Vocabulary (Review)

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Lesson Transcript

สวัสดีค่ะ, ดิฉันปรารถนาค่ะ! Welcome to Thaipod101.com’s ตัวอักษรไทย Made Easy!
The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn the Thai alphabet: ตัวอักษรไทย!
In the last lesson you learned the letters ศ, ษ, and ส. Do you remember how to write them all?
In this lesson, you’re going to learn about two high class consonants and two vowels.
The 2 new consonants for this lesson look very similar to a pair of consonants that we already learned. Here are ผ (phǎaw phûeng) and ฝ (fǎaw fǎa). The word ผึ้ง (phûeng) means "bee", and ฝา (fǎa) means a "lid" or "cover".
As you can see, ผ and ฝ look almost the same as พ and ฟ. The only difference is the direction that the heads are written. ผ and ฝ have counter-clockwise heads, which leaves the head inside the letter.
But พ and ฟ have clockwise heads, which makes the head stick outside the letter.
This pair of letters make the same sounds as their cousins. ผ and พ both make an initial sound "ph" like the P in "pig". And ฝ and ฟ both make the sound "f" like the F in "fan". All four letters make a P-stop as a final consonant.
Let's practice writing both new letters, using counter clockwise heads for both.
Here is ผ. And then ฝ.
We can use ฝ to write the word ฝน (fǒn), which means "rain". ฝ is the initial consonant, and น is the final consonant. Remember the rule about สระ โอะ from lesson 9? A word containing only two consonants and nothing else will have the short vowel sound สระ โอะ, but the สระ โอะ itself isn't written.
So when writing it, you just have ฝ and น -- the สระ โอะ is unwritten... ฝน (fǒn).
ฝน is a rising tone because we have a high class initial with a live syllable ending.
You can remember that the missing vowel in words with a single syllable, such as ฝน, will be สระ โอะ. However, words with more than one syllable will often have สระ อะ as an unwritten syllable.
For example, here is the word ผนัง (phà-nǎng), which means "wall". In this case, we can see that there is a vowel symbol ไม้หันอากาศ written above the second consonant, น. This shows us that น has to be treated as an initial consonant for a syllable. The syllable has the short vowel sound สระ อะ written with ไม้หันอากาศ, and the final sound "ng" coming from the consonant ง.
But that leaves the consonant ผ all by itself in the front. Thai consonants need some vowel sound to make noise, so we give ผ a short vowel sound สระ อะ right after it.
This first syllable ผะ (phà) is a low tone because it has a high class initial consonant with a short vowel to make a dead ending.
Then what happens is the high class consonant gives its tone quality to the letter that follows it. This is because there was no written vowel in the middle.
So in this case, น will act like a high class consonant. The syllable has a live ending, so it is said with a rising tone.
ผนัง (phà-nǎng)
Something similar happens in the word ขนม (khà-nǒm), which means "snack". This word is a little bit more tricky because it has 2 unwritten vowels. There is an unwritten สระ อะ after ข. And there is an unwritten สระ โอะ between น and ม.
The first syllable (khà) is low tone, and the second syllable (nǒm) is rising tone because the high class consonant ข has an effect on both syllables.
Do you remember the sound of this syllable? It's สระ อื (sà-rà uue). The next pair of vowels we are going to learn sound like a combination of สระ อื (sà-rà uue) and สระ อะ (sà-rà à).
These are called สระ เอือะ (sà-rà ùea) สระ เอือ (sà-rà uuea).
สระ เอือ is written using สระ เอ before the consonant, สระ อื above the consonant, and อ after the consonant.
The short vowel, สระ เอือะ, can be written by adding สระ อะ onto the end of this.
Let's write them:
สระ เอือะ (sà-rà ùea), สระ เอือ (sà-rà uuea).
We can use สระ เอือ to write the word เมือง (muueang), which means "city" or "country". The initial consonant is ม, which makes a sound like the letter M. It has the vowel สระ เอือ written around it. And the final consonant is ง.
Let's practice writing เมือง together.
สระ เอ, ม, สระ อื, อ, ง... เมือง
เมือง is said with a mid tone because it has a low class initial consonant and a live syllable endling.
Now it's time for Pradthana's Points.
It may take some time in the beginning to figure out where unwritten vowels should go, especially with long words. But after a while you'll begin to notice patterns in words that have similar spellings. So the more you practice reading, the easier it will become to read new words that you come across.
Do you know which animal is called หมี (mǐi) in Thai? In the next ตัวอักษรไทย Made Easy Lesson you'll learn what it means, and most of all, how to write it! See you there! สวัสดีค่ะ!

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