The list below is a small selection of what I’ve collected so far:

Thai [Transliteration] Translation

Onomatopoeia

กุ๋ย [Guy] Sound of someone bragging
โก้ก [Gok] Sound of a spoon hitting a bowl
กรอด [Graawt] Sound of grinding teeth
ซู่ [Suu] Sound of rain flowing or sloshing
กึงกัง [Geung Gang] Sound of furniture being moved in an adjacent room
กระกรี๊ด [Gra Greet] Sound of a woman screaming in surprise
ฉับ ๆ [Chap] Sound of cutting a tree branch
ติ๋ง ๆ [Dting] Sound of dripping water
เปรี้ยง [Bpriang] Sound of thunder, or a gun
ผัวะ – [Phua] Sound of a slap, or a whip cracking
กระจองอแง [Gra Jaawng Angaae] Sound of children crying annoyingly
ฮือ ๆ – [Heuu Heuu] Sound of mourning or grieving
กราว [Graao] Sound of many solids hitting the ground at once
กิก [Gik] Sound of solids colliding (normal pitch)
กึก [Geuk] Sound of solids colliding (low pitch)
กึง [Geung] Sound of a hard thing hitting the floor
โกรง [Grong] Sound of impact from hollow things
เผละ [Phle] Sound of soft things falling
ขลุก [Khlook] Sound of a clay ball rolling fast
จุ๋ม [Joom] Sound of a pebble being thrown in a pond
แจะ [Jae] Sound of chewing
ซี้ด [Seet] Sound of someone eating something very spicy
ฮัดเช่ย [Hat Cheeuy] Sound of sneezing
ขาก [Khaak] Sound of coughing something up
โครกคราก [Krok Kraak] Sound of fluid bubbling in the stomach
ครืด [Khreuut] Sound of dragging something heavy
แปร๋น ๆ [Bpraaen Bpraaen] Sound made by an elephant
ตุ๊กแก [Dtook Gaae] Sound made by a gecko
เอ๋ง [Aehng Aehng] Sound made by an injured dog
กุบกับ [Goop Gap] Sound of a dog walking on the ground
ควาก [Khwaak] Sound of clothes ripping
แควก [Khwaaek] (A different) sound of clothes ripping

Verbs
กระอ้อมแอ้ม [Gra Aawm Aaem] To stumble in speech because you know you’re guilty
กระอิดกระเอี้อน [Gra It Gra Eeuan] To delay action through words
กระอึกกระอัก [Gra Euk Gra Ak] To stumble from nervousness
กระชั้น [Gra Chan] To speak in short breaths
กรีด [Greet] To shriek (esp. women)
กระจุ๋งกระจิ๋ง [Gra Joong Gra Jing] To speak softly (esp. women – for some reason there are many sounds specific to women, but almost none specific to men)
กระปอดกระแปด [Gra bpaawt Gra Bpaaet] To speak in a grumbling manner, esp. to someone of higher status

Adjectives
ใหญ่ [Yai] – Thick, as a voice (like Whitney Houston, according my teacher)
เคลิ้ม [Kleum] – To be enthralled to a spoken message, esp. out of drowsiness

Thai language teacher and first-year students practice vocabulary. August, 2009.

Thai is a tonal language and English is not. Thai has five tones, and every syllable in every word in the language has one. Disconcertingly, often comically, there are many groups of words that have exactly the same phonemic sounds, and yet because of different tones express very different meanings. For example, call a man “laaw” (low tone) and you’ve told him he’s handsome. Call him “laaw” (rising tone – pronounced like a cartoonish imitation of an Italian chef saying “Come-a on-a in-a!) and you’ve insinuated that he has no teeth.

Spectrogram of tones in Thai

You can hear this difference in action in the sound clip at the top of the post. From the first word, the teacher gives deliberately exaggerated inflection to every syllable, to make the tone as clear as possible. The students, who in their native language speak flatly and inflect only for emphasis (rather than meaning), imitate her fledglingly.

The teacher, by turn, inflects English in ways that have no meaning – except, as it turns out, to mark her speech as that of a native Thai speaker. Tone is excessive once she switches to English and yet, out of habit, her speech is still full of it. Notice how, at :18, she pronounces “selLER” with a high tone on the second syllable. Thais tend to do this with borrowed words, for reasons I can’t explain. Around 1:48, she does it again with “buyER” and then once more with “how ‘BOUT.” I think that accent is not only an impediment to clarity, but also a way of continuing to “speak” one’s native language while speaking another language.  The patterns of nonsensical excess produced by speaking in an accent immediately take on new meaning beyond the parameters of the languages themselves, since they mark their speaker in totally relative terms.

The valences of accent, however, work differently depending on which direction you’re traveling, i.e. an American in Thailand is not the same kind of foreigner as a Thai is in the United States. Thais are used to foreigners being inept with tone, and will often laugh at them openly. The monotone of the foreigner (say it to yourself: for-ay-NERRR) is partially confusing, but also an unmistakeable marker of alienness, probably at least as potent as skin tone.