Why is ก (gor gai) usually translated as k instead of g ?

[thailien]

For example, from LearnWithOliver.com’s Daily Thai Exercise (recommended):

สังเกต

sǎng kèet

to notice

 

If I knew no Thai, and noticed this, I wouldn’t even come close to understandable pronunciation.  

“sang keet”  Here we go….  Sang to rhyme with Hang, Bang, Clang (not with Chang); and Keet as in parakeet, sweet tweet.

Maybe not.  How about   Sung?  Gate           Putting ? after Sung might help an English speaker to use rising tone, as in a yes-no question.  
And rendering เกต as Gate, not Kate, may help.  

There are so many problems involved with transliterating Thai words into English.   I guess if you know the phonetic symbols for pronunciation, that could be helpful.  I never cared for phonetics.  
 

When I got interested in learning Thai, and visited several schools in Bangkok, Hua Hin, and Pattaya, I was not impressed by most of the books they used.  Way too much dependence on bad transliterations.   Decided to skip that halfway measure, and go straight into learning pronunciation via Thai alphabet.

20 years ago for me, this was the Walen school in Pattaya.  No English in their books.  In at the deep end.  Learn and use the Thai alphabet.  Lovely Thai teachers speaking beautiful Thai.   Recommended

 

 

[bgtp]

My school used transliteration for the first three months. They thoroughly taught the appropriate pronunciation of each Latin letter in their transliteration scheme at the beginning and then it wasn’t a problem. I studied for six months, reading/writing was introduced in the fourth month, and was very happy with the results. The school I went to is now closed. Like several others, they used the same curriculum as Union Language School in Bangkok.

[Micky2]

On 04/01/2025 at 03:33, thailien said:

There are so many problems involved with transliterating Thai words 

In at the deep end.  Learn and use the Thai alphabet. 

The correct answer.

The Roman alphabet is used for so many different languages, resulting in many different pronunciations for the various letters, or combinations of letters. It is sometimes somewhat phonetic, but often confusing. 

When transliterating Thai there is a somewhat standard equivalent for Thai letters, which is not always adhered to. Hence you often see the same word written in different ways when transliterated. Then there is what to do with the few Thai letters that change in pronunciation depending on where they occur.

Thai script is generally fairly phonetic, with the few exceptions being the aforementioned few letters that change pronunciation, depending on whether they are at the beginning or the end of a word or syllable.

[Harry Brown]

Try travelling through Wales and trying to buy a train ticket.

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

That's  the name of a town.

[dude26]

Because about writing or speaking there is no G in thai , there is only K , may be a far equivalent about G  with ง . 

 

[FarangBear]

On 04/01/2025 at 21:58, Harry Brown said:

Try travelling through Wales and trying to buy a train ticket.

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

That's  the name of a town.

That's easy, "I want a ticket to the Silly Gogo" 😄

Edited January 9, 2025 by FarangBear

[GhostRider666]

Brain loses capability to record and learn correct pronunciation  of language phonic after puberty.

You see how kids of immigrants speaks new lanuage before and after puberty.

Therefore if adult immigrants /learn new language the accent (even few sounds) will never be the same as native speaker, even speak fluently..

Moreover, there are some phonics of two or three vocals (letters) in our mother languages coverts to only one in foreign language. 

like money in Thai: (เงิน) Ngern "ng" sounds a combination of "N+G".

or chicken (ไก่) kai, or gai.. 
we hear "G" but Thai translate to "K" but the correct is pronounce both as one phonic (sound)!

Shrimp (กุ้ง): G-n or Goon or Goorn but correct is all of them together :))

We do not hear correct sound and brain cannot give order to our larynx to create correct vocal. Same for Thai cannot hear "R", and need to Learn by brain when need use it..

Chinese, and Japanese (partly Thai ) do not hear "R" sound, simply because they don't have it!

As faraway our born place geographical, as well  mother tongue group language  belonging (Indo-European, Slavish Etc) as harder to hear and learn...

It is so 100 times easier for a Vietnamese to learn Thai than a European one.

 Most strange is "R" sound for Thai.

If "R" comes in start of the word, they pronounce will too clear  "R": Rongrian (school)
If "R" comes in middle of word, they cannot: we all know how pronounce "tomorrow" Tomollllo, "Darling" Dallllllllling.

Edited January 9, 2025 by GhostRider666

[megro]

15 minutes ago, GhostRider666 said:

If "R" comes in start of the word, they pronounce will too clear  "R": Rongrian (school)
If "R" comes in middle of word, they cannot: we all know how pronounce "tomorrow" Tomollllo, "Darling" Dallllllllling.

Same with the S, my ex GF had no problem saying words starting with S but for example miss became mid, kiss came as kid and so on.

One of the loveliest words to hear her say was strawberry smoothie. Took a few seconds for my brain to catch the meaning on the first time.

Edited January 9, 2025 by megro

[Mitch999]

The "Royal Thai General System of Transcription" isn't very good or clear and most school or books will use there own transcriptions to make things clearer. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Thai_General_System_of_Transcription

ก is not the same as an English g but it is definitely much closer to an English g than a English k and a lot of resources will probably use g instead of k for their own transcription. 

http://www.thai-language.com/ref/consonants

[Mitch999]

If you want to learn to read and write Thai, I found personally that the material or classes from native English speakers who learned to become fluent in Thai is much much better than material from native Thai speakers who learnt to speak a little or a lot of English. 

[bgtp]

3 hours ago, Mitch999 said:

The "Royal Thai General System of Transcription" isn't very good or clear and most school or books will use there own transcriptions to make things clearer. 

My school used a transliteration scheme versus a transcription scheme. They are different. Transliteration is probably the more suitable of the two. Still, the sooner you learn the Thai alphabet and proceed from there, the better imo.

[Dan1986]

Quite simple because its not pronounced as a 'g' but rather a hybrid g and k sound

[FLEngineer]

As you said, better off learning the actual alphabet and not relying on transliteration, as there is no standard system. Different places will use different systems. There is no consistency. Google translate is the worst by far!

I only refer to transliteration for the tone markers on words I'm not familiar with, because I still don't know the consonant classes.

Edited March 21, 2025 by FLEngineer

[thailien]

On 10/01/2025 at 01:06, Mitch999 said:

material or classes from native English speakers who learned to become fluent in Thai

Interesting, are you talking about Andrew Biggs?  He was one of my original inspirations that got me started learning Thai.

[SKYYcmdr]

Well, its a bit complicate.

G = จี so it can be "จ" sound and sometimes "ก" 
K = เค o it can be "ค" sound and sometimes "ก"

since no english letter sound exaclty for "ก"

[FLEngineer]

With a little more experience, I might have a slightly better guess now.

In Thai, there are some trios of letters where there are two English equivalents, and then an "in between" sound that doesn't exist as its own letter in English. They go together because they use the same mouth position, but either voiced or unvoiced (in English). The third one is...I don't know the exact term, but it's a "stop" that doesn't exist in English as its own letter (but does exist in Thai).

บ - b
ผ/พ - p
ป - transliterated as "bp" - ไป pronounced like "spy" without the s

ด - d
ถ/ท  - t
ต - transliterated as "dt" - ตา pronounced like "star" without the s (or the r)

But the g/k trio doesn't exist in Thai, and it's one of the "regular" letters that's missing! 
The "in between" letter is ก!
? - g
ข/ค - k
ก - should technically be transliterated as "gk" - ไก่ pronounced like "sky" without the s

So that's probably why not all resources can agree on how to Romanize ก - it really should be "gk", but since there is no direct equivalent of "g" in Thai, some resources use "g".

P.S.: Notice that the unvoiced versions always have a high class and a low class equivalent? The Thai alphabet derives from the Devanagari script used for Sanskrit. In Sanskrit, unvoiced sounds could be unvoiced-unaspirated (ka), and unvoiced-aspirated (kha). The Thai script inherited both letters, but the sounds have merged over time. So in modern Thai, both sets of letters remain, but are used as class markers (high vs low). 

Also notice that the "stop" letters are all middle class (plus บ)!

Edited August 10, 2025 by FLEngineer

[Ocraled]

On 21/03/2025 at 08:51, FLEngineer said:

As you said, better off learning the actual alphabet and not relying on transliteration, as there is no standard system. Different places will use different systems. There is no consistency. Google translate is the worst by far!

I only refer to transliteration for the tone markers on words I'm not familiar with, because I still don't know the consonant classes.

Also depending on the nationaly, the translitterations can be "read" differently.

As a Finn, we have alphabets that correlate with thai "sounds".

For example for: เเ- there is "Ä". For เ-อ, there is "Ö". English persons usually write these as "ae" and "oe".

(Actually as those are long vowels, it would be "ÄÄ" and "ÖÖ". Drop one for short vowel...)

Also words with จ and ย are problematic, since we pronounce ย as in "yellow" and จ as in "Jake".

So english will translitterate words starting with ย (etc. ยา) -> Yaa. Finnish would translitterate -> Jaa.

About "gor gai", I agree what was mentioned earlier. It's somewhere between k and g. 

 

AI put it this way:

"The Thai consonant ก (gor gai) is pronounced as an unaspirated "g" or "k" sound, produced by briefly touching the middle part of your tongue to the hard palate at the back of your mouth. 

Mouth Position Details:

Voicing: The sound is typically unvoiced, meaning your vocal chords do not vibrate when you make it (unlike the English "g" in "gun", which is voiced).

Aspiration: It is unaspirated, meaning there is no puff of air released after the sound, unlike the English "k" in "kin".

Articulation: The sound is a velar stop. You achieve this by:

Lifting the back of your tongue to touch the soft palate (velum) at the roof of your mouth.

Stopping the airflow completely for a moment.

Quickly releasing the tongue, but without a strong expulsion of air."

 

[FLEngineer]

20 hours ago, Ocraled said:

Also words with จ and ย are problematic, since we pronounce ย as in "yellow" and จ as in "Jake".

To add to this, listening to native speakers say จ, it sounds like they're making sound very similar to the Russian Ц, which is a bit softer than the J in Jake. But of course if you look at any official linguistic texts, they will say that there is no voiceless alveolar affricate in the Thai language.

[Ocraled]

7 hours ago, FLEngineer said:

To add to this, listening to native speakers say จ, it sounds like they're making sound very similar to the Russian Ц, which is a bit softer than the J in Jake. But of course if you look at any official linguistic texts, they will say that there is no voiceless alveolar affricate in the Thai language.

You're right about that  Ц. It's pretty close, but not just quite.

Edited November 9, 2025 by Ocraled