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Mid class consonant · letter 43 of 44

อ o ang

อ (o ang) is a mid-class consonant named after อ่าง, “basin”. At the start of a syllable it is silent: it carries a vowel, and you hear only a slight catch in the throat, and it does not end syllables.

See it in 61 fontsAll 44 consonants
ออ อ่างo ang · basin
Thai name
อ อ่าง · o ang
Name word
อ่าง, basin
Class
Mid class
At the start of a syllable
/ʔ/ · silent carrier, nothing in RTGS
At the end of a syllable
not used
Unicode
U+0E2D · THAI CHARACTER O ANG
In HTML
อ or อ
Kedmanee key
V
Pattachote key
R

How it sounds

A silent carrier: a Thai syllable that begins with a vowel is written with อ in front, because a vowel sign cannot stand alone. What you hear is only a glottal catch, so RTGS writes nothing for it.

It is also part of several vowels (ออ in พ่อ, เ◌อ, ◌ือ, เ◌ือ), and before ย in four words (อยู่, อย่า, อย่าง, อยาก) it is silent and gives them mid-class tones.

Easy to mistake for ฮ ho nokhuk: compare them at a large size in the grid below.

Class and tone

Mid-class letters are the only ones that take all four tone marks. With no mark, a live syllable has the mid tone and a dead one the low tone; mai ek gives low, mai tho falling, mai tri high and mai chattawa rising.

Syllables with อ and the vowel า
SpellingSyllableTone
No mark, live syllable (long vowel)อาMid
No mark, dead syllable, short vowelอะLow
No mark, dead syllable, long vowelอากLow
Mai ekอ่าLow
Mai thoอ้าFalling
Mai triอ๊าHigh
Mai chattawaอ๋าRising

The syllables show the rule, not words to learn. The tone rules explain live and dead syllables.

Words with อ

ThaiRTGSMeaning
อ่านanto read
อาหารahanfood
อากาศakatweather; air
อ้วนuanfat (of a person)
อยู่yuto be at; to live

RTGS shows neither tone nor vowel length; type a word into the font tester to see it in every font.

อ in every font

The letter in each of the 61 families you can download here, in its regular style. Looped faces start the stroke from a small circle; loopless ones leave it out. Each card opens the family’s page.