Structure of Thai language (no spaces, vowel blocks)

In this video, I will give you some advice on how to determine where a word starts and ends in Thai. This topic can be particularly confusing because

  1. Thai script does not use spaces between words, and

  2. vowels can appear on any side of a consonant (on top, below, on the left and right side, and surrounding the consonant).

Let's use the sentence

'เรากินกาแฟกับชา'

(meaning 'we/I drink coffee and tea') as an example.

Click to see this sentence in different fonts (102 KB)

The main takeaways of this video are:

  • Tip 1: Identify the consonant and its associated vowel block.

  • Tip 2: Understand the meaning of the word.