Category: Learn Thai

April is MESAA-YON 

April is MESAA-YON เมษายน

This is an easy one! It’s the month of the Messiah of course!
We celebrate Passover (the last supper of Jesus) and Easter (the resurrection) in April.
last-suppersm.jpg

easter-luck.jpg โชคดี อีสเตอร์นี้
500 รับ ฟรีGood luck this Easter
Get 500 free!
easter-patch.jpg อัพเดท แพทช์
ต้อนรับ เทศกาล อืสเตอร์Update patch
receive (on) Easter festival

March is MEENA-COM

March is MEENA-COM มีนาคม

meaner.jpg

St Patrick’s Day is in March. The story of his life is fascinating. He had a pretty mean life, captured by pirates and enslaved for six years. He was also a bit of a mean fighting man, railing against druids, idols and kings. Many fellow Christians were quite hostile towards him also. But he baptised thousands of people and ordained priests and introduced the shamrock (three-leafed plant) to describe the concept of the Holy Trinity… not to mention banishing all snakes from Ireland.

ฤกษ์ดึ มีนาคม ฤกษ์ดี วันดี
เดือน มีนาคมAuspicious days and times in March.

February is KOOMPAA-PUN

February is KOOMPAA-PUN กุมภาพันธ์

February

For the guys: Why not take your beautiful, delicate new Thai girlfriend to a romantic Valentine Day’s meal at the German Sausage & Beer Restaurant, where you will find an Oom Pa Paa band!?

For the girls: The ideal place to take your fellow on Valentine’s Day is to the German Sausage & Beer Restaurant with the jolly Oom Pa Paa band!

(กุมภา “koompaa” is February, the พันธ์ “-pun” ending = obligation/to unite/to connect, probably refers to the fact that it’s a non-standard 28-day month.)

You might not remember the word “koompa-pun” itself all that accurately at first. That’s okay. Thinking of Valentine’s Day, which is in February, and the Oom Pa Paa band will be enough of a trigger. After a few attempts, you’ll easily be able to get from “oom pa paa” to “koompaa-pun”.

February with Peter Corb Dyrendal Can you read the modern fonts? I cover these in the workshop, but I can also send you a handout that shows you how to do it easily.

กุมภาพันธ์
ปีเตอร์ คอร์ป ไดเรนดัล

Peter was in a Thai TV series and became a popular singer for a short while. “February” was the theme song.

January is MOCKARAA-COM มกราคม

January is MOCKARAA-COM มกราคม

January is MOCKARAA-COM

After the expensive month of Christmas presents and New Year partying, all one can usually afford to eat in January is MACARONI.

(The -com or -yon endings refer to whether the month as 31 or 30 days respectively, so it’s not something one needs to put any effort into remembering.)

Okay, so this mnemonic is a bit imprecise I admit. But I chose this to illustrate a point: even a convoluted suggestion is usually enough to help you remember something… if it’s bizarre enough!

See if you still remember this tomorrow and next week…

As I said, you might not get “mockaraa-com” precisely. It might have been better to try a mnemonic involving “mocha” (e.g. my New Year’s Resolution is to reduce my caffeine intake by drinking mocha instead of coffee).

attention! Important: Pronounce “ck” the same way as the “k” in “sky” – the air is kept inside your mouth, not expelled as a puff.

The word for January consists of two syllables: มก and รา. The first syllable has the invisible vowel “o” (“mock”). It’s difficult for Thais to run these two syllables together, so they add the spacer sound “a” as a bridge. That’s why you get “mock-a-raa” (and not “mokraa”).


January Can you read the modern fonts? I cover these in the workshop, but I can also send you a handout that shows you how to do it easily.

3 มกรา มาดู proud ขวัญเวียง … ฟรี
(mockaraa maa doo … khwan wiyang … free!)

3 Jan come look … khwanwiyang … free!

ขวัญเวียง is just the name of the moobaan, but it’s an interesting name.

ขวัญ means “the spirit inside you” (possibly the same as “soul”?). So ของขวัญ is a (nice) thing for your soul, or a “gift”.

เวียง means a walled city, like the old city in Chiang Mai. And a moobaan is, after all, a private, protected area for your soul (or peace-of-mind).

Nice name…!

Learning Thai Months

This is part of a series of how to remember essential vocabulary “in Thai”.

The months are particularly difficult, primarily because they are not really Thai words – they usually have something to do with the Zodiac or originating from Sanskrit.

Nevertheless, at some point, it is worth learning the names of the months. Start by learning the current month and the one following, so that you can at least talk about today’s date and a date in the next month.

Or you could cheat and simply say เดือนนี้ (for this month) and เดือนหน้า (for next month).

Here’s how to remember the months in Thai:

Month Hint
January Macaroni
February Oom Paa Paa
March Meaner
April Messiah
May Pretty Party
June Meat ‘n Tuna sandwiches
July 4th of July fireworks
August Leo the Singer
September Hunting season, get out yer guns
October OktoberFest Too Laa Laa
November Dance a Pretty Jig
December A Ton of Xmas presents

Reading Modern Fonts

If you can more or less recognize the classic fonts, with all the loops in the right places, you are probably ready to have a go at recognizing the more stylish, minimalistic modern fonts.

Happy New Year (modern font) Breeze

Modern Fonts are actually quite easy to read, once you get used to them.

Please download this PDF handout to see how the fonts differ (or not, as the case may be).

Most of the letters are the same, with bulges or blobs where the loops (heads) were. And if something isn’t important then it’s simply left out. For example, ม and น and ห don’t bother with the “head” (the loop on the top left). The main distinguishing factor is where the loop changes – e.g., for ม it’s on the bottom left, for น it’s on the bottom right, for ห it’s on the top right.

You’ll get to recognize these very quickly. Sometimes if you’re not sure about a particular letter because it could one of two possibilities (e.g. the ด letter, which could be either ด or ถ in a modern font) then you might have to find another example of the letter, or its counterpart, in the text (hopefully it’s a long enough text to contain more than on example of the same letter).

Sometimes you’ll see a word you recognize, it becomes a ‘sight word’ – and by a process of deduction you’ll figure out what the letter is. It takes a bit of practice, but after a while you’ll find that the modern fonts are actually easier to read. They’re cleaner and have fewer distracting lines and loops than the classic fonts.

Obviously, it also helps to have some vocabulary so that you can more or less guess what the word is likely to be from the context.

Attached is the hand-out that identifies the differences that you do need to know in order to be able to read the modern fonts. The letters in black are easily recognizable in the modern fonts, so just focus on the red and blue letters.

  • The traditional fonts are in the left column. The next columns are the modern & handwritten forms. All that has happened is that the unimportant bits of the letter are left out, usually the extraneous loops. If you look at the 3rd & 4th letters down (ม and น) you’ll notice that the essential difference between these is the loop at the bottom is either on the left of the right. So the loop on the top left can be discarded. No other letters looks like these, so it’s safe to do so.
  • Sometimes the ห looks more like a K than an H or h. But if you think of the K as a kind of h but with the dash (representing the ‘baby’ of the hump-backed mother) then it’s easier to recognize.
  • Another potentially confusing letter is the ข (cackling old witch). It’s often just a skinnier version of บ or sometimes a kind of lazy V. But it can also sometimes look like a cursive X . If you write it very fast and lazily, the curl of her neck can easily intersect and become like an .
  • The ช and ซ are often quite difficult to distinguish, either from the regular ข or from each other because the dent of the ‘chop’ is often very slight, and the dent in the ‘slice-and-dice’ neck is usually a hint of a curve, no more.
  • Some letters look quite different – and I’ve highlighted them in red. Some are only slightly different – and these are in blue. The blue ones just need to be noted and you’ll recognize them easily. The red ones can be understood when you know how Thai letters are written. They start from the main loop. So the letter ว is written starting from the loop at the bottom. In English, we’d normally write it starting from the other end. Try writing it the Thai way. Now write it again, but very fast. And again, dropping the loop. And again. Notice that it starts to look like a lazy backwards “C”.

    So you could maybe think of it as a backwards WC or backwards WC, which is how wiggly ladyboys use the lavatory anyway!

    Another way to think of this is simply to “see” a different picture that represents the same sound (W) – the “wiggly” ear of a cartoon face…!

Wiggly ear

  • Remember, all Thai letters are written starting from the loop. So what looks like an “S” is actually the ร written very quickly from the bottom, which eventually looks like our “S”. Think of a Snake Rearing its head to give you the “r” letter.

    Snake - Rearing

  • The backwards “G” is actually the อ written quickly or stylistically. Very often, you will see it simply as an “O”.
  • Finally, the “U” is simply the u-boat บ and the upside down “U” is the male chicken in the sky without its beak ก.

As for the vowels, these are mostly the same except for the following potential ambiguities:

  • The ‘igloo’ vowels are fairly obvious: either a single horizontal dash for the “igloo”, a horizontal dash and a vertical line on the right for ‘chiminey’, two vertical lines for ‘birdy’ and a blob for ‘burp’. However, the ‘puppy/pizza topping’ has the vertical line or curve on the left.
  • The ‘surfer’ tone mark and ‘puppy’ vowel can sometimes look the same. Keep in mind that the ‘surfer’ tone mark is actually a zig-zaggy character like a “Z” (actually the number “2”), whereas the ‘puppy’ is at most a slighly concave horizontal line.
  • The เ and แ vowels are quite obvious, but often appear as two vertical lines, | or ||. And the ‘end-puppies’ ะ often appear as two dots like a colon :

Once you’ve become familiar with the ‘classic’ style of the letters, you’ll notice that It’s only a few letters that look ‘different’; the rest are more or less obvious.

Print out the handout (above) for reference and then see if you can make out the following signs:

ซัก อบ รีด ซัก อบ รีด
เปา เปา

ยูวีคัลเลอร์

สะอาด สีสดใจ เพือสุขภาพ

4000 กรัม

beautiful แว่นบิวตี้ฟูล
ซื้อ1แถม1 ซื้อ 1 แถม 1
subway ประหยัด 20-40 บาท

เริ่มต้นที่ 59 บาท

More notes about the รร (“run”) vowel.

On its own รร is pronounced like the English word “run”.

But it will never appear on its own.

1. Normally it will be surrounded by two consonants, in which case it simply becomes the “puppy” vowel, as in ธรรม,pronounced ธัม (dharma) or กรรม, pronounced กัม (karma).

2. Occasionally there will just be a consonant on the left and none on the right, in which case, the final “rolling ladyboy” becomes a kind of “n” at the “end”, as in บรร-ทุก (บัรทุก= truck)

3. Conceivably, there could be a consonant on the right only and none on the left, in which case it would become ระ-, but I haven’t come across any words spelled this way.

This spelling is used in a few very common words, so unfortunately, one can’t just discard it as being too obscure:

รถ บรรทุก truck
สุวรรณภูมิ Suvarnabhumi (pronounced “su-wan-a-phoom” in Thai)
ธรรมดา ordinary
ธรรมชาติ nature/natural (the final “igloo” vowel isn’t pronounced)
and
กิจกรรม activity
บรรจุภัณฑ์ package
วัฒนธรรม culture
พฤติกรรม behavior

How to pronounce องุ่น

There are several words that start with อ fused together with another consonant letter. So how do you pronounce a silent letter with another consonant letter?

Well, it’s the same as any two ‘unpronouncable’ fused letters. You must open your mouth wide to jump from the first sound to the second, i.e. by making an ะ sound.

So องุ่น is pronounced อะ-งุน, just like is สบาย pronounced สะ-บาย or ขนม is pronounced ขะ-นม.

Obviously, there are a few two-letter words that start with อ and have no vowel (in which case it’s the invisible or default ‘o’ vowel), like อก (chest/breast), อม (to suck), อบ (bake), อด (refrain from) and องค์ (organ/bodypart).

And don’t forget the four words where อ changes the ladyboy (ย) back into a boy for tone purposes:

อย่า
อย่าง
อยาก
อยู่


Note: For tone purposes, it’s the first consonant that determines the sex of the word (or compound syllable in this case). But also note that this only applies if the second consonant is a ladyboy (which it is, most of the time, anyway)…

So องุ่น is a dead boy (sad).

ขนม is a singing girl (question)

But in สบาย, the second consonant in the fused pair is a boy – so we don’t give precedence to ส and so the sex for the whole thing is a boy: บ (i.e. singing boy = no tone).

Spacer Vowels

“Spacer” vowels

Basically, for two-letter words with no vowel, the vowel is understood or implied to be the short “o” vowel. (It’s not the “o” as in “on” and it’s not the “o” as in “no”. It’s the short version of the vowel in “short”. There is no equivalent in English, but if you say “o”in “or” and cut it really short then that will be the sound you want.

So here are some examples that you can probably already recognize:

– ผม – I (for a male)

– หก – six

– สด – fresh

– ตด – fart

– หมด – used up; completely (note that ห is just used to change the sex of ม, it makes no sound of its own)

The last one is still a “two-letter” word! The ห is just there to change the sex of ม from a ladyboy into a girl. Another way you can think of it is that the first consonant (reading from left to right) is what determines the “sex” of the entire syllable.

Now what about the multiple syllable words?

Well, strictly speaking, they’re still single syllable words. These are usually foreign-derived words (from English or Pali) that cannot be easily pronounced by Thais – like “stamp”. So they add a kind of “spacer” or “breather” sound… an “a” (like the “a” in “pizza” or the “u” in “up). So “stamp” becomes “sa-tamp” and “steak” becomes “sa-tehk” and “tnon” (street) becomes “ta-non”. (Can you say “tnon” as a single syllable???)

So if there is no vowel written anywhere in a 3- or 4-letter word then very likely it’s one of those words that have two consonants fused together like Siamese Twins in the beginning and then the invisible “o” vowel in the middle.

ขนม is a good example of this.

This is actually the two letters ขน fused together to form the unpronounceable sound “cn” followed by an ม. So as there’s no vowel written, it’s the implied “o” sound. And the word – which should be “cnom” becomes pronounced as “canom”.

There are several examples of this in Thai, where two fused-together letters are “spaced out” by inserting a short “a” sound, like:

– ตลาด tlaahd = ta-laahd

– สวัสดี swas dee = sa-was dee [s signifies that the “s” isn’t enunciated, so sounds almost like a strangled “t”]

– สบาย sbaai = sa-baai

In all other cases (where two consonant letters are fused together), you can either say them as written or – very often in colloquial speech – simply drop the second consonant entirely, as in :

– ครับ krab or kab

– ปลา bplaa or bpaa

Pronouncing the Vowels

Pronouncing the Vowels

It is absolutely essential to pronounce the vowel sounds accurately in order to be understood.

Thankfully, the vowel sounds in Thai are very consistent, they do not change depending on your region, as in English. There are regional dialects in Thailand, of course, but if you pronounce the vowels in particular the ‘standard’ (middle-country) way then you will be universally understood.

There are only nine vowel shapes in Thai. All the vowels are made up of short (cut-off) or long versions of these sounds, or of two vowel sounds pronounced in sequence (“dipthongs”). This article is a summary for your reference and practice.

If you haven’t already watched the videos on youtube then watch them now.

Exaggerated ‘farang’ version and explanations The normal Thai way of pronouncing the vowels
Exaggerated ‘farang’ version and explanations The normal Thai way of pronouncing the vowels

HERE ARE THE NINE SHAPES.

Practice them in an exaggerated way until you develop a muscle memory for the feeling of each shape. Stretch your muscles so that they feel tired after a minute or two (otherwise you’re not doing it right)! It may feel a bit silly to talk in such an exaggerated potato-in-mouth way (in fact, it should!) but it’s normal for Thai people, just like it feels quite normal and natural for us to stick our tongues out when pronouncing “th” in English. We need to train our mouth muscles so that these shapes eventually feel normal and comfortable if we want to be able to enunciate Thai clearly.

If a Thai person compliments you by saying พูดเก่งนะ then they’re just being polite: “hey, good effort (but I still don’t understand you)!” However, if someone says พูดชัด then you know you’ve arrived: you speak clearly enough that they can actually hear what you’re saying.

Stretch your mouth sideways
เก
เกม
เวลา
เห็น
Stretch sideways and open wide (push your tongue out slightly)
แก่
และ
แล้ว
แฟน
Open wide, like at the dentist!
อาหาร
จะ
ทำ
น้ำ
Make a large O with your mouth.
รอ
ขอ
จอ
เกาะ
The shortened “ao” vowel (as in เกาะ) is the short, cut off version of this sound.
Make a smaller O with your mouth.
โทร
โต๋ะ
อก
ผม
The “invisible” vowel (as in ฝน) in is a short, cut off version of this sound.
Blow a kiss!
ดู
รู้
สุด
ขุด
Stretch out your mouth into an inane grin.
กีต้าร์
ตี
สิ
อิ่ม
Keep your mouth in a smile (maybe not as much as before) and clench your teeth slightly while saying the “birdy” vowel sound.
คือ
มือ
หนึ่ง
อึ
Americans, keep your tongue out the way to avoid making an “r” sound – for all the “birdy” or “dirty” vowels.
Relax your mouth and drop your jaw.
เปิด
เกิด
แฮมเบอร์เกอร์
เงิน
Two vowels: “dirty” plus “chiminey”
เคย
เลย
เนย
Two vowels: “dirty” plus “puppy”
เพื่อน
เมื่อ
เหลือ
เชือ
Two vowels: “chiminey” plus “puppy”
เบียร์
เสีย
เปลียน
เงียบ
Two vowels: “balloon” plus “puppy”
วัว
ตัว
เกลัว
ขวด
Two vowels: “puppy” plus “hook”
เกา
เขา
เรา
เดา
Two vowels: “puppy” plus “igloo”
ไป
ไคร
ใจ
ไม้ ไม่ ม้าย ไหม

VOWEL/SHAPE COMPARISONS