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:

Now try reading these words:

These are the remaining regular ones.

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:

Now try reading these words:

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

Writing