There are many words in Thai which have either two initial consonants or two consonants coming together in the middle of the word. In some cases these two consonants can quite easily be pronounced together just as in English and there is no problem.

	ปลา	PLAH	Fish
	กลิ่น	GLIN	Smell
	พรุ่งนี้	PROONG NEE	Tomorrow

Very frequently however you will find that an unwritten vowel sound (Inherent Vowel) is understood between the two consonants; the two most common of these Inherent Vowels being;

1. The Inherent “a”.

   This is a very short “a” practically the same as the written vowel -ะ but even shorter and is used when the two consonants are considered as being the initial consonants of two different syllables. For example, the English word “Spring” is written in Thai

   สปริง

   SPRING

   but is pronounced SA-PRING.

   Similarly

   	สนุก	SNOOK	“Happy”	is pronounced SA-NOOK,
   	ตลาด	DTLAHT	“Market”	is pronounced DTA-LAHT.

   This inherent vowel will always be represented in the transliteration by “A” and not distinguished from the short written vowel -ะ in any way. (See also Lesson 18.B.1. Anomalous Tones)

2. The Inherent “o”.

   This is used between double consonants where the first is considered as being the initial consonant of the syllable and the second as being the final consonant.

   	ลม	LM	“Wind”	is pronounced LOM
   	ส่ง	SNG	“To send”	is pronounced SONG
   	ดนตรี	DNDTREE	“Music”	is pronounced DONDTREE

   This inherent vowel has the short sound of “o” in “not”.
   It is represented in the transliteration by “O”.

3. Words using both inherent vowels.

   	ถนน	TNN	“Road”	is pronounced TANON
   	สกปรก	SKPRK	“Dirty”	is pronounced SOKAPROK

   We must warn you that though you will very quickly fall into the way of using either of these two inherent vowels quite correctly in most cases, there is no certain way other than by knowing the word to determine just which of the vowels should be used and in fact there are a few cases where the word may be pronounced with either vowel and has a different meaning in each case.

   	นม	NM	“Milk”	is pronounced NOM
   	นม	NM	“A salutation”	is pronounced NAMA
   	ส้ม	SM	“Citrus fruit”	is pronounced SOM
   	สม	SM	“Fatigue”	is pronounced SAMA

Generated by Lyndon Hill on Thu Jul 20 18:40:31 BST 2006.

Copyright remains with the original authors.