According to Thai dictionaries, there are 48 Thai consonants representing 21 distinct initial consonant sounds and 9 distinct final consonant sounds. The order of the consonants below is arranged by the Thai dictionary order. We romanized the characters and grouped them mostly based on the sounds in English and the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) system. Therefore, it is easy for foreigners to learn and understand how each consonant is pronounced from the romanization below especially if you know some IPA. When we use the romanization below to transliterate Thai words or sentences, everybody will read it correctly in the same way as Thais. For example, “Thai language” (ภาษาไทย) can be transliterated as [phaasaathai].

Velar Consonants

Post Alveolar Consonants

Palatal Consonant

Alveolar Consonants

Bilabial Consonants

Palatal Consonant

Alveolar Consonants

Bilabial Consonant

Alveolar Consonants

Glottal & Alveolar Consonants

NOTE:
Upper roman scripts with white background represent initial sounds while lower roman scripts with grey background represent final sounds.
1= High Class | 2= Mid Class | 3= Low Class (indicating tones)
(O)= Obsolete, no longer used or rarely used
” = The consonant can be considered as a vowel.
* = The consonant comes with its own vowel.
^ = no form exists. For example สระ [sraʔ] : pool (N.)