แ — sara ae
«sara ae» is a vowel of the Thai script, read as “long ae (written before)”. A long open e, held twice as long as sara e; it also sits in front of the consonant. For example, in the word “แม่” — mother. The Thai alphabet has 63 letters in total. On a carrier the character looks like this: แอ. It appears, for example, in the word “แล้ว เจอกัน” — bye.
In short
| Character | แ |
| Name | sara ae |
| Sound | long ae (written before) |
| What it is | a vowel |
| On the carrier | แอ |
In our course the character comes 46th of 67: the order here is not alphabetical but from familiar to unfamiliar, its neighbours in the course are เ and โ, appears in 356 words of this site.
How to type แ
- On a phone: add the Thai keyboard in the keyboard settings (Gboard on Android; Keyboards in the iPhone settings).
- In Word on Windows: type U+0E41 and press Alt+X right after it — the code turns into the character.
- On a Mac: switch to the Unicode Hex Input source, hold Option and type 0E41.
- Unicode code point: U+0E41. With it, the character can be found in the character map of any system.
How it sounds
A long open e, held twice as long as sara e; it also sits in front of the consonant
The character in a word
A lone character is hard to remember: memory holds on to meaning, and a letter has none. The word it stands in provides that anchor.
- แม่мэmother
The character in the “vowels written before the consonant” group
The sign stands to the LEFT of the consonant, but the sound comes after it. So เ + ข + า makes เขา, read khao. This is the first habit to build. ใ and ไ are one sound, ai, in two signs: "the one in twenty words" and "all the rest".
Words with this character
How to remember this character
A single letter is the hardest thing to remember: memory has nothing to hold on to — a character has no meaning. A three-step loop works: see the character, try to recall the sound (for «sara ae» it is “long ae (written before)”, as in the word “แม่”), see the right answer.
And come back to it the next day, not in an hour: a check a day or two later beats a check the same day. Nobody holds the whole alphabet — 63 letters — at once.
- It is better to test yourself the next day than at the end of the same session. That is why a word comes back to you tomorrow.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · g = 0.82 when tested a day or two later, against 0.56 on the same day.
- Studying a little every day gets more into your head than spending the same total time in one sitting.checked many timesDonovan & Radosevich, 1999, Journal of Applied Psychology 84(5) · 63 studies compared, difference d = 0.46 — a sizeable figure for a learning effect.
Frequently asked
How does the Thai character แ read?
As “long ae (written before)” — it is a vowel of the Thai script. A long open e, held twice as long as sara e; it also sits in front of the consonant. For example, in the word “แม่” — mother.
What is the letter แ called?
Sara ae. A character's name and its sound are different things in the Thai script: it is called “sara ae” and reads as “long ae (written before)”. Learn the second one: the name only helps when the alphabet is recited aloud.