Hard Endings
What is a hard ending?
Say the word “deck” in English out loud.
Now click on the Thai word below a few times and try to see if you can notice any of the differences between these 2 sounds. Don’t worry about the symbols you don’t recognize yet. We’ll learn them very soon, for now, just listen to the sound.
The most important difference is in the ending sound. In English, we usually follow through with the ‘k’ sound and it gets a strong puff of air. Put your hand very close to, but not touching your mouth and say DECK again. Can you feel the blast of air from the K sound? Thai K sounds do not have this sound at the end of a word EVER.
When we say เด็ก which means “child” in Thai, we stop the sound by freezing our tongue in the position of the final consonant and we stay in that position until the sound (and AIR) dies off completely. There is no strong blast of air like in the English K ending sound that you are probably used to.
There are 3 core consonant sounds that act as “hard endings.’ They are also called “stop endings” as you are stopping the sound.
- K – includes the CHICKEN ก as well as a number of other K-like sounds you’ll learn later.
- T – includes all T/D and similar sounds as well as any consonants that are T-like (like the TURTLE.ต) and most consonants that don’t exist as an ending sound in Thai (like S and CH).
- P – includes all P/B-like sounds (like the FISH ป and LEAF บ)
*Note that the บ and ป despite being different sounds when starting a word sound identical when used as a final consonant. This is because ALL consonants that fall into one of the 3 hard ending buckets above /k/, /p/ or /t/ all meld together into one of those 3 hard ending sounds.
A good method for checking to see if you are pronouncing these correctly is to take a tissue or paper napkin (your hand is fine) and hold it very close in front of your mouth while saying words like ‘mop’, ‘cat’, and ‘deck’ or any words that end in a K, P or T sound.
Speak loudly and clearly. Every /k/, /p/, and /t/ -like sound that we come across will sound like these. Those 3 sounds cover a number of Thai consonants, but the most common consonants used to spell words we will come across are: ก ด บ (chicken, child, leaf) which line up to /k/, /t/ and /p/ respectively.
In the above examples, we saw the word for “sin” which is บาป. It’s very uncommon to see the FISH used as a final consonant. And we could replace the FISH with the LEAF and the pronunciation would be exactly the same. However, it would then be spelled incorrectly so we won’t actually do this.
/k/ Ending Sounds
For a “k” sound, the back of your tongue moves up and touches the top of your mouth. In English, when a word ends with a K, we often release the tongue and a puff of air will usually follow the sond . Put your hand back in front of your mouth and say the following words: deck, jack, pack, hack, puck, buck. Can you feel the puff of air at the end of each word?
Now try to keep your tongue in place rather then let it come back down from the /k/ sound. Practice this a few times until you can get rid of the puff of air 3 times in a row. What you’re trying to do is hold your tongue up in this position (touching the roof of your mouth) until the sound of the word dies off completely.
/p/ Ending Sounds
For “p” and “b” sounds, you just close your lips together and leave them closed until the sound dies off. Try saying the following words in English normally and then try them without letting your lips come back apart. Pop, cap, top, mop, hop, cup, lap, sap.
/t/ Ending Sounds
When we have a “t” sound, our tongue touches the ridge at the top of our mouth a little ways back from our top teeth. When we end that “t” in Thai, we will of course have to leave our tongue in place to make the correct sound. Try saying these words normally, and then with the Thai stop (tongue up until sound dies off). Cat, bat, hut, wit, tap, rut, rack, like.
Hard Endings? Who cares?
Oh my กอด!
With the exception of the placeholder อ, all the remaining middle class consonants are considered hard endings. The basin is not a hard ending as it becomes a vowel when on the right side of another consonant. This is important because the ending of a word (whether it is hard or soft) affects the resulting tone.
When a word begins with a Middle Class Consonant (the 7 letters you hopefully have mastered in the first few lessons)and has a hard ending (the stop endings above) this indicates that it will be pronounced with a low tone. Try to force your voice down into your chest when pronouncing a low tone. Talk like you are terribly depressed today and it should get you close to where you want to be. It’s ok to not entirely understand how tones work yet. We’ll get more into this as you get further into the course.
Exercise:
See if you can figure out how these are pronounced, then click to check your answer. Try to apply your new understanding of hard endings which you hopefully have just practiced above. *All the words in this exercise start with a MIDDLE CLASS CONSONANT and end with a HARD ENDING, therefore they are pronounced with a LOW TONE.
I’ve added the meanings to the backs of the flashcards just so you know you are reading words you’ll need later, but I wouldn’t spend extra time trying to remember them at this stage.
A number of letters such as ป and บ differ only in the way they are produced at the beginning of a syllable. This means that when they are at the end of a syllable they sound exactly the same. So the following two words would be pronounced exactly the same: บาบ บาป.
All words ending in a /p/ or similar letter in Thai will end the same way. Just close your lips together and don’t let any sound escape. Try saying the words “stop drop” really fast one after the other to get a better idea.