Consonants

There are 20 consonants in Dai Ahom language called to māe līk tái or the “main body of Tai Alphabet,” as the below table lists out in detail.

Twenty consonants of Dai Ahom Language

	Consonant
	k (ga)
	x (xa)
	[ (nga)
	n (na)
	t (ta)
	p (pa)
	f (pha)
	B (ba)
	b (wa)
	m (ma)
	y (ya)
	c (tsa)
	v (tha)
	r (ra)
	l (la)
	s (sa)
	N (nya)
	h (ha)
	A (aa)
	d (da)

Stroke Order

The following chart shows the stroke order for all 20 consonants. To correctly recognize them I recommend you to take the Alphabet Quiz aside from this lesson's exercises

Some Pointers

• 𑜀 is same as english letter 'm'
• 𑜁 looks like a snail
• 𑜂 looks like a bird flapping its wings
• 𑜃 is same as english letter 'c'
• 𑜄 looks like inverted 'ou'
• 𑜆 is same as english letter 'v'
• 𑜇 looks like 'w' closed on right-end
• 𑜈 is same as english letter 'o'
• 𑜉 looks like 'v' with a stripe
• 𑜊 is same as english letter 'w'
• 𑜋 looks like right-end closed italic w
• 𑜌 looks like 'w' closed on both ends
• 𑜍 looks like a butterfly
• 𑜎 looks like 'vu'
• 𑜏 looks like 'vI/'
• 𑜐 looks like 'vc'
• 𑜑 is same as english letter 'n'
• 𑜒 looks like 'm' with a pony-tail
• 𑜓 is same as '5'

Inherent Vowel

The inherent vowel sound in Dai Ahom is /a/ unlike Thai and Assamese which have default vowel /ɔ/ and Hindi which has default vowel /ə/. So 'Asama' can be written as '𑜒𑜏𑜉' in Dai Ahom (Note that this is the short vowel 'a' instead of 'aa' which we will see later in the next lesson, how to write Asaam properly)

Approximation of Sounds

Note how there are only 20 distinct phonemes in Dai Ahom, so if you want to transcribe sounds from other language to Ahom script, then you have to make some approximations. For example there is no distinct /k/, /q/ and /g/ sounds in Dai language so all are written as 𑜀. Similarly both /f/ and /pʰ/ will be written as 𑜇 and j, z, zh, ch all will be written as 𑜋, simiarly there is no distinction between /x/ and /kʰ/, both will be written as 𑜁. So you can change these spellings accordingly as you want so as long as you don't change the meaning - this alone is the golden rule of Phonology.

Clearing Confusion

Now some people will have doubts, 'I thought Ahom only had 19 consonants where did the extra 20th consonant come from?' That's actually because Ahom has voiced consonants [d] along with [t] and [b] along with [p] just like Dai Lue. But although we have separate grapheme for [d] but the [v] sound really got merged with [b] because of Aryanisation (which is why people here say gib me instead of 'give me' because they have completely mixed these two phonemes). And it is not just Ahom problem, because even Phakes and Khamyangs pronounce [v] as [b] because they didn't have separate voiced consonants unlike Dai Lue and Dai Ahom. Hopefully there are very few words that start with b, so this is not immediately a problem but it will still be better if we had a separate grapheme for it, so that it is not confused for /v/

Also this course is about how Dai Language is actually spoken, so now's the time to flush down, whatever you have learned from any other source. As we define the A-Z of Modern Ahom Phonology.

Exercise