off the flash cards from www.learningthai.com These are very good (colour coded system to sort them into classes), but unfortunately the transliteration into English of the name of each letter does not include any indication of tone. I'd really like to learn the names with correct tone pronunciation - it makes little sense to learn them once all mid-tone and then go on to learn them with the correct tone; my head just can't cope with that.

Can anyone point me towards a good resource that I can download or buy? It can't be a computer based resource as I want something to carry around with me and use whenever i have a few spare moments...

Any and all ideas very gratefully received!

[freddy123]

Is this sort of what your looking for?

http://www.thai-language.com/id/590098

Its not perfect and you would have to get rid of the extra words in the peom. Or maybe you could just learn the poem.

But it has the transliterations there with the tones.

Just copy and paste it into a word doc and rearrange it how you like and print it.

Note I only spent a couple of minutes looking, so there are probably better resources, this was just all I could find.

[beano2274]

Here are a couple of links. Most Thai kids know Manee and Friends.

http://www.learningthai.com/books/manee/index.html

http://www.thai-language.com/

Enjoy

[Tim207]

I found it fairly easy to memorize the classes. As long as you can already read you must be pretty familiar with the alphabet. Most are low class so ignore low class. Memorize the middle class and then the high class. High class only has a few to remember after you realize that anything with that extra slash added such as สษ is high and the charachters with the inword circle ฝผถ not พภ are high. Everything you have not learned after that is low class.

[SoftWater]

The tones of the words that name each consonant do not mean all words beginning with that consonant have that tone.

The consonant class on its own does not determine the tone of any particular word beginning with that consonant - that's why the flash cards can't indicate the tone for you. It is also necessary to pay attention to whether the syllable is live or dead, and the tone mark of a word if there is one (which can determine a different tone depending on the combination of all these factors.)

I started a thread explaining this here want to learn thai?

but I have still to finish off the low class consonants before its complete.

Once you've got the basic idea, the best thing to do is create your own table to carry around - the exercise of making your own table itself will help you to remember it. Good books to try are David Smyth's 'Teach Yourself Thai' and Gordon Allison's 'Easy Thai: An Introduction to the Thai Language'.

Edited November 11, 2009 by SoftWater

[JimShortz]

Is this sort of what your looking for?

http://www.thai-language.com/id/590098

Thanks a lot for that Freddy - that gives me the tones and I can write them onto the cards that I have already printed out.

Here are a couple of links. Most Thai kids know Manee and Friends.

http://www.learningthai.com/books/manee/index.html

http://www.thai-language.com/

Thanks for that beano - they are good links, and in fact Manee at learningthai.com is excellent and is what I used to learn basic reading, but unfortunately they don't address the problem that I have at the moment. Thanks anyway.

I found it fairly easy to memorize the classes. As long as you can already read you must be pretty familiar with the alphabet. Most are low class so ignore low class. Memorize the middle class and then the high class. High class only has a few to remember after you realize that anything with that extra slash added such as สษ is high and the charachters with the inword circle ฝผถ not พภ are high. Everything you have not learned after that is low class.

Thanks Tim, that's some great advice on how to memorise the tones - that is going to be a real help; it especially makes learning the High Class very easy. Thank you.

The tones of the words that name each consonant do not mean all words beginning with that consonant have that tone.

The consonant class on its own does not determine the tone of any particular word beginning with that consonant - that's why the flash cards can't indicate the tone for you. It is also necessary to pay attention to whether the syllable is live or dead, and the tone mark of a word if there is one (which can determine a different tone depending on the combination of all these factors.)

Sorry SoftWater, I think you misunderstood what I was asking for; I'll try to be more clear when posting in future. I understand the tone rules and how they work, but thank you for trying to help anyway.

[RickBradford]

My approach was similar to Tim207's

First, learn the 11 high-class consonants, which are categorised easily:

ข ฃ ('high' kh and its weird counterpart)

ฉ (the alternative ch)

ฐ (the database 't' - I call it that because I first saw it as ฐานข้อมูล, 'database')

ถ ผ ฝ (all the 'innies')

ศ ษ ส (the replacement 's' letters)

ห (the silent class changer)

All the 7 mid-class consonants are the 'dead-sounding' ones, the 'g', 'd', 'dt' 'b', and 'bp' sounds (ก ด ต บ ป) , plus 'จ' and the rarely used silent 'อ'.

Everything else is low-class.

[tgeezer]

The best way to learn the consonents is to get a หัดอ่าน ก ไก่ book, you will learn over one hundred useful words from it as a side benefit too. It shouldn't take longer than a week to learn all of it.

Without the book though, if you write the consonents out in six lines of; first 7 letters then three lines of 6 letters one of 8 and one of 11 you will see a pattern. The first five lines starts with a mid class or two ก,จ,ฎฏ,ดต,บป, followed by a high or two ขฃ,ฉ,ฐ,ถ,ผฝ and ends with oddball letters ,ง,ญ,ณ,น, Write it out you will see patterns, sound production, class of letter etc. which help memory. Most people agree that it is helpful.