Phayan Blog
Honest guides on learning to read Thai: the alphabet, the tones, the vowels, and how the tools actually work.
1–24 of 34 articles
Which Thai App Uses Typing Instead of Multiple Choice?
Phayan has a typing card with nothing to pick from, but its defaults answer new words on a pick-one-of-three card. Counted from the app's code and course, with Duolingo, Ling and Drops checked on their own pages.
Does Duolingo Have a Thai Course? What Its Own List Says
Duolingo's course list holds 313 courses and none teaches Thai; nine teach other languages to Thai speakers. Which apps do carry Thai, and which say they teach reading, per their own pages on 26 October 2026.
Thai Vowel Length: Why น้ำ Is Long and เล่น Is Short
Thai spelling marks every vowel short or long, and in 60 of the 3,000 most common words the voice does the opposite. น้ำ is written short and said long; เล่น the reverse.
Thai ร and ล: Why ร้าน and ล้าน Can Sound the Same
Everyday Thai often says ร as an l, but the spelling never does. 26 word pairs, ร้าน and ล้าน among them, have both spellings among the 3,000 commonest words and stay apart on the page.
Thai Names and Nicknames: How to Read Both
A Thai person has a registered name and a nickname, and only the nickname gets used. The registered one is spelled out of Pali and Sanskrit, so it carries letters nobody says and an English spelling that misleads twice over.
Vegetarian in Thai: Two Words, Two Different Promises
เจ is two letters long and rules out animal products entirely. มังสวิรัติ is the ordinary word for vegetarian and leaves fish sauce in. On 21 public Thai delivery menus read on 3 November 2026, 33 dishes carried เจ and none carried มังสวิรัติ.
Two Ways to Write Ai in Thai: ใ and ไ
Thai spells the sound ai two different ways and pronounces them the same. Twenty base words and their compounds take ใ and everything else takes ไ, and a count of every Thai lemma in English Wiktionary finds only four exceptions: the letter itself and three archaic entries.
Colours in Thai: สี Plus One More Word
Almost every colour in Thai is the word สี followed by one more word, and several of those words have other senses: ส้ม is an orange, น้ำตาล is sugar, ฟ้า is the sky. Checked against Wiktionary, the tone rules derive the tone of all thirteen colour words from the spelling.
Thai Place Names in English: What Two Sources Actually Disagree About
A measured study of Thai romanisation, re-measured on every place OpenStreetMap and Wikidata both name on 26 October 2026: how often two sources write the same place name identically, what the differences are, and why two published systems disagree on almost every word.
What Does Ka Mean in Thai? ค่ะ, คะ and ครับ
The ka at the end of a Thai sentence is a politeness particle, and the female form has two spellings. ค่ะ ends a statement, คะ ends a question, and the official romanisation writes both, and seven other common words, as kha.
Thai vs Lao vs Khmer: Telling Three Scripts Apart
Khmer stacks consonants under the line, Lao letters are rounder and Thai mixes loops with right angles. Underneath, Thai and Lao are siblings with a Khmer parent, and all 27 Lao consonants sit 128 code points from a Thai letter in Unicode.
Thai Airport Signs and Immigration Form Words
Thai airport signs are compounds of a few pieces, read against the Airports of Thailand signage standard: ผู้โดยสารขาออก is Departures and ทางออก on the flight board is a gate. The official online arrival card is filled in English.
Thai Letters That Sound the Same: 42 Letters, 21 Sounds
Thai spells 21 initial sounds with 42 letters. Twelve sets of letters are pronounced identically, and in seven of those sets the letter chosen decides the tone. Measured against the 1,000 most frequent Thai words, 644 begin with a set letter and 18 of those use the rarer member.
Thai Handwriting vs Printed Thai: What a Fast Hand Drops
Handwritten Thai drops the loop that starts most consonants. Rendering lookalike pairs in 16 typefaces, looped and loopless, shows which pairs that breaks: ก ถ ภ and ฎ ฏ, but not the pairs held apart by a raised stem.
Reading Thai in LINE: 555, คับ and Dropped Tone Marks
Chat Thai looks misspelled and mostly is not. เค้า, ชั้น, มั้ย and คับ decode under the ordinary tone rules, and in 26,737 Thai social-media messages เค้า is as common as เขา.
Reading Thai Price Tags and Receipts: The Words Around the Number
ราคาปกติ and ราคาพิเศษ mark which number you pay, ลด, เหลือ and สูงสุด change what it means, and ละ makes it a rate. Plus what 300 Thai shop pages print beside a price, counted on 26 October 2026.
Thai Months: How to Read a Date on Any Thai Sign
A Thai date runs day, month, year, and the month name tells you its length: -คม endings have 31 days, -ยน endings have 30, and กุมภาพันธ์ is February. The year is Buddhist Era, 543 ahead - 2569 is 2026.
Thai Silent Letters: The Mark That Switches a Letter Off
The ์ mark on top of a Thai consonant means the letter is spelled and not spoken. What it silences, how far back the silence reaches, and how often reading the silenced letter would change the tone, counted over the 5,000 most frequent Thai words.
Thai Alphabet Chart: 44 Letters by Class and Sound
All 44 Thai consonants with the name Thai people say out loud, the sound each makes at the start of a syllable and the sound it makes at the end - grouped by consonant class rather than in ก-to-ฮ order.
Thai Consonant Clusters: Two Letters, One Sound
Two Thai consonants side by side can be one blended sound (ปลา plaa), a pair where the second letter lies or disappears (ทราบ sâap, จริง jing), or two syllables with an unwritten vowel between them.
How Long Does It Take to Learn to Read Thai?
Phayan's course teaches every Thai letter, vowel form and tone rule in 47 rounds, about seven weeks at its planned round a day. The cost of each milestone in rounds, words and reviews, counted from the course itself.
Is Thai Hard to Learn? Which Parts Are, and Which Are Not
Thai grammar is one of the easiest an English speaker will meet: no conjugation, no cases, no plurals, no tenses. The hard half is sound and script, down to 42 consonant letters for 21 sounds, counted letter by letter.
Learning the Thai Alphabet: What Apps, Decks and Charts Each Skip
Charts, Anki decks, mnemonics, video courses, general language apps and dedicated script apps all teach the Thai alphabet. Each is good at one thing and blind to another - here is which.
Days of the Week in Thai, and the Colour Each One Wears
The seven Thai day names are all วัน plus a planet, each with a colour from Thai astrology. A count of 22 Thai opening-hours listings shows who drops the วัน and who abbreviates.