# Letters that are either vowel or consonant

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/letters-that-are-either-vowel-or-consonant/636564>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [October 3, 2012, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/letters-that-are-either-vowel-or-consonant/636564 "2012-10-03T08:11:09Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\
**Post date:** [October 3, 2012, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/letters-that-are-either-vowel-or-consonant/636564/21 "2012-10-03T17:14:31Z")

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The Thai alphabet has 44 consonants, 14 vowel symbols, 6 marks (tone etc.) and a few other special symbols.

Three of the consonants (W, Y, and a “glottal stop”) can serve instead as vowels. This doesn’t mean there are “only” 17 (14+3) vowels; vowels occur in combinations, so there are 40-odd distinct vowel/diphthong representations altogether. (Not even multiplying by tone variations).

For example, a very common phrase where I live is _to harvest rice_, เกี่ยวข้าว (sometimes represented phonetically as “giaao khaao.” Transliterating the Thai spelling letter-by-letter (and ignoring the two tone marks) would produce something like EGIYW KhAW. (Note that the I vowel – English “ee” – appears _above_ the G consonant, with a tone mark yet above that vowel.)

But this just scratches the surface of Thai alphabet weirdness. Another consonant, H, frequently occurs at the beginning of a word, silently, to modify the tone. There is a special vowel which sounds as “am.” There is a consonant symbol in addition to the standard 44 which sounds as “reu.” The consonant for R, when doubled, becomes a vowel. :smack:

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**Author:** ![Noone\_Special](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/noone_special/32/2863_2.png) [@Noone\_Special](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noone_Special)\
**Post date:** [October 3, 2012, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/letters-that-are-either-vowel-or-consonant/636564/22 "2012-10-03T17:25:32Z")

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> [@septimus](#):
>
> The consonant for R, when doubled, becomes a vowel. :smack:

This is actually fairly normal, as many Spanish and any French speaker will tell you (about ‘l’ rather than ‘r’, but then again, they **are** quite related to each other.)

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