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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 ฑ and ฒ. Do you remember how to write them?
In this lesson, you’re going to learn how to write the last 2 low class consonants…
Ready to start? Then let's go!
The first new letter for this lesson is called ฬ (laaw jù-laa). The word จุฬา (jù-laa) means a certain type of star-shaped kite, but you might hear it more often as a name of one of the best known universities in Thailand. As an initial consonant, ฬ makes the sound of letter L, just like ล. And it would make the sound of letter N as a final consonant.
ฬ looks just like the letter พ with an extra loop at the end.
Let's practice writing ฬ together.
Start with the head, make the shape of the letter พ, and add a loop at the end.
ฬ is a very uncommon letter. But one word that you'll see it in is the word นาฬิกา (naa-lí-gaa), which means "clock". นาฬิกา has 3 syllables. The first syllable is made up of น and สระ อา. The second syllable is ฬ and สระ อิ. And the third syllable is ก and สระ อา. The tones in the word นาฬิกา are mid tone, high tone and mid tone.
นาฬิกา (naa-lí-gaa)
The other new letter for this lesson is another uncommon low class consonant. It's called ฆ (khaaw rá-khang). The word ระฆัง (rá-khang) means "bell". ฆ makes an initial sound "kh" and final K-stop just like ค and ข.
The shape of ฆ is just like the letter ม except for an extra curved line with a bump after writing the head.
Let's practice writing ฆ.
Start with a small clockwise head. Make a curved line with an indentation on top. Then continue with the shape of letter ม.
One word that uses ฆ is เมฆ (mêek), which means "cloud". เมฆ has the initial consonant ม. The vowel สระ เอ is written to its left. And the final consonant is ฆ.
เมฆ is said with a falling tone because it has a low class consonant with a dead syllable ending and a long vowel.
Before we move on to talk about the tone rules for using tone marks with other consonant classes, let's review all the tone rules for using tone marks with middle class consonants.
With middle class consonants, mái-èek gives low tone, mái-thoo gives falling tone, mái-dtrii gives high tone, and mái-jàt-dtà-waa gives rising tone.
The good news is that mái-dtrii and mái-jàt-dtà-waa are not used with the other two consonant classes. So you've already learned half of the rules for tone marks.
The rule for using mái-èek with high class consonants is:
High class consonants with mái-èek are low tone.
This rule is easy to remember because mái-èek affects high class and middle class consonants in the same way.
Now let's take a look at this tone rule in action.
Here is the word สี่ (sìi), which means the number "4". It has the high class consonant ส with the vowel สระ อี. Then the tone mark mái-èek is written above that.
Without any tone symbol we would have the word สี (sǐi) with a rising tone, which means "color".
But adding mái-èek gives it a low tone, so we have สี (sìi) , which means "4".
Another example of mái-èek used with high class consonants is the word ใหม่ (mài), which means "new". Be careful when reading this word. Notice that there is an initial consonant cluster formed by a silent ห followed by ม. This means the word will start with the initial sound "m" of ม, but that letter will be treated like a high class consonant because of the silent ห. So without any tone mark, this word would have a rising tone. however, mái-èek gives the word ใหม่ (mài) a low tone.
Let's write ใหม่ together.
สระ ใอ ไม้ม้วน, ห, ม, ไม้เอก. ใหม่ (mài)
Now it's time for Pradthana’s Point.
A fun way to practice reading the Thai script is to follow along to music videos with karaoke subtitles. It's pretty easy to find the karaoke versions of many Thai music videos on YouTube and other video sharing websites. Just make sure that you watch videos that have the Thai script. Some Thai karaoke videos use romanization of the Thai lyrics, which won't be helpful for improving your Thai writing and reading skills!
Do you know the Thai word that means "English"? In the next ตัวอักษรไทย Made Easy Lesson you'll learn how to say it, and most of all, how to write it! See you there! สวัสดีค่ะ!

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