Vowels
Monophthong
or จ or ช or ฮ
In English, there are twelve monophthongs while Thai has eighteen pure vowels. This is advantageous for Thai as there are only two vowels which does not appear in Thai; they are [ ́] and
[√]. Therefore, Thai students have little trouble pronouncing most English vowel sound.
However, for English native speakers trying to pronounce Thai vowel sounds, [o], [μ], and
[F] seem to be difficult for them since they do not occur in the English sound system. Dipthongs
Unlike monopthongs, dipthongs consists of two segments of vowel sounds; i.e. vowels and glides. In English, there are eight dipthongs.
[eI] as in page [aI] as in five [çI] as in boy [I ́] as in near [ ́U] as in home [U ́] as in pure [e ́] as in hair [aU] as in now
But in Thai there are fifteen dipthongs which can be classified into two groups, depending on the role the length of the vowels play in the word meaning.