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Pronunciation Guide Systems for Thai

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Sample: คุณ เก็บ เสื้อ ไว้ ไหน

Introduction

As you've probably noticed, nearly every book and website uses a different pronunciation guide system (also known as "romanization," so-called "transliteration," or "phonemic transcription" systems) for helping you learn the pronunciation of native Thai words.

For example, the Thai word เหมือนกัน (same) can be written in the different systems as:

This page introduces you to several of these systems, including some of their hidden pitfalls—and some of the inherent limitations of any such system—that may surprise you.

Which System Is Best?

This is everyone's favorite question, so let's get it out of the way now:

Q: Which pronunciation guide system is best?

A: The one you learned first, of course!

We will be pointing out advantages and disadvantages of each system in the sections below, but practically speaking, the pronunciation guide systems are all crutches, and if you will be in Thailand for more than a quick vacation, the crutch analogy is really spot-on:

If you are just starting your study of Thai and haven't learned any pronunciation system yet, we can give you this advice: all the systems are pretty close in their completeness and suitability for a Thai learner, except for the Thai Government system. So as long as you avoid that, you'll be fine. This won't be a practical issue for you, as any Thai learning website you visit, or book you purchase, will use one of the modern, complete systems. We include the Thai Government system here just for comparison, since it is used for road signs and other government publications.

We offer a pretty useful transition system called Easy Thai that spells out Thai words using a smaller, simpler subset of Thai. That could be a great way for you to make a step up from your old pronunciation guide system towards reading real Thai. You can even enable both "Easy Thai" and your old system at the same time! Just check the box for "Easy Thai" below.

Also, since you'll eventually need to learn Thai script, why not print out a set of our free Thai consonant and vowel flashcards and start learning them today!

We Let You Choose

Here at slice-of-thai.com, we let you choose the pronunciation guide system(s) you want to see. Check your favorite system(s) below, and we will remember your setting and instantly apply it to all pages on slice-of-thai.com:

SystemDescriptionExample
คุณ เก็บ เสื้อ ไว้ ไหน
PaiboonBenjawan Poomsan Becker's Thai for Beginners[kun-gèp-sʉ̂a-wái-nǎi]
Paiboon+Adds a few extra sound distinctions[kun-gÈp-sʉ̂ʉa-wái-nǎi]
TLCFrom the fantastic thai-language.com[khoonM-gepL-seuuaF-waiH-naiR]
TigerThai learning books from Tiger Press[koon-gèp-sûea-wái-nǎi]
LPSystem from the Lonely Planet guidebooks[khun-kèp-sêua-wái-nǎi]
Thai Govt+Lame system used for Thai road signs + tones[khun-kèp-sûea-wái-nǎi]
IPAInternational Phonetic Alphabet: nerds love it[kʰūn-kèp̚-sɯ̂ːa-wáj-nǎj]
Easy ThaiSpells out each syllable using simple Thai[คุน-เก็บ-เซื่อ-ไว้-ไหฺน]
Example of how it will look: [sʉ̂a, sʉ̂ʉa, seuuaF, sûea, sêua, sûea, sɯ̂ːa, เซื่อ]

The Basic Goal, and What to Expect

What are pronunciation guide systems for and what should you expect from them?

Helps You With Sound, Not Spelling

The basic goal of a pronunciation guide system is to make it easier for you, the foreigner studying Thai, to learn how a Thai word is pronounced, without having to know full Thai script.

Pronunciation guides are specifically not designed to tell you how a Thai word is spelled in Thai script (with a few small exceptions we will give for each system below).

For example, in Thai there are 4 different consonant letters that sound like "s" (just as in English, "c," "s," and "ps" can all sound like an "s"). A pronunciation guide purposely simplifies this down to just "s" so you can focus on the sound. This goes for vowels, too. In Thai, there are at least 4 ways to write "ai" which all potentually get folded into one in a pronunciation guide system.

Transliteration or Transcription?

Various books and websites will call their pronunciation guide systems "transliteration" or "transcription" systems.

By definition, a transliteration system seeks to preserve all of the spelling distinctions of the original language, and so it would never glom the 4 "s" sounds of Thai into one.

A transcription system, on the other hand, seeks only to represent the sounds of the original language.

So, the pronunciation guide systems described here are all primarily transcription systems (although in a few cases, they do indicate some additional details about the spelling of the original word).

Don't be thrown off by the fuzzy industry usage. For any modern book or website about Thai, you can be sure that the primary goal of its pronunciation system is to encode sound, not spelling.

English Letters Go Only So Far

Most pronunciation guide systems primarily use familiar roman letters, which is why they're called romanization systems.

While it sure is nice to see familiar letters, it is very easy to assume that the English letters will always guide you to the correct pronunciation.

This is a common fallacy that has led many Thai learners astray. Don't obsess over the English letters. It is fundamentally impossible for any Thai pronunciation system based on English letters to be "intuitively" correct for all speakers, or even any particular speaker, since:

Are Those British Letters or American Letters?

For example, consider that each of these supposedly "intuitive," so-called "what you see is what you say" systems were designed by a person with a certain English dialect, and they only "work intuitively" for people with that dialect.

One rather amusing area where this comes up is the spelling "porn." A huge number of (otherwise respectable) place and person names in Thai have an English spelling of "porn," such as "Rattanaporn" or "Porn Ping Palace" or "Pornthip."

Why on earth, Americans ask themselves, whould Thais ever call themselves or their business "porn?"

The answer is that the foreigners whom they asked for advice, when deciding how to spell their names, were British! When you pronounce "porn" with most British dialects, you get pretty much the right sound (as good as you can get with British dialects), and few, if any, snickers.

This problem is not limited to differences between countries, either. Californians are likely to pronounce "man" differently from Bostonians or midwesterners, and huge UK, Austrailian, and New Zealand dialect differences abound as well.

This example should immediately convince you to stop trusting, and stop obsessing over, the English spelling of pronunciation guide systems.

If you're still not convinced, just look at this:

Misleading Spellings vs. Funny Letters

Some people argue that by presenting the illusion of being "intuitive" and "what you see is what you say," some pronunciation guide systems might be doing you a disfavor by fooling you into thinking that if you pronounce the English letters using your native dialect, it will sound right.

The fear is that for every Thai learner they help (whose dialect matches that of the system), there are a larger number of Thai learners who they have hurt (by misleading them into mispronouncing Thai without even knowing it).

Based on this idea, some pronunciation guide systems, such as the Paiboon system, purposely use non-roman letters for sounds such as [ʉʉ] that do not exist in any dialect of English, and even for some sounds like [ɔɔ] for which any "intuitive" English spelling (e.g. "or," "aw," "ough") would have huge misinterpretation in different dialects of English.

These "funny letters" can have the effect of annoying or putting off the Thai learner at first, but the benefit is that they force the Thai learner to actually dig a little bit into the book/website, or even better talk to a Thai person, to find out how the funny letter is pronounced. It's a case of making you pay a little bit up front to save you a lot of pain in the long term.

Now, to be sure, most books and websites which claim an "intuitive" system do actually say that their system is targeted at a user with a particular dialect. For example, the creator of the TLC system from thai-language.com makes this honest and amusing statement:

In keeping with the tradition of proliferating transliteration methodologies, this website uses the system described above. It seems reasonably accurate to me and has the advantage of being internally consistent and well documented. You may wish to note that I was raised on America's east coast, so my decisions reflect this regional pronounciation.

You'll have to decide for yourself whether you think the average Thai learner will actually bother to read the introduction of his/her book or website, or whose fault it is if they don't!

Personally, I think it's a wash. The "funny letter" systems teach you an valuable, and possibly painful, lesson about the true nature of Thai sounds early on, whereas the non-"funny letter" systems offer some readers some instant gratification!

Easy Answer: Sit with a Thai and Learn the Real Sounds

In reality, you don't need to get involved in this silly argument at all.

There is a simple way you can learn real Thai.

What you should do is spend 30 minutes with a Thai person, early in your study of Thai, and go over all of the consonant sounds, vowel sounds, and tones of Thai. There really aren't that many.

You can use our website or any book on Thai to present the list to them. Have them make each sound for you, and listen to and correct your attempts to make those sounds.

Once you have learned the true sounds of Thai by ear, then later as you learn a pronunction guide system and eventually Thai script, you can map those written "symbols" (and you really should just think of them as "symbols"—don't try to assign deep meaning to their spelling, cuz there isn't any) to the true Thai sounds you have learned.

This simple advice can save you years of pain and confusion!

How Much Detail Does It Give?

The goal of a pronunciation guide system is not to record the exact sound of each word down to the last excruciating detail (in linguist parlance, it is not meant to be a complete phonetic system).

For example, it will not tell you the differences between Thai dialects. Think about how a Brit, a Bostonian, or a Californian would say "Harvard Yard:" we don't usually see three entries for this (or any) word in an English dictionary corresponding to each dialect, and we don't want to be overloaded with dialect details in a basic Thai dictionary either.

Phonemes: The Absolute Minimum Detail

A pronunciation guide must at least point out the sound differences that are actually important for distinguishing one word from another (in linguist parlance, it must at least be a phonemic system).

For example, a pronunciation guide system for English must have a separate way to write [b, b, b, b, b, b, b, บ] and [p, p, ph, p, ph, ph, pʰ, ผ/พ], otherwise we could never teach people to tell between "bot" and "pot."

The same thing applies in Thai, but you need to be aware that the sounds of Thai don't always map one-to-one with sounds of English. For example, in Thai there are actually three different "b"/"p"-like sounds, [b, b, b, b, b, b, b, บ], [p, p, ph, p, ph, ph, pʰ, ผ/พ], and [bp, bp, bp, pb, p, p, p, ป], and you need to learn to speak and recognize the three sounds separately in order to be functional in Thai. We'll tell you all about these cases in our page on the consonant sounds of Thai.

Same thing applies for Thai vowels. For example, In English, if you say "man" or you draw out the vowel like "maaaaaaaaaan," you're nearly always saying the same word. But in Thai, many vowels have two versions: one that has a short duration and one that has a long duration. You need to use the right one, otherwise you will say the wrong word. For example, the word มัน [man, man, manM, man, man, man, mān, มัน] (fat, oil, grease oil) and มาร [maan, maan, maanM, mahn, maan, man, māːn, มาน] (the Devil, wicked angel, the evil one) differ only in the length of the vowel. We'll tell you all about these cases in our page about the vowel sounds of Thai.

Finally, there are the tones. As you are probably aware, Thai is a tonal language, meaning that a word may have 5 different meanings depending on how the pitch of your voice changes as you say it. In order to be useful to language learners, a pronunciation guide system must indicate the tones. Most systems do it with funny marks over the vowels. You can find out all about the tones—what each of them sounds like, how they are written in pronunciation guides, how to say them, and how to recognize them— on our page about the five tones of Thai.

Some Systems Fail At This Level

Sadly, some of the pronunciation guide systems—notably the Thai Government system that is used on road signs in Thailand—fail to meet this basic requirement.

The Thai government system does not indicate tones at all (we have added them on this website in an attempt to salvage some usefulness from the system), it gloms together several consonants which distinguish many common words, it gloms together all long and short versions of vowels, and it inexplicably gloms together two completely different vowels, [oo, oo, ohM, oh, oh, o, ʔōː, โอ] and [ɔɔ, ɔɔ, aawM, aw, aw, o, ʔɔ̄ː, ออ], which distinguish vast numbers of words in Thai. The result is something that is nearly useless for learning Thai.

Some Give You More Phonetic Information

Fortunately, most modern pronunciation guide systems, and nearly all the systems you'll find in Thai learning textbooks or websites, represent the complete palette of Thai sounds (phonemes) with unique letters or letter combinations.

Some pronunciation guide systems go a little beyond that too. Because you are a non-native trying to learn a new language, they provide you with some (but not too much) additional phonetic information that will help you pronounce words.

This is especially relevant when you consider that, in both Thai and English, some phonemes sound different depending on where they appear in a word. To understand this, consider the English word "potato." Notice how the two "t" sounds in "potato" sound different (for most English speakers). The first "t" has this extra "breathiness" (aspiration) after it that does not occur after the second "t." This is something we don't write in most English dictionaries (their pronunciation guides just say "po-tay-toe" or something similar, where we use the same "t" symbol in each case), because "it's just obvious" to native English speakers that they should aspirate the first "t" and not the second one. Now consider a foreign person learning English. They have no idea that they should aspirate the first "t" and not the second one. Eventually, that person will learn to aspirate the "t," either by example or by someone teaching them the rules for when "t" gets aspirated, but while they are learning, they would benefit from a dictionary that made it explicit how they should pronounce the "t"s.

This same idea can be usefully applied to Thai.

Some of the pronunciation guide systems provide a teeny bit of extra phonetic information that is not strictly needed to distinguish words. For example,

Does Everyone Agree on the Phonemes?

The set of phonemes in Thai (including consonants, vowels, and tones) is pretty well agreed-upon, but it's not completely set in stone. Occasionally phonemes will split when people discover important examples of word pairs. For example, Rikker Dockum of Thai 101 points out that word pairs like นะ and ณ have the same consonant sound, vowel sound, and tone (and therefore have the same pronunciation guide in most systems, e.g., [ná] for the Paiboon system), but in real Thai speech they are distinguished by the presence or absence of a final glottal stop (that is, whether or not you cut off the sound abruptly at the end using your vocal cords) and so they are really different phonemes.

If enough people agree, they will "declare" new phonemes and slowly revise the various pronunciation guides to reflect the new conventions. Currently, IPA is the only pronunciation guide system that even has the eqipment to represent this distinction.

Stressed and Unstressed Syllables

Syllable stress, which we will discuss at length in an upcoming page on this site, is an important aspect of proper Thai pronunciation that adds yet more variation on how a given Thai phoneme may actually sound in fluent speech.

Stress is an important aspect of the Thai language that is nearly 100% ignored by today's Thai learning texts. Most pronunication guide systems in use today either do not notate stress at all, or they do it inconsistently in a way that confuses learners.

Briefly, certain syllables in multi-syllable Thai words are unstressed syllables and the other syllables are stressed syllables. The last syllable of a Thai word (or the only syllable, for one-syllable Thai words) is always stressed. The other syllables could be stressed or unstressed. In most cases, syllables that are unstressed have short vowels and no final consonants, though there are exceptions (the converse is not true: if a syllable happens to be short or have no final consonant, that doesn't mean it is, or is particularly likely or unlikely to be, unstressed).

The word "stress" really refers to two different phenomena in English, at least one of which also occurs in Thai:

Stressed syllables are pronounced as written, taking into account all the other irregularities of Thai script below the level of stressed/unstressed!

In so-called "citation speech," where someone speaks unnaturally slowly and clearly to you (e.g. to teach you a new word, or to show off their superiority), unstressed syllables are generally also pronounced as written, just like stressed syllables.

The difference comes in normal, fluent, running, connected speech: unstressed syllables are pronounced differently than they are written.

At first glance, it would seem that Thai, a tonal language, has no "room" for stress. In English, you express stress by changing the tone (pitch) of your voice. But in Thai, tone is already "used up" for something else.

Well, it turns out that language is more complicated than that. Nobody ever said you can't use the same property of speech (tone, vowel sound, consonant sound) for more than one thing at the same time! Stress, in particular unstressed-ness, imposes an extra layer of change on a set of properties that are "already used" for other things.

In particular, in unstressed Thai syllables, some or all of these things happen:

Stress is a different concept than either tone or vowel sound, but an unstressed syllable tends to have a different tone or vowel sound than is written.

Stress In Pronunciation Guides

Most pronunication guide systems in use today either do not notate stress at all, or they do it inconsistently in a way that confuses learners.

For example, in the Paiboon system, which is used in a large number of books and websites, a word is:

If I had to pick one, I'd say that the form #2 is the one you will most commonly find for the Paiboon system, but you will certainly be able to find exceptions between books and even within certain books.

On sites such as thai-language.com, whose TLC pronunciation guide is mostly computer-generated based on an algorithm that examines the Thai word, you are more likely to find form #1, but even on that site there will likely be exceptions.

All modern pronunciation guide systems have this problem because none of them explicitly specify how stress should be notated. Hopefully this problem will be fixed in all systems, and old material will be updated to be consistent, as awareness of this issue rises.

Ironically, many of the systems developed by the first wave of non-Thai linguists who studied Thai in the 20th century, including Mary Haas, do include stress, but we lost those refinements somewhere along the way.

There is no reason why a system has to choose #1, #2, or #3 above; there's many other, useful ways of notating stress. The problem comes when the method used is inconsistent.

Comparing All Systems, Side-by-Side

Sample Sentence

SystemDescriptionExample
คุณ เก็บ เสื้อ ไว้ ไหน
PaiboonBenjawan Poomsan Becker's Thai for Beginners[kun-gèp-sʉ̂a-wái-nǎi]
Paiboon+Adds a few extra sound distinctions[kun-gÈp-sʉ̂ʉa-wái-nǎi]
TLCFrom the fantastic thai-language.com[khoonM-gepL-seuuaF-waiH-naiR]
TigerThai learning books from Tiger Press[koon-gèp-sûea-wái-nǎi]
LPSystem from the Lonely Planet guidebooks[khun-kèp-sêua-wái-nǎi]
Thai Govt+Lame system used for Thai road signs + tones[khun-kèp-sûea-wái-nǎi]
IPAInternational Phonetic Alphabet: nerds love it[kʰūn-kèp̚-sɯ̂ːa-wáj-nǎj]
Easy ThaiSpells out each syllable using simple Thai[คุน-เก็บ-เซื่อ-ไว้-ไหฺน]

Consonant Sounds

Initial Consonant Sounds

Here's how each system notates consonant sounds when they appear at the beginning of a syllable. For more information about these sounds, see our page on the consonant sounds of Thai:

Initial Consonant Sounds
PaiboonPaiboon+TLCTigerLPThai Govt+IPAEasy Thai
[b][b][b][b][b][b][b][บ]
[p][p][ph][p][ph][ph][pʰ][ผ/พ]
[bp][bp][bp][pb][p][p][p][ป]
[d][d][d][d][d][d][d][ด]
[t][t][th][t][th][th][tʰ][ถ/ท]
[dt][dt][dt][dt][t][t][t][ต]
[g][g][g][g][k][k][k][ก]
[k][k][kh][k][kh][kh][kʰ][ข/ค]
[j][j][j][j][j][ch][tɕ][จ]
[ch][ch][ch][ch][ch][ch][tɕʰ][ฉ/ช]
[f][f][f][f][f][f][f][ฝ/ฟ]
[h][h][h][h][h][h][h][ห/ฮ]
[l][l][l][l][l][l][l][ล]
[r][r][r][r][r][r][r][ร]
[m][m][m][m][m][m][m][ม]
[n][n][n][n][n][n][n][น]
[ng][ng][ng][ng][ng][ng][ŋ][ง]
[s][s][s][s][s][s][s][ซ/ส]
[w][w][w][w][w][w][w][ว]
[y][y][y][y][y][y][j][ย]
[][][][][][][ʔ][อ]

Final Consonant Sounds

Here's how each system notates consonant sounds when they appear at the end of a syllable. For more information about these sounds, see our page on the consonant sounds of Thai:

Final Consonant Sounds
PaiboonPaiboon+TLCTigerLPThai Govt+IPAEasy Thai
[p][p][p][p][p][p][p̚][บ]
[t][t][t][t][t][t][t̚][ด]
[k][k][k][k][k][k][k̚][ก]
[m][m][m][m][m][m][m][ม]
[n][n][n][n][n][n][n][น]
[ng][ng][ng][ng][ng][ng][ŋ][ง]

Vowel Sounds

Here's how each system notates the vowel sounds of Thai. For more information about these sounds, see our page on the vowel sounds of Thai:

Vowel Sounds
PaiboonPaiboon+TLCTigerLPThai Govt+IPAEasy Thai
[ɛ][ɛ][ae][ae][ae][ae][ɛ][แ−ะ/แ−็−แ◌ะ/แ็◌]
[ɛɛ][ɛɛ][aae][ae][ae][ae][ɛː][แ−/แ−−แ◌/แ◌◌]
[ɛo][ɛo][aeo][aeo][aew][aeo][ɛw][แ−็วแ็ว]
[ɛɛo][ɛɛo][aaeo][aeo][aew][aeo][ɛːw][แ−วแ◌ว]
[e][e][eh*][e][e][e][e][เ−ะเ◌ะ]
[e][E][e/eh*][e][e][e][e][เ−็−เ็◌]
[ee][ee][aeh][ay][eh][e][eː][เ−/เ−−เ◌/เ◌◌]
[eo][eo][eo][eo][ehw][eo][ew][เ−็วเ็ว]
[eeo][eeo][aayo][ayo][ehw][eo][eːw][เ−วเ◌ว]
[a][a][a/ah][a][a][a][a][−ะ/−ั−◌ะ/ั◌]
[aa][aa][aa/aah][ah][aa][a][aː][−า/−า−◌า/◌า◌]
[ai][ai][ai*][ai][ai][ai][aj][ไ−/ไ−−ไ◌/ไ◌◌]
[aai][aai][aai/aay*][aai][ai][ai][aːj][−าย◌าย]
[ao][ao][ao][ow][ao][ao][aw][เ−าเ◌า]
[aao][aao][aao][ao][ao][ao][aːw][−าว/−าว−◌าว/◌าว◌]
[o][o][oh/o][o][o][o][o][โ−ะ/−−โ◌ะ/◌◌]
[oo][oo][oh][oh][oh][o][oː][โ−/โ−−โ◌/โ◌◌]
[ooi][ooi][ooy][oy][oy][oi][oːj][โ−ยโ◌ย]
[ɔ][ɔ][aw][aw][aw][o][ɔ][เ−าะ/−็อ−เ◌าะ/็อ◌]
[ɔɔ][ɔɔ][aaw][aw][aw][o][ɔː][−อ/−อ−◌อ/◌อ◌]
[ɔi][ɔi][awy][awy][awy][oi][ɔj][−็อย็อย]
[ɔɔi][ɔɔi][aawy][awy][awy][oi][ɔːj][−อย◌อย]
[ə][ə][er/uh][er][oe][oe][ɤ][เ−อะเ◌อะ]
[əə][əə][eer/uuhr][er][oe][oe][ɤː][เ−อ/เ−ิ−เ◌อ/เิ◌]
[əəo][əəo][uaaw][eeuow][oeaw][oeaw][ɤaw][เ−อวเ◌อว]
[əəi][əəi][eeuy][eeuy][oei][oei][ɤːj][เ−ยเ◌ย]
[u][u][oo][oo][u][u][u][−ุ/−ุ−ุ/ุ◌]
[uu][uu][uu][oo][uu][u][uː][−ู/−ู−ู/ู◌]
[ui][ui][uy][ooi][ui][ui][uj][−ุยุย]
[ua][ua][ua][ua][ua][ua][ua][−ัวะัวะ]
[ua][uua][uaa][ooa][ua][ua][uːa][−ัว/−ว−ัว/◌ว◌]
[uai][uai][uay][ooay][uay][uai][uaj][−วย◌วย]
[ʉ][ʉ][eu][eu][eu][ue][ɯ][−ึ/−ึ−ึ/ึ◌]
[ʉʉ][ʉʉ][euu][ue][eu][ue][ɯː][−ือ/−ื−ือ/ื◌]
[ʉa][ʉa][eua][eua][eua][uea][ɯa][เ−ือะเือะ]
[ʉa][ʉʉa][euua][uea][eua][uea][ɯːa][เ−ือ/เ−ือ−เือ/เือ◌]
[ʉai][ʉʉai][euuay][ueay][euay][ueai][