ABSTRACT
The Thai script, dating from the late thirteenth century, seems to have been borrowed in part from the Khmer version of a south Indian script. It has no ligatures. The short vowel /ɔ/ is inherent in the base form of each consonant. The degree of redundancy is high, with five graphs for /kh/, six for /th/ and four for /s/, etymologically explicable but no longer phonologically justifiable.
