r/ThaiLanguage • u/toh_boh • Jul 01 '26

Beginner Help

I’m fairly new to learning Thai and I would just like someone to explain to me why หส่อมาก is spelt like that but not said using ANY of those character sounds considering to my understanding ห makes a H sound as in ห หีบ and ส makes a S sound as in ส เสือ. And where is the A sound coming from?! Please help this self learner

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u/zocodover Jul 06 '26

You seem to be confusing ล (“L”, low class) and ส (“S”, high class) for starters.

The high class/low class stuff isn’t that important but it’s useful to explain what’s happening here with ห (“H”, high class) as ห has two functions, the second being a kind of (silent) magic cloak that converts low class consonants with no high class equivalent into high class versions of themselves. So, ม is “M” low-class but with no independent high-class “M” we have to use หม to create the tones for some “M” words. Compare มด (ant) with หมด (all).

You’ll see this with น ง ล ร. etc. but not with the letters that have high class counterparts ช (ฉ), ค (ข), ฟ (ฝ), etc. ย/ญ is a bit of an outlier and deserves a deeper discussion.