Stop Final Letters and Sonorant Final Letters
In the Thai language, the ‘final letters’ decide the sounds of the syllables and words. When I teach my Thai language students I normally focus on the final sounds/final letters because often they find it difficult to pronounce the length of final sounds in the Thai language.
Final letters mainly have 8 sounds which are basically categorized into 2 groups
· Stop final letters are (short) -ก, -บ, -ด
· Sonorant final letters are (nasal long) -ง, -น, -ม, -ย, -ว
The stop final letters make dead syllables/words whereas the sonorant final letters make live syllables/words
Now you have learnt Step 3 of Thai grammar in term of reading and writing Thai words. When you combine all the steps together…1-2-3 then you are getting very close to a perfect reading and writing the Thai language. You will just need one more thing to go …… Tone Markers!
Jang
Thai Language Teacher
