ฬ	L as an initial consonant and N as a final. Name. LOR JOORLAH from จุฬา “A male fighting kite”.
อ	Is always silent when used as a consonant. See note below. Name. OR AHNG from อ่าง “A basin”.
ฮ	H as an initial consonant and does not occur as a final. Name. HOR NOK NOOK from นกฮูก “An owl”.

Note on the letter อ.

1. The letter อ as a consonant is always silent and is used only as a support for vowels, which as we have already mentioned, cannot stand alone. When thus used it does not appear in the transliteration.

   	อ่าน	AHN	“To read”.
   	อีก	EEK	“Still”, “More”.

   When อ is written at the beginning of a syllable and is immediately followed by another consonant, an inherent vowel is always understood between the two consonants.

   In most cases this is the inherent “a” but when ง is the second consonant and in a few other cases it is the inherent “o”.

   	อนุญาต	ANOOYAHT	“Permission”.
   	อนามัย	ANAHMY	“Health”.
   	องอาจ	ONGAHT	“Brave”.
   	อเวจี	AWAYJEE	“Hell”.

2. There are four words and their compounds beginning with อย in which the letter อ acts as a tone indicator only and the ย is considered as the initial consonant except for tonal purposes. This will be dealt with in Lesson 13.B.1.

3. When the vowel -ื is used alone without a final consonant the silent อ is always added.

   	คือ	KEU	“Namely”.
   	มือ	MEU	“Hand”.

4. The letter อ may be used as a vowel alone or as part of a compound vowel. When used alone it carries the sound of “OR” as in “foreign” which as mentioned in Lesson 5.B.2. may be long or short.

   	นอน	NORN	“Lie down”.
   	ล้อ	LOR	“A wheel”.
   	ออก	ORK	“Out”.

   In this last word ORK you will notice that the first อ is a silent consonant acting as the support for the second which is a vowel with the sound “OR”.

   The use of อ in compound vowels is dealt with under “Vowels” in this and other lessons.

5. The letter อ also occurs as an inherent vowel. This is dealt with in B.3. below.
   

Generated by Lyndon Hill on Thu Jul 20 18:40:32 BST 2006.

Copyright remains with the original authors.