Kho Khuat
Encyclopedia
Thai alphabet
Thai script , is used to write the Thai language and other, minority, languages in Thailand. It has forty-four consonants , fifteen vowel symbols that combine into at least twenty-eight vowel forms, and four tone marks ....
. It is a high consonant in the Thai tripartite consonant system (ไตรยางค์, informally อักษรสามหมู่). The letter is now rarely used, being replaced universally by kho khai (ข. ไข่). There are currently no words using kho khuat in Thai language according to the Royal Institute
The Royal Institute of Thailand
The Royal Institute of Thailand , or RIT in brief, is a Thai public agency called otherwise but having the status equivalent to an independent Department which is not subsidiary to any other agency but comes under the direct supervision of the Prime Minister of Thailand.The...
Dictionary of 1999, the official standard current dictionary of the Thai language. However, kho khuat still has an entry in most dictionaries stating that it is obsolete, and is included on alphabet charts to preserve the traditional count of 44 Thai consonants.
There is a minor movement for conservative spelling among some Thai publishers, one goal of which is to bring kho khuat and kho khon back into currency. One such publisher is Butterfly Book House (สำนักพิมพ์ผีเสื้อ), which publishes children's literature both by Thai authors and Thai translations of foreign authors, such as Roald Dahl. In its books, words like ขวด and คน are spelled ฃวด and ฅน, despite the fact that the apparently "conservative" spelling is sometimes arguably not the etymologically correct one, as with ฅน for คน. As for the latter, a 2006 film set in 1890's Siam and titled in Thai: ฅนไฟบิน Flying Fire Person (in English: Dynamite Warrior
Dynamite Warrior
Dynamite Warrior is a 2006 Thai martial arts film directed by Chalerm Wongpim and starring Dan Chupong .-Plot:The story is set in 1890s Siam. Siang is a young Muay Thai warrior and rocketry expert who steals back water buffalo taken from poor Isan farmers by unscrupulous cattle raiders...
), uses ฅ kho khon to spell ฅน Person. Person is the standard example word for ฅ in consonantal charts, but is spelled คน.
Both the ฃ kho khuat and ฅ kho khon letters fell out of use at the same time when the first Thai script typewriter
Typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...
s were brought to Thailand in 1896, for there was no space for all characters in their 84 key keyboard. Thus these two letters were chosen to be done away with. Even after the shift key
Shift key
The shift key is a modifier key on a keyboard, used to type capital letters and other alternate "upper" characters. There are typically two shift keys, on the left and right sides of the row below the home row...
was invented and the number of keys in typewriters was reduced to half, those two letters were not reinstated. The reasons why precisely these two letters were chosen and not others is not known, but neither ฃ kho khuat nor ฅ kho khon correspond to letters of the Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
or the Pali
Páli
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alphabet.