Try this as a meditation: Say “ก” and put your mind on where your tongue is, especially the back of the tongue. Then say a “g”. The one small difference is that the “ก” is pressed a little harder to the soft palate than it is when you say a “g”. As the New York saying goes, “Same difference”.

Even though the “g” is technically voiced and the “ก” is technically voiceless, in actual usage you will not hear a “ก” without a voiced sound just after it, even in the consonant clusters like the name of the southern town of “กระบี่” spelled by the Thai government as “Krabi”, and pronounced by most visitors as “Crabby” when a better approximation is /grà~bi/.

I’ll stick with the “g”. It’s not a “stupid mistake”. It’s just an “approximation”. But one that works for me, and it would appear, lots of other people.

Note: The word “gay” is a Thai word, and is spelled in the Thai-English English-Thai software Dictionary as “เกย์” /gee/ and sounds exactly as the English word does (since it is a loan word of course).

Note 2: How does the Thai word for tiger “เสือ” become “sua” as in “sua noy”? It does because it is the closest “approximation” that the English writing system has for that unbelievably difficult to say (for most westerners) Thai vowel sound in “เสือ”.

But in the end, use what works for you. they are all the “same difference”.

THE DEVOICING OF CONSONANTS (16th or 17th century according to Philip N Jenner, quite recent indeed) :
First of all remember that “voicing” means that your vocal cords vibrate, “aspirated” means that a little puff of air is blown out while saying the consonant (which you can feel if you put your hand in front of your mouth).
In an earlier period of thai languages (before the devoicing) ค was corresponding to the voiced counterpart of ก, so it was also unaspirated. After the devoicing came, ค became aspirated in central thai, not in northern thai. It was the same for ท and พ : they were voiced counterpart of ต and ป, so they were unaspirated (don’t read this if you already have a headhache : actually they were counterpart of ด and บ which were unvoiced and became voiced…). After the devoicing, they also became aspirated in central thai, not in northern thai.
So let’s see this again :
The new pronounciation of ค has now a twin which is ข in central thai, ก in northern thai.
For ท has it is ถ in central thai,ต in northern thai.
For พ it is ผ in central thai, ป in northern thai.
That’s why in northern thai they pronounce way “ตาง” (tone is not on purpose here), thousand “ปัน” and กำเมือง instead of คำเมือง.

For those who speak that most wonderful of all languages, khmer, it’s the same, the devoicing didn’t make the devoiced consonants become aspirated.

But in lao it followed the central thai pattern : devoiced consonants became aspirated. Why in ล้านซ้าง but not in ล้านนา? I find it fascinating, two similar areas, with languages so close to each other, with quite similar historic relationship with central thailand…(16th 17th century, I think NE Thailand was not yet settled by lao deported by Bangkok rulers, it came mostly as a punishment after the delusions of grandeur of Chao Anou). Languages are fascinating.

While i agree that it is a mistake, it is probably satisfying enough since most people tends to associate unknown foreign sound to the most similar sound in their own language. So as English speaker tend to hear g instead of ก, Thai people tend to hear ก when foreigners pronounce the english g.

For example, when i started to speak Thai, i was not very confortable with pronouncing the sound ก (it often sounded like ค to Thai people) and after a few misunderstandings, i often opted to pronounce ก like the english g. It was always perfectly understood by Thai speaker even if it was clearly not the proper ก sound.

Since the back of the tongue (the dorsum) is not very precise in its move, and the velum is soft and extensive, you may have this feeling of “slightly different place”

I’m putting my mouth to your โก and กี test (works for me) and the man across the way keeps saying, ‘Pardon? Pardon?’ (It’s been fun)

This alphabet was made by genius !

:-)

velar ก to ง
palatal จ to ญ
dental ด to น
labial บ to ม

Note that there is a third row of “etymologic” consonants ฎ to ณ which corresponds to alveolar consonants in sanskrit and pali loanwords : the rearmost point of contact of the tongue is supposed to be more in the back than for dentals, nowadays in thai (and khmer) it is pronounced like dentals.
This classification is more obvious in khmer where they continue to learn the alphabet by nicely ordered rows of consonants.

This alphabet was made by genius !

Rikker’s post talks about ก in Thai 101 Learners Series: Finding Your Voice.

The first letter of the Thai alphabet is ก ไก่ (kor kài). It is a “voiceless” sound. In English, g is voiced. It’s a subtle distinction, but it is there.

The correct sound of ก ไก่ is one of those non-contrasting sounds in English, only found in words such as sky and ski. In that context, our brain groups it with k. In Thai, since there is no English g sound, it’s tempting to just let g fill in that gap, rather than learning to say the ก sound properly.

If you pronounce ก ไก่ like English g, it’ll sound wrong to Thais, even if they can’t explain why.

Today I was running around with friends and this subject came up. I asked them what sound they were hearing with ก, and they said G, and that there was no way they’d be convinced that ก is a K.

The G/K discussion always goes round and around, so perhaps what is needed is a post that includes the actual sounds to compare (G, K, etc), a written explanation, and diagrams for good measure. So if anyone is game to write that post…

On the subject of transliteration… On WLT I use transliteration from T2E, but it’s nowhere near perfect and has G instead of K for ก. But as transliteration is intended as a temporary crutch only, not a final solution, I’m not fussed. If an better and equally easy solution comes around I might replace what’s here, but until then, it stays.