Lesson 8

Low Class Consonants: ล, ค, พ, ฟ, ฮ

Reading

In this lesson we'll look at the final class of consonant, low. We've already encountered ง, ท, น, ม, ย and ร.

The tone for dead syllables starting with a low class consonant depends upon the length of the vowel. For short vowels, the resultant tone is high, and for long vowels, it's falling. (You can think of this as being: "with a short vowel the tone doesn't have enough time to fall".)

In summary:

Class	Live	Dead
		Short Vowel	Long Vowel
Low	Mid	High	Falling

Now try reading these words:

These are the remaining regular ones.

Character	Pronunciation	Name	Meaning	Notes
ล	/l/	/lɔɔ ling/	Monkey
ค	/kh/	/khɔɔ khwaay/	Buffalo	Note the loop is to the right and below its stem. Contrast with ด.
พ	/ph/	/phɔɔ phaan/	Tray	Note (a) the position of the loop, and (b) the height of the central notch1. Contrast with ผ.
ฟ	/f/	/fɔɔ fan/	Tooth	Contrast with ฝ.
ฮ	/h/	/hɔɔ nókˑ​hûuk/	Owl	Variant of อ2.

Notes

1. In stylised fonts which don't have initial loops, the height of the notch is the only way to distinguish between พ and ผ, and between ฟ and ฝ
2. ฮ is only used in words borrowed from another language such as /heeˑ​líˑ​khɔ́pˑ​tə̂ə/ (helicopter) and /hanˑ​lǒo/ (hello).

All the regular high class consonants have a corresponding low class one. Here's a (not yet complete) table of how they relate:

	kh	ch	th	ph	f	s	h
High Class	ข	ฉ	-	ผ	ฝ	ส	ห
Low Class	ค	ช	ท	พ	ฟ	-	ฮ

Now try reading these words:

Finally, here are some slightly longer words to practise reading.

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Writing