Field notes
How Thai typing works
Thai is not English with extra letters. The keyboard, the script, and the sound system pull on each other. These are the few facts that make the lessons click.
You do not need a Thai keyboard
TimeWarp Thai maps the physical keys of a QWERTY board onto Kedmanee — the standard Thai layout. Press J and you get ่, whether or not your operating system is in Thai. When you later switch the OS to Thai, the same fingers land on the same letters.
Home row is a language lesson
English home row is A S D F J K L ;. Thai home row is ฟ ห ก ด เ ้ ่ า ส ว ง. That is not a coincidence of engineering. ก is the most common consonant. า is the most common vowel. ่ and ้ are the two tone marks you actually use. The keyboard was built around frequency, in 1932, for typewriters.
Preposed vowels
Five vowels sit in front of the consonant: เ แ โ ใ ไ. You type them first. The screen draws them first. Unicode stores them first. There is no “type the consonant then hop backwards.” ไป is ไ, then ป. If you type ปไ you have typed a different (and wrong) sequence.
Stacking order
After the consonant come the small vowels that sit above or below (ั ิ ี ึ ื ุ ู), then the tone mark (่ ้ ๊ ๋), then a trailing ะ or า. กี่ is ก, ี, ่. ก่า is ก, ่, า. The type-lane always asks for keys in this stored order — which is also the order a Thai typist uses.
Three consonant classes
Mid, high, and low. The class of the initial consonant, plus whether the syllable is live or dead, plus any tone mark, produces the spoken tone. You do not need the full chart to start typing — but you should notice it. หา unmarked is rising because ห is high class. กา unmarked is mid. The badge on each letter in Keys tells you which family it belongs to.
ใ versus ไ
Both are /ai/, both preposed. ไ is productive. ใ is a closed club of roughly twenty native words: ใจ, ใส่, ใหญ่, ใหม่, ให้, ใช่… If you are inventing a spelling, it is ไ. If you are writing “heart,” it is ใจ, period key, no discussion.
Shift is where Sanskrit sleeps
Kedmanee puts the everyday alphabet on the unshifted layer and the Indic leftovers on Shift: ฉ ฮ ซ ศ ษ ฐ ฑ ฒ ณ ญ ฎ ฏ. You will need ฉ for ฉัน and ษ for ภาษา. The rest you can hunt until they appear in a word you care about.
Spaces
Thai does not put a space between every word. Spaces sit between phrases, or where a breath would go. Lessons keep a space between drill groups so your eye can rest. Real sentences in lesson 16 breathe the Thai way.