Learn how to write 3 letters: the class-changing hǎaw hip, อัวะ and อัว
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| 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 ผ and ฝ, and the vowels สระ เอือะ and สระ เอือ. Do you remember how to write them all? |
| In this lesson, you’re going to learn about a very important high class consonant that is used to change the class of other consonants. |
| This is the letter ห (hǎaw hìip). It's named after the word หีบ (hìip), which means "trunk" or "chest". ห makes the sound "h" as an initial consonant, like the H in "Hello". It isn't used as a final consonant. |
| ห looks a little bit like a capital letter H, so that might help you associate its shape with its sound. |
| Let's practice writing ห. Get out your pen, and follow along. |
| Start with the head. Go down, up diagonally. Make a loop, and down. |
| ห |
| Let's learn a new pair of vowels to make a word with ห. |
| These are the vowels สระ อัวะ (sà-rà ùa) and สระ อัว (sà-rà uua). They make the vowel sound อัว (uua), which is like a combination of อู (uu) and อะ (à). |
| When it has no final consonant following it, สระ อัว is written using ไม้หันอากาศ over the consonant and ว to the right of it. |
| We can make it into the short vowel สระ อัวะ by also adding สระ อะ to the right of that. |
| Okay, time to write them: |
| สระ อัวะ (sà-rà ùa), สระ อัว (sà-rà uua). |
| Here is the word หัว (hǔua) which means "head". It is written with ห as the initial consonant, then it has ไม้หันอากาศ and ว making up the vowel สระ อัว. |
| ห, ไม้หันอากาศ and ว to make สระ อัว ...หัว |
| หัว is said with a rising tone because it has a high class initial consonant with a live syllable ending. |
| สระ อัว has to be written differently when it has a final consonant following it. In that case, we just write it as the letter ว sandwiched between the initial and final consonants. For example, here is the word สวน (sǔuan), which means garden. |
| It has the initial consonant ส, the vowel สระ อัว written using ว, and the final consonant น. |
| Okay, your turn: |
| ส, สระ อัว using ว, น... สวน |
| สวน has a rising tone because it has a high class initial consonant combined with a live syllable ending. |
| Let's look at ห again because it's a very important letter. It can also be used to make low class consonants act like high class consonants. In this case, it will act like a silent letter that makes the *next* letter follow the tone rules for high class initial consonants. |
| To do this, we put it right in front of an initial low class consonant. |
| For example, here is the word หมี (mǐi), which means "bear". It starts with ห, but the real initial consonant is ม. |
| The word หมี is said with a rising tone, but ม is a low class consonant, and there is no tone rule that lets low class consonants make a rising tone on their own. So it has to team up with a silent ห to get the job done. |
| Let's write หมี together. |
| Start with a silent ห, then ม, and the vowel สระ อี... หมี |
| There's one other tone, besides the rising tone, that low class consonants can't make on their own. Do you know which one it is? |
| Let's review the tone rules to find out. |
| The tone rules for syllables with low class initial consonants are: |
| With a live ending, it's a mid tone. |
| With a dead ending and short vowel, it's a high tone. |
| And with a dead ending and long vowel, it's a falling tone. |
| So on their own, low class consonants can't make rising tone or low tone. |
| But with the help of ห, they can make both tones. |
| Here is an example of ห helping to make a low tone. This is the word หลอด (làawt), which means "straw". The initial consonant is ล, which makes a sound like the letter L. อ is acting as the vowel สระ ออ, and the final consonant ด is making a T-stop, which is a dead ending. If we didn't have ห the word would be a falling tone. But the silent ห out front makes ล act like a high class consonant. Then we follow the rule: High class initial consonant with a dead ending makes a low tone. |
| So, หลอด is said with a low tone. |
| One last word to write this lesson! |
| ห, ล, อ, ด... หลอด |
| Now it's time for Pradthana’s Points. |
| Thai has many compound words that are made up of 2 or more short words. Because we don't put space between words, you might think a compound word is actually two short words that mean something else. For example, ผี (phǐi) means "ghost", and เสื้อ (sûuea) means "shirt". But together, ผีเสื้อ (phǐi-sûuea) doesn't mean "ghost shirt" -- it means "butterfly". So if you think you know all the words in a sentence, but it doesn't seem to make sense, check with a Thai dictionary to see if any of the words are forming a compound word that you didn't know about. |
| Have you ever heard the Thai word ภูเขา (phuu-khǎo)? 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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