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Font: Thai
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Thai script descended from the Brahmi Indic script through the intermediate descendant, Old Khmer. Traditionally, the development of Thai script is attributed to King Ramkhamhaeng in the 13th century AD. Naturally, there have been many stylistic changes since then. As in the case of most Indic-derived scripts, the alphabet of Modern Thai is syllabic and reflects the Indic scheme in the order of its consonants1. Belonging to the Tai group of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages, Thai is a tonal language closely related to Lao. Moreover, the resemblance applies equally well to their respective writing systems. Thai script is also used for writing Lao, as well as other minority languages in Thailand. Faithful to the Indic model, the consonants of Thai script all have an inherent vowel. Considered the primary symbols of the Thai alphabet, consonants are divided into 3 classes (low, medium and high). Part of the high complexity of Thai script is owed to the excessive number of consonant symbols. In fact, 44 symbols are used to represent 21 unique consonant sounds. Thai spelling is often based on etymological derivation of a word rather than its phonetic realization in contemporary language. Words can often contain letters which go unpronounced in modern Thai.
Used to represent the 21 vowel sounds of Thai, vowel symbols can take either diacritic or syllable-initial forms and are grouped in parallel sets of short and long vowels. Vowel diacritics, which can appear next to, above or below a consonant, serve to replace the inherent vowel of the consonant. Whenever appearing in syllable-initial form, vowels are actually presented as modifiers of a consonant, the glottal stop.
While there are 4 tone symbols in Thai, two of which are most frequently used, the indication of tone is also dependent on the class of the host consonant, length of the associated vowel and type of syllable. Tone marks always appear above the consonant, as well as any vowel diacritics.
Words in Thai are not separated by spaces. However, groups of sentences or phrases can be separated by spaces. Thai script includes its own set of the numerals 0 to 9. There are also a series of special symbols to indicate repetition, silent letters and abbreviation.
1 For a fuller description of the features of Brahmi-derived scripts, see 'Devanagari'.
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