FEATURES OF THE THAI LANGUAGE Made up of an alphabet containing 44 consonants and 32 vowels (Karoonboonyanan, 1999, p. 1) Has five different tones that can be used when pronouncing a word – these five tones are: low, mid, falling, high, rising A change in tone can alter the meaning of a word Does not have parts of speech – such as articles Where a word is placed in a sentence determines whether the word is a verb or a noun in Thai Words do not change based on the concepts of singular verses plural No third person forms of verbs Shows no distinction between past and future tense All letters maintain same sound throughout the Thai language Writing in Thai: No spacing between the words in the sentence No use of capital or lower case letters