--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" wrote:

>> --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "suzmccarth" wrote:
>>> Is Thai taught as a syllabary - with a syllable chart?

> Yes it is! If you go to

<http://www.thailandguidebook.com/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=8;t=6929;st=0;r=1>

> , Post 2, you'll not only get an explanation and a link to the first
> chart, but with the first chart a video of the class chanting the chart!

The links have been broken by the site's migration. The discussion
and text link is at and from
http://www.thailandqa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6577 . I can't get
the link to the video to work; I have to type its URL in directly,
which is http://www.sriwittayapaknam.ac.th/multimedia/thaireader.WMV .
The URL seems to be case-sensitive.

Richard.

>
> The table is rather cut down from the possible 42 by 32 array - it
> only shows the common mid class consonant letters (unaspirated
> plosives), combined with the four graphically simple pairs of short
> and long vowels - /a/, /i/, /M/ (high back unrounded) and /u/. The
> consonant sounds are in strictly phonetic order - glottal stop, /k/,
> /c/, /d/, /t/, /b/ and /p/. (/k/ and /c/ lack voiced counterparts,
> and the letter for the glottal stop is the next to last _letter_ of
> the alphabet, while the letter for /k/ is the first letter of the
> alphabet.) The two mid class letters corresponding to Indian
> retroflexes are omitted - they are only used in words perceived to be
> Indic loans.
>
> Richard.
>