Thai Alphabet Chart: Consonants, Vowels & Tone Marks

A Thai alphabet chart lays out the whole writing system on one page: 44 consonants (พยัญชนะ, phayanchaná) in three tone classes, around 32 vowel forms (สระ, sàrà), and four tone marks (วรรณยุกต์, wannayúk). The chart is not just a poster to admire — it is a lookup table. Thai spells tone, and to read a syllable's tone you check its consonant's class, its vowel length, whether it is live or dead, and any tone mark. This page gives you the chart, explains each part, and drills the 20 letters that do the most work.

If the letters are brand new, start with the full Thai alphabet guide, which teaches all 44 consonants one by one; this page is the reference you keep open beside it.

What's on the chart (three parts)

Every complete chart has the same three sections, and they do different jobs:

1. Consonants (พยัญชนะ) — 44 letters, each belonging to one of three classes (mid, high, low). The class is half of the tone machinery, so a good chart groups the consonants by class, not alphabetically.
2. Vowels (สระ) — written around the consonant, not in a line, so they are grouped by position: before, after, above, below, or wrapped around.
3. Tone marks (วรรณยุกต์) — just four symbols, written above the consonant, that nudge the tone once the class and syllable shape have set the baseline.

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The consonant chart, by class

The single most useful way to arrange the consonants is by class, because the class is the first input into every tone you will ever read. There are only three groups, and two of them are small:

Mid class — 9 letters (อักษรกลาง, àksɔ̌ɔn klaang):

ก จ ฎ ฏ ด ต บ ป อ

High class — 11 letters (อักษรสูง, àksɔ̌ɔn sǔung):

ข ฃ ฉ ฐ ถ ผ ฝ ศ ษ ส ห

Low class — 24 letters (อักษรต่ำ, àksɔ̌ɔn dtàm) — everything else:

ค ฅ ฆ ง ช ซ ฌ ญ ฑ ฒ ณ ท ธ น พ ฟ ภ ม ย ร ล ว ฬ ฮ

9 + 11 + 24 = 44. You can actually hear the class when a Thai person recites the chart: a high-class letter's own name takes a rising tone (ข = khɔ̌ɔ, ส = sɔ̌ɔ, ห = hɔ̌ɔ), while mid- and low-class names stay level and mid (ก = gɔɔ, ด = dɔɔ, ม = mɔɔ). That is the tone rules operating on the letter's own inherent vowel — your first proof that class and tone are inseparable. The why behind all of this lives in our guide to Thai consonant classes.

Two letters on the chart — ฃ (khɔ̌ɔ khùat, bottle) and ฅ (khɔɔ khon, person) — are obsolete. They appear on the chart for completeness, but no modern Thai word uses them, so in practice you read with 42. Both have an ordinary twin that is still in use (ข and ค), so you lose nothing by skipping them.

The vowel chart: written around the consonant

Thai vowels are the part of the chart that surprises beginners most, because they are not written in a straight line. A vowel attaches to its consonant positionally, and the chart groups them by where they sit. Using อ as a placeholder for "the consonant":

The leading vowels เ แ โ ไ ใ are the classic trap: ไป is read bpai ("go"), not "ai-p", because the ไ is voiced after the ป even though it is printed first. Vowel length also changes meaning the same way tone does — khâao (rice) and khǎao (white) are different words — so the chart always pairs short with long (อะ a / อา aa, อิ i / อี ii). The full set is laid out in our Thai vowels guide.

The four tone marks

Thai has exactly four tone marks, each written above the consonant:

Here is the single biggest source of confusion the chart cannot fix on its own: the mark alone does not tell you the tone. Put máai èek on the low-class ค and you get ค่า (khâa, falling); put the exact same mark on the high-class ข and you get ข่า (khàa, low). The mark did not change — the class beneath it did.

How to read a cell: turning the chart into a tone

To read the tone of any syllable, combine four things, in this order:

1. Class of the initial consonant (look it up on the chart).
2. Vowel length — short or long.
3. Live or dead — live ends in a long vowel or a sonorant (-m, -n, -ng, -y, -w); dead ends in a short vowel or a stop (-p, -t, -k).
4. Tone mark, if any.

With no mark, the class alone sets a live syllable: mid class → mid tone (มา, maa), high class → rising (เสือ, sʉ̌a, tiger), low class → mid (ควาย, khwaai, buffalo). Add a mark and the class changes what that mark means. If running this in your head sounds slow, that is exactly what tone-marking romanization solves — it writes the result down for you, which is the whole argument in Paiboon vs RTGS. The full derivation, mark by mark, is in the Thai tone rules.

Memorise these 20 first

You do not have to swallow 44 consonants at once. Learn the 9 mid and 11 high — just 20 letters — and low class is simply whatever is left. Those two classes are the minority and the ones whose class you must know to read tone, so they earn their place first. That is the deck at the top of this page: all 20 tone-setting consonants, each with its acrophonic name (ก ไก่, ข ไข่, ฉ ฉิ่ง…) and audio, so the class attaches to a word instead of a rule.

The commonest beginner slips are the look-alike pairs, and a chart makes them easy to drill side by side: ด (dɔɔ dèk) versus ต (dtɔɔ dtào), which differ only by a tiny inward hook, and บ (bɔɔ) versus ป (bpɔɔ), which differ only by the height of one tail — plus the mid-class twins ฎ/ด and ฏ/ต, which share a sound but add a looped base. Drill each pair as a pair with its sound, so the audio anchors the shape. More of these are collected in our roundup of common Thai pronunciation mistakes.

Once the chart stops being a wall of shapes and becomes a lookup you can run, roll straight into real words — the greetings and first everyday Thai words — so the letters immediately do a job instead of sitting in a grid.