These
are the 44 consonants, the numbers, and a few of the
vowels. From a poster I got in Bangkok for 30 baht.
March 3, 2002: I am... Don Quixote. My quest is to conquer the 74 Thai characters well enough, that I can continue to learn once I leave Thailand. There are two schools of thought about learning the Thai characters: the first is that they're too complicated and get in the way of learning useful skills in the language; the second is that learning their sounds facilitates speaking properly (and is perhaps the only way). And that once you can read and pronounce correctly, you're a lot further ahead. I'm hoping the latter is true.
Then, this musing is about the Thai alphabet. I wrote about it earlier, but I actually understand some of it now, so I thought I'd elaborate.
Thai for Dummies
It's got consonants. Lots of them. Forty four. Two are no longer used (they sound the same as other characters, and look quite a bit like those others, too. They're retired and are now living in Phuket). Of the remaining 42, each of 21 has another which sounds the same but looks different. There are three classes of consonant, low, middle, and high. The low class consonants work in dead end jobs. The high class consonants drive BMWs, and secretly disparage the middle class consonants. [I made that part up] There are "single" and "double" consonants. Spanish has got a couple of those. Reminds me of a quip I recently read about English: "Half the words don't sound the way they're spelled, and the other half aren't spelled the way they sound". Or something like that.
It's got vowels.Thirty, although I seem to count only 29. Vowel Thirty, where are you? Now, my rigid little brain strongly desires to see vowels after consonants. How inflexible. In Thai script, while the vowel sound can come at the beginning, or after the consonant (like any other language I suppose), but the placement of the vowel — well, some follow the consonant, others precede it, some have two parts (so imagine an "A", split down the middle vertically, with half before the "C" in "CAT", and half after. But wait, there's more! Some vowels appear above or below their consonants. And finally, the writing can change in some cases: one of the "half-before-half-after" vowels becomes a simplified version, written just above the character, when there's a "dead final" consonant. There are 18 "single" vowels, 6 "compound" vowels, and 8 "consonant-like" vowels.
It's got tone rules: a low class, single consonant, accompanied by a long vowel and a "dead final" is pronounced with a "falling tone". Did I mention, there are short vowels and long vowels? Thus "a" and "aa" are two different characters.
It's got diacritical marks. Diacritical marks (in general) change the sound of a particular letter. You may know the umlaut (e.g. û), used in German. Diacriticals in Thai change the tone. There are four, I think. Haven't learned them yet.
And it's got a few special characters. One means "etc." like "that was a list and there are more". Another means "abbreviation", like the "." after "abbrev."
It's got it own set of numbers.
This must seem quite daunting to kids (and middle aged Americans), so (probably to cope with many suicides back in the 13th century when this system was designed by some well meaning but obviously evil monarch with too much free time and a sadistic bent) somewhere along they came up with mnemonics to help learners memories the characters and their sounds. Kaw (in the title) is the sound of the character that's in the top left corner of the photo. Kai (it sounds like "guy") means chicken. The chicken curry you see in Thai restaurants is gaeng phet gai — "curry spicy chicken".
The other 43 consonants likewise have associated names; "naw nuu" (nuu means "mouse" and is the generic "Mr./Miss" applied to a child, like "khun" for adults) [this is far more complicated than I'm describing] for example. My homework this weekend is to memorize the first seven. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! [update: I failed, but later I got it. I'm up to about 2/3rds.]
At first I thought it was impossible. But with practice, the characters now look familiar. Where it took forever to transcribe them before (like you were trying to make a accurate drawing of a map), it no longer looks completely foreign.