High Class Consonants (HCC) Posted by palmisano on Nov 16, 2012 in Beginner
As mentioned in the previous post, when considering the spelling of a word in Thai, the consonant class influences the tone of the word. There are three consonant classes: low, mid, and high.
We will start with the High class consonants (HCC) first because I believe it is the easiest of the three.
The high class consonants are:
ข, ฉ, ฐ, ถ, ผ, ฝ, ศ, ษ, ส, ห
You will need to memorize this list. The HCC are the only consonants that can create a rising tone without the use of the อ๋ tone mark. The HCC cannot be used to create a mid-tone. If you hear a rising tone, chances are it uses an HCC. In the following rules I won’t go over every letter, but the rules apply to any of the HCC.
1. If a HCC is with a live (or no) ending consonant, and has no tone mark and no dead consonant, the tone is rising.
2. If a HCC has a อ้ tone mark, and no dead consonant, the tone is falling.
3. If a HCC is with a อ่ tone mark, and/or has a dead ending consonant, the tone is low.
4. When the first syllable is an alone HCC without a visible vowel (and is not a consonant cluster), it becomes a low tone while the second consonant becomes an HCC. The ห is always silent if there is no vowel with it – it solely exists to modify the tone of the word.