Step 9: the leading consonants

One question has been hanging since step 8: if a low-class consonant alone can never make a rising tone, how does Thai write mǎa, the dog? You heard it in the listening drill next to maa and máa. The answer is the neatest trick in the script. ห-นำ (hǎw nam, leading ห): a silent ห in front of a low-class sonorant lends it HIGH-CLASS rules. The sonorants this happens with are ง ญ น ม ย ร ล ว. หมา is not h+maa, it is maa read as a high-class syllable: live and unmarked, so RISING, mǎa. หมู (mǔu, pork), หนู (nǔu, mouse), หนึ่ง (nèung, one: the lent high class plus ไม้เอก gives low). Do not skip ญ in that list, because two very common words depend on it: หญิง (yǐng, woman) is rising, and ใหญ่ (yài, big) is low, both because the silent ห put them in the high-class row. Read them without the leading ห and you get the wrong tone on words you will use daily. Two vowels you have met in passing become official here: ไ and ใ both say ai and are both written BEFORE the consonant. Twenty words use ใ, everything else uses ไ. So: ไหม (mǎi, the question particle, ห-นำ rising) and ใหม่ (mài, new, ห-นำ plus èek = low). You have been saying both since your first week; now they decode. อ-นำ (aw nam) is the same trick with อ, and Thai only ever did it to four words, all of them essential: อยาก (yàak, to want), อยู่ (yùu, to be somewhere), อย่า (yàa, don't), อย่าง (yàang, kind/manner). Memorise the four as a set: ya-yaak-yuu-yaa-yaang, all low tone. With steps 5 to 9 you now hold the complete core system: class, live or dead, vowel length, mark, leader. Nearly every syllable in every phrase on this site is now derivable rather than memorised.