Learn to read Thai
The Thai alphabet — interactive chart, guide & trainer
Every Thai consonant, vowel and mark, colour-coded by consonant class, with audio. Below the chart: a clear guide to how the script and tones work, an interactive tone-rule calculator, and practice exercises at four levels.
Consonants (44)
Middle class
High class
Low class — sonorant (live-syllable finals)
Low class — voiceless (dead-syllable finals)
Vowels
Basic
Complex
Diphthongs
Special
Tone marks
Numerals & marks
Click a consonant or numeral to hear its example word. Audio uses your browser's Thai voice — treat it as a guide.
How the Thai script works
Thai is written left to right with no spaces between words — spaces separate sentences or clauses instead. There are 44 consonants and a large set of vowel symbols. Crucially, vowels are not all written in a line: they can sit before, after, above or below the consonant they attach to, and Thai is almost fully phonetic — once you know the rules you can read a new word and know its tone.
The three consonant classes
Every consonant belongs to one of three classes — middle, high or low. The class is not a pitch you pronounce; it is a category that, together with the syllable type, the vowel length and any tone mark, decides the tone of the syllable. Learning each letter together with its class is the single most useful thing you can do.
Live vs dead syllables
A live syllable ends in a sonorant sound (m, n, ng, y, w) or a long vowel. A dead syllable ends in a stop (k, t, p) or a short open vowel. This live/dead distinction, plus the consonant class, drives the tone.
Vowel length
Thai distinguishes short and long vowels, and length changes meaning — and, for low-class dead syllables, the tone. In the chart above, short vowels are marked amber and long vowels green.
The tone rules
With no tone mark, the tone comes from the class and the syllable type:
| Consonant class | Live syllable | Dead (short vowel) | Dead (long vowel) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Middle | Mid | Low | Low |
| High | Rising | Low | Low |
| Low | Mid | High | Falling |
The four tone marks override this:
| Tone mark | Middle / High class | Low class |
|---|---|---|
| ◌่ mái èek | Low | Falling |
| ◌้ mái thoo | Falling | High |
| ◌๊ mái dtrii | High (chiefly on middle-class consonants) | |
| ◌๋ mái jàt-dtà-waa | Rising (chiefly on middle-class consonants) | |
Classic example: มา maa (come, mid), ม้า máa (horse, high), หมา mǎa (dog, rising) — same sounds, different tone, different word.
Interactive tone-rule calculator
Pick the features of a syllable and see which tone results.
Practice
Read next: the full beginner's guide to the Thai alphabet, or practise vocabulary with the 100 basic words.