Need help on consonants!

[javanoob]

hi..
i been readining learningthai.com and i come across this page
http://www.learningthai.com/thailetters.html

can someone help me understand the phrase better : "Each letter is named after something. For example, Gor Gai. "Gor" is the sound that letter makes and "Gai" is a chicken"

what is consonants? i search in dictionary, the explainations is too compound..

please help and care to provide more examples, thanks

[djaidee]

For your question what are Consonants let me first explain what are Vowels.
Vowels are the English Letters "A", "E", "I" and "U".
In Thai there are even more Vowels like "Ue", "Ua", "Ia" and so on.
All other Letters are Consonants, for example "B", "C", "D" and so on.
What Thai makes it different is that the Thai Alphabet is only represented by 44 Consonants, but nowadays there are only 42 Consonants in use.
The Vowels you have to learn seperately, they are not part of the Thai Alphabet.
Remember the English/Roman Alphabet contains Consonants and Vowels, the Thai Alphabet only contains Consonants.

For your other question why the Thai Alphabet is like this: "Go Gai", "Kho Khai" and so on, have a look at the following Link:

http://www.thailandguidebook.com/cgi-bin....;t=7215

[jaibaan]

You can think of 'gor' as the name of that letter and 'gai' as a word that this letter 'gor' is used in. They are usually said together when a person is verbally identifying a consonant. Why not just say 'gor' then? Consider the letters ธ and ถ. If we say just 'thor', which one would we be refering to? So we must say 'thor thohng' or 'thor thoong'. In essence we have to say "thor - the one used in the word flag", etc. There are a number of Thai letters like this which are pronounced similarly and need such clarification with a sample word. Some do not need it. But this system was adopted for all the consonants for uniformity I suppose. So why then are some Thai letters even called the same thing such as 'thor'? Unlike in English, Thai letters are refered to more strictly by the type of sound they actually make when used in the language, and some different Thai letters generate the same sound in usage.



Edited:
By the way, the vowels are treated differently. They are just called by 'sara', which means 'vowel'.

[pichai]

I'm not sure if you're familiar with the way of telling English letters, Javanoob.
For example:
b-boy
d-dog
etc.

In Thai we have:
Gor-Gai
Khor-Khai
Mor-Maa
Nor-Noo
Sor-So
Chor-Chaang
etc.

[javanoob]

i got you guys ~

[jaibaan]

I was just editing my previous post on this thread and remembered something. When I first started learning Thai I hadn't payed too much attention to this system yet. I was up in Muang Nonthaburi one day trying to get across the river to Bang Yai. When I asked a local (using my limited Thai) I came up with a bus number as the one I needed. Well I got on a bus with that number and ended up at a bus depot down a side Soi away from my intended destination. Speaking to another Thai at this depot I heard her say that same number again. But at one point I heard her say 'gor gai' too, and realised there's a 134 bus and a 134ก bus. .

[javanoob]