QWERTY Farang
QWERTY Farang keyboard created for Thai learners who are more familiar with the QWERTY layout. It uses "longpress" and "rota" to house characters with identical phonetics by order of frequency.
Consonant Class are Color-Coded
Many Thai learners feel Thai tones are difficult due to the complex tone rules. Thai tone depends on the initial consonant class. To aid your memorization, we color-coded low-class consonants blue, mid-class consonants green, and high-class constants red.
Rota
The Rota function allows users to cycle through multiple phonetically-similar letters assigned to a single key. Consonants are ordered by frequency of appearance per this list: List of Thai characters sorted by frequency.
Eg. ช > ฉ > ฌ
Vowels are ordered as short vowels first, long vowels second.
Eg. เ > แ
Rota is available on both desktop and touch (mobile devices).
On Windows, some vowels have to be typed after another charather, otherwise nothing would be output. This is also true for tone marks and diacritical marks.
Full Rota Rules
- ` (Backquote)= ่ > ้ > ๊ > ๋
- Q = ช > ฉ > ฌ
- W = ว > ะ (ie, วิสรรชนีย์ or wisanchani)
- E = เ > แ
- R = ร > ฤ > ฤๅ
- T = ต > ฏ
- Y = ย > ญ
- U = ุ > ู
- I = ิ > ี
- O = อ > โ > °
- [ = พ > ผ > ภ
- \ = ํ > ฺ > ๎ (Sanskritist symbols not used in standard Thai)
- A = ั > า > ะ
- S = ส > ศ > ซ > ษ
- D = ด > ฎ
- F = ฟ > ฝ
- G = ก > ์ (ie, การันต์ or garan)
- H = ห > ฮ
- K = ค > ข > ฆ
- L = ล > ฬ
- ; = ฯ > ๚ > ๏ > ๛
- Z = ท > ธ > ถ > ฐ > ฒ > ฑ
- X = ็ > ๆ (Thai diacritics derived from Thai numerals)
- C = ไ > ใ (/aɪ/)
- V = ึ > ื (/ɯ/)
- B = บ > ฿
- N = น > ณ
- M = ม > ำ
- RALT K = ฆ > ฃ > ฅ (to access obsolete /kʰ/)
- RALT R = ๅ > ฦ (to access obsolete “r”-related vowels, [ตัว ฦ, Tua lue])
- RALT M = ᴍ > ʟ > ꜰ > ʜ > ʀ (Learner’s Tone Marks)
Notable Key Assignments
- ` : Thai Tone marks ่, ้, ๊, ๋.
- Q : The aspirated alveolar-palatals /tɕʰ/ ช > ฉ > ฌ.Per the letter “q” in Mandarin Chinese pinyin.
- J : The Voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate /tɕ/ จPer the letter “j” in Mandarin Chinese pinyin.
- X : The two diacritics evolved from Thai numerals ็ > ๆ
- C : Diphthong /aɪ/ ไ > ใ
- Z : /tʰ/ (aspirated /t/)
- V : The close back unrounded vowel /ɯ/ ◌ึ > ◌ื
All other letters are arranged per the Royal Thai General System of Transcription (RTGS) or “loose” IPA.
And we left a few redundancies within for you to discover.
Keyboard Layout
Desktop
Touch
Longpress
Keys with a little dot on the top right can be pressed and held for more keys.
Eg. press and hold on R key to reveals ฤ and ๅ. Move your finger over to one of the two popped up keys to type it.
Lexical Model
This keyboard employs a Lexical Model per the Chulalongkorn University Thai Language Word Frequency List. It will offer auto-complete suggestions (predictive text) for single words at a time, but it will not understand multiple words.
Press any initial character to get top three suggestions beginning with that character. The next character typed narrows down the suggestion.
© 2021 Sebastian Restrepo & LatamAsia
