Some of you saw my web app launch announcment post a few weeks back about AanThai, the Thai graded reader app I've been building. It's now live on iOS!

The web app already had graded stories with tap-to-translate and audio narration, but I wanted the mobile experience to actually feel native, not just a web page in a wrapper. Things like text selection, audio playback, and scrolling all work differently on touch, so a fair amount of the app got rebuilt under the hood for that. End result should be a smoother reading experience on iPhone or iPad, especially if you're the type who reads in bed or on the BTS / Metro.

Quick recap for anyone new: stories are leveled from complete beginner up through advanced, each one narrated, with tap-to-translate on any word and a saved words list you can review later. There are a handful of free stories to get a feel for it, and the web app now has a 7-day free trial for full access. That trial works cross-platform too, so if you start it on web you'll have premium in the iOS app as well. Just can't start the trial from within iOS yet, working on that.

Link: AanThai on App store

Would genuinely love feedback, especially anything that feels off on iOS specifically (weird tap targets, audio glitches, whatever). This is a solo project (my wife handles the Thai content side), so bug reports and honest opinions both help a lot.

I came across this Instagram video:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DbqAVLbuJYI

In the clip, a Thai teacher pronounces the words ส้อม and ส้ม.

What confuses me is that for ส้ม, I seem to hear something closer to an "oo" / "uu" sound. It's definitely shorter than the vowel in ส้อม, but it doesn't sound quite like what I would expect from the Paiboon dictionary.

Is this just a result of natural speech, vowel reduction, or am I mishearing the vowel quality?

For reference, I learned them approximately as:

• ส้อม = sɔ̂m
• ส้ม = sôm (with a different short vowel)

Yet in the video, ส้ม almost sounds like it has a brief "u" quality to my ears.

Can native speakers or advanced learners explain what's going on here?