Page 184 - The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand Vol.XIII-2021

The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand
Volume XIII – 2021

The same case as b) applies to หง, หญ, หน, หม, หย, หร, หล, หว which are
classified as High Class-2 consonant letters and ง, ญ, น, ม, ย, ร, ล, ว which are Low
Class-2, while อย, ฎ-ด, บ are Mid Class.

Consonants หย and อย are merely a variation of * y (Suwattee and Kullavanijaya,

1976: 222). In modern Thai หย is classified as High Class while อย is Mid-Class.

It is important to understand that ฎ-ด representing d and บ, representing b,
d and b are new sounds because in ancient Thai language *d was written with ท
and *b with พ.

In addition, ฎ was created to achieve similarities for ฎ-ฏ to that of ด-ต and ฮ

was created for ห in High class to have symmetry with ฮ in Low Class.

At this point if we are to count all the consonants the total number would be
21.

It is worth noting that in language evolution, sounds are easily changed while

changing letters is difficult and, as such, consonants were changed by reducing
from 38 sounds in ancient Thai to 21 sounds in modern day Thai but the written
forms are still 53 in number consisting of:

ก-ฮ 44 forms

หง, หญ, หน, หม, หย, หร, หล, หว 8 forms

อย 1 form

6. Consonant letter used as Final Consonant

In total of the 44 consonant letters, excluding those led with ห- and อ-, there
are 8 of them, ฃ, ฅ, ฌ, ผ, ฝ, ห, อ, ฮ that have never been used as final consonant
and are only limited to 8 sounds which are -ŋ, -n, -m, -y, -w, -k, -t, -p. In the same

manner as initial consonants, consonant letters used as a final consonant can be
easily identified using Sanskrit phonology as follows:

174 The Thai Writing System: Reasons behind Its System