The Easiest Way to Learn the Thai Vowels - By Stuart Jay Raj
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ส.ค. 2024
- The Easiest Way to Learn the Thai Vowels - By Stuart Jay Raj
I encourage people learning Thai to master the vowel sounds and shapes from as early as possible. Even if you don’t know the consonant shapes, you can ‘clip’ the Thai vowel frames around even English consonants and start reading words in a ‘Pseudo-Thai’, ‘Abugida’ style which will quickly train you to see syllable blocks even before you master the whole alphabet.
In this clip I present the Thai vowels in their original ‘Tai’ system. It’s a beautiful, elegant system that perfectly fits the same map of the human mouth that the Thai consonants are based on.
You can open an interactive version of my Consonant Compass and follow on with the lesson at You can access all of my training modules at www.jcademy.com - create an account and get access to swathes of content.
You can read my blog at stujay.com
Cracking Thai Fundamentals Book: Installing a Thai Operating System for your Mind
You can order my book for delivery within Thailand here:
www.jcademy.co...
Or outside of Thailand on Amazon
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3 BASIC DEGREES
Short
Long
Stretchy
Back / Open Throat
a -ะ
a: -า
a: -า
Back / Closed Throat
ɯ อึ
ɯ: อือ
ɯ:ə เอือ
Mid / Closed Throat
i อิ
i: อี
i:ə เอีย
Lips / Open Throat
u อุ
u: อู
u:ə อัว
OPEN
Short
Long
ɔ เอาะ
ɔ: ออ
ə เออะ
ə: เออ
o โอะ
o: โอ
PALATE
Short / Long
æ แอะ
æ: แอ
e เอะ
e: เอ
Note:
อำ [am] is the nasal version of อะ (อั) [a]
and
เอา [au] is traditionally the extended version of โอ o:
I look forward to hearing your comments and suggestions. If you would like to contact me, you can drop me an email via my website - stujay.com/contact
came here from a comment on I Get Thais channel. Good stuff from both of you guys!
I love the simplicity of this. Thanks man!
Yup. Very logical. Sad that most of the modern methods teaching Thai aren't built around the original logical systems that the language is based on. It seems that someone (ones) without full understanding, but high power to implement / influence policies cobbled together something that they thought would suffice, and de-coupled the language from its beautiful, logical and symmetrical base to the detriment of all future learners.
So much better to "picture" the vowels in this fashion rather than my flash cards everywhere! Thanks for posting! Will look into your courses online.
My ethnicity is thai but born and raised in Australia. I did learn to speak thai because of my parents drilling it in me since I was a baby, but being majority an english speaker outside of the house I've always had trouble learning to read and write in Thai, and also with tones since english you only use tones when you want to express emotion in your words or an intent, but thai does not only do this but it uses tone in just everyday regular speech and in text which is confusing af. This teaching style you figured out Stuart has really helped me understand the language and alphabet more. Thanks for the lesson.
Thank you for this video, which is short though perfectly saying how to pronounce the thai vowels sounds. I have been learning thai language almost two years and noone from my teachers was able to explain me this. . . so i need to re-learn all the words and sounds, thank you very much for this anyway. I gonna use this video everyday for learning vowels as it takes me a lot of time fix them well in my memory. It would be great to have something like this for mandarin as I know Stuart speaks mandarin perfectly well;o)
Good job Stuart 👍
Very very helpful! Thank you
Best explanations I've learned. Thank you.
First view of this today but some how its the way i,ve been thinking with Thai for a while.Very strange,i thought that concept was the norm once you got involved with Thai Ive been explaining the emotional and creative meaning too friends for years.Great stuff.
Great stuff, much easier than how I was taught
I wish it was taught in this format everywhere. It would save a lot of grief for many learners.
Amazing! Could you export the chart to a pdf? And maybe... integrate อำ and เอา and how the semi-vowels fit in the picture? Obviously, the coolest thing would be the vowel equivalent to your Indic Consonant Compass.
Stuart, can the same thing be applied to Cambodian? Is there any possibility for you to make a video comparing Sanskrit, Cambodian, Thai and Burmese writing systems and their approaches concerning this amazing concept of "throath-mapping" ??? Your video on tones is simple amazing, God bless you always, man!!! And THANKS A LOT for sharing this knowledge with all of us here, thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
Davi - The same principles are in play when it comes to the 1st and 2nd series in Khmer. I have included these in my Indic Consonant Compass - you can see that the 2 series there are the same as the Thai classes (kind of). 1st series in Khmer are the Mid and High class consonants in Thai and the 2nd series are the low class which are traditionally voiced - with one difference. The equivalent of ณ (ណ) is the 1st series (hard) 'n'. You can jump in and have a play on the compass here - stujay.com/courses/indic-consonant-compass-12-script/ .
Great video Stu, do you have similar video for pronouncing consonants?
Yes. I have a tonne of stuff out there on youtube for consonants in my Thai Bites clip, and the full interactive version is there in my site at stujay.com .
Hi Jay. Thanks for this video. I don't understand what you mean by "stretchy." What is being stretched - the tongue or the sound to transition to another vowel to create a dipthong? Thanks.
that w looking vowel sound, have you got a video going over that in more detail? Like you have with the ng sound? I find that w looking vowel sound much more challenging than the ng sound.
Can someone please explain the difference between ใ and ไ . Thanks in advance!
They are pronounced the same way as /aj/ (similar to the English "eye", but not exactly the same). In ancient times ใ used to be pronounced /aɯ/ (อะ + อึ) but then /aɯ/ was lost and merged into /aj/ as time passed. We still keep them different in writing for the etymological reason. Nowadays, there are only around 20 words in Thai that use ใ instead of ไ.
It's the Bangkok Podcast guy! Hey Stu my Thai cousin is learning English... you interested in making a few extra bucks tutoring?
Hi Adam - sadly I don't teach English. My main work is in crisis management and cross cultural business solutions across Asia. The Thai stuff is something I've had on the side for the past 18 years.
A better, later version by Jay in "Thai Vowels for Dummies". I however, don´t agree with his pronunciation of "a". In my opinion it shall be pronounced like "a" in the word calm. You say it more like "a" in am. Listen to that sound in "translate.google.com" in the words กา (gaa, crow), ตา (dtaa, eye) and ปา (bpaa throw).
I just went back and listened (1:21) ... This is the /a:/ sound like in arm .. not æ
Wow sounds similar to Khmer's language. I think there are certain percentages of Khmer's language using in Thai speaking.