Thai writes with 44 consonant letters — a lot for a language with only about 21 consonant sounds. The alphabet grew out of old Indic scripts carried into Southeast Asia over a thousand years ago, and it kept extra letters so that Sanskrit and Pali loanwords could be spelled “properly”. The result: whole families of letters now make the same sound — five different letters all say kh, and six say th. Two letters, ฃ and ฅ, have quietly retired and survive only in old spellings. Here is why the big count is worth your time anyway: every consonant belongs to one of three classes — mid, high or low — and the class of the first letter is what decides which tone a syllable can take. Learn the classes, and Thai tones stop looking random. Tap any letter below to hear its name and see its class at work.
Every Thai consonant has a name built from a familiar word — ก is “ko kai”, the k of kai (chicken). Thai schoolchildren chant the whole list, and it is still the fastest way to learn the letters. Use the class filter to see one family at a time, search by letter, name or meaning, and tap any letter for the full story.
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All 44 consonants — tap any letter to explore it.
“chicken”
Mid classg, as in “go”
k, unreleased — the air stops in your throat
One chart explains almost every Thai tone. Find the class of the syllable's first consonant, check whether the syllable is live or dead, then see what each tone mark does. Marks that aren't used with a class are shown as —.
| Consonant class | Live syllable | Dead syllable | + Mai ek ่ | + Mai tho ้ | + Mai tri ๊ | + Mai chattawa ๋ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mid class | Mid | Low | Low | Falling | High | Rising |
| High class | Rising | Low | Low | Falling | — | — |
| Low class | Mid | High (short vowel) Falling (long vowel) |
Falling | High | — | — |
Live or dead? A live syllable ends in a vowel or in one of the smooth sounds m, n, ng, y or w — your voice can keep humming and stretch it out, so it can comfortably carry any of the five tones. A dead syllable is chopped off short: it ends in a p, t or k sound, or in a short vowel, and that sudden stop restricts which tones it can take.
That is the whole trick behind the chart. The tone marks themselves never change — mai ek is always the same little mark — but the result depends on the class of the first consonant and on whether the syllable is live or dead. Learn to spot the three classes in the grid above and you can work out the tone of almost any written Thai word, even one you have never heard spoken.
You have met the whole alphabet. Put it to work with 76 travel phrases you can say today, each with audio and tone marks, or test yourself with the phrase quiz.