Loking For Alphabet Cheat Sheet - Thai

[bangkokburning]

I am looking for an Alphabet cheat sheet - something like...a few sheets on A4 or Excel spreadsheet

Thai letter - Corresponding sound in English.

Even better if broken into consonants (H/L...), vowels and other markers...

I then want to group them as the Becker book has done.

I don't want to get kids books because they will not have the English. Anyone know of an inexpensive small book, large type that accomplishes this?

The Becker book does hash these all together at some point n the chapters, but I am really confused starting out. I'd like to swallow a chunk of the alphabet otherwise I am just reading the phonetics.

Its pretty crazy but I thoroughly see why learning phonetically is a waste. I can't cheat it if I really want to learn it.

Thanks

[HalfSquat]

Would be interested in this too.

[desi]

Here:

There are more here:

[Tod Daniels]

I used the attached sheet when I learned to read the thai alphabet (consonants).

I never bothered to learn the corresponding words to the letters, like G is for Chicken (ก ไก่) K is for Egg (ข ไข่), K is for Bottle (ฃ ขวด), etc . I just learned when I saw a specific letter it made a certain sound as an initial consonant and another sound as a final consonant. (Example; there are SIX letters which make a T (or Th) sound in thai: ฐ,ฑ,ฒ,ท,ธ,ถ when they start a word and the ending or final sound is a D)

Sadly, early on, I paid no attention to whether it was high, middle or low class consonant. Consequently I can't discern the tones with any degree of accuracy (that's my next mission). I can however get pretty close to the way a compound word sounds just by having memorized that chart and knowing vowel length. Certainly close enough for a thai to make out what I'm trying to say and correct me.

Here's the consonant chart.

Thai Consonant Sounds Initial-Ending.doc

[bangkokburning]

Thanks Tod. That's pretty much what I am after.

Desi - That site is great. I always forget about it and it is one of the best. I Dl'd a few documents. I'll have a better look.

Thanks

[Richard W]

I used the attached sheet when I learned to read the thai alphabet (consonants)... Here's the consonant chart.

A couple of corrections:

1) ก on one hand and ข et al. on the other have the same final sound. Given that you have chosen /g/ for the initial sound of ก, I would have expected you to use /g/ for the final sound.

2) The final sound of ญ is /n/.

Sadly, early on, I paid no attention to whether it was high, middle or low class consonant.

The way to avoid this is to us a 2-D reference chart of consonants that groups them according to Indic phonetics. It will look like an early periodic table, having plenty of gaps, and a few anomalies. Most Indic alphabets are normally explained via such a table - I don't understand why Thai isn't. Thais associate the chart with Pali. (Thai text books for the Northern Thai script - tua mueang / Tham script - do use such a table, but possibly this is because of the Pali association of the Dharma script.) An example of such a table is given at phonetic organisation of Thai consonants.

There are some anomalies:

1) Phonetically, ซ fits the fourth row (dentals) better than the second row (palatals).

2) The nasal of the palatal row (row 2) is not pronounced as a palatal in Central Thai. Syllable initially, it is a palatal semivowel. Syllable finally, it accords with the rule that the 2nd (palatal), 3rd (retroflex) and 4th (dental) rows have the same syllable-final pronunciation.

3) In a few words ฑ behaves like ด. This is probably because it performs the role of ด in the Khom script, as in the tua mueang.

Proceeding now to those not formally assigned to vargas (Thai อวรรค) the first seven true consonants could be added to the table, with varying returns.

The first 4 true consonants (ย ร ล ว) could be added as a ninth column, as semivowels, all low consonants (no letter for the first row), given the only Thai phonetic difference between the retroflex and dental rows. The only advantage I see is that it explains their relative alphabetical order.

Logically, the three /s/ letters belong to the column headed '*f' - ศ in row 2 (palatals), ษ in row 3 (retroflexes), ส in row 4 (dentals). The one disadvantage is that this breaks the correspondence between table position and alphabetic position.

The letter ฬ does not fit the pattern. One can treat is as an alternative to ล, though historically it is what Pali and Vedic Sanskrit have between vowels instead of ฒ in Sanskrit, e.g. กีฬา from Pali corresponding to กรีฒา from Sanskrit.

The final three consonants ห อ ฮ could be assigned to the *f, *p and *v columns respectively in a row 0 (glottals), c.f. the way hydrogen and Helium fit the periodic table badly. (For Indic languages, ห actually belongs to the column without Proto-Tai antecedents.)

[Tod Daniels]

I can neither take credit (nor the blame ) for the inconsistencies in the sheet I provided.

I copied it from a learning thai language book whose title now eludes me

Please don't shoot the messenger for mistakes in the message.