Learn how to write 6 letters: ฃ, ฅ, ฤ / ฤๅ and ฦ / ฦๅ
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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 ฬ and ฆ. Do you remember how to write them? |
| In this lesson, you’re going to learn about 2 obsolete letters plus some rare vowels… |
| Ready to start? Then let's go! |
| The Thai alphabet has 44 consonants, but two of them are considered obsolete and not used in the modern spellings of any words. The names of these letters are ฃ (khǎaw khùuat) and ฅ (khaaw khon). They look just like the consonants ข and ค with an extra indentation drawn on the top of each. Both of these letters would make the same "kh" sound as ข and ค if they were used in any words. But even the words that these two letters are named after are now spelled using ข and ค. |
| You don’t spend much time on ฃ and ฅ as they don’t appear in words in modern use. Just be aware that they are still counted as letters of the alphabet. |
| Now let's move on to learn the last 4 of the official vowels. From left to right they are ฤ (rúe) ฤๅ (ruue) ฦ (lúe) ฦๅ (luue). |
| These 4 are different from other Thai vowels because they don't have สระ (sà-rà) in their names. |
| They are also different because they are a combination of consonant and vowel sounds. ฤ is usually pronounced as a combination of ร and สระ อึ. However, there are some words in which it is pronounced as a combination of ร and สระ อิ instead. |
| ฤๅ is pronounced like a combination of ร and the long vowel สระ อื. |
| They are both written like the letter ถ with an extra long line. Then ฤๅ has what looks like an extra long สระ อา on it's right side. |
| The other pair of vowels is similar, except they are pronounced like a combination of ล with the vowel sounds สระ อึ or สระ อื. |
| ฦ and ฦๅ are written like ฤ and ฤๅ except that the heads are sticking out on the left side of the letters. |
| Even though ฦ and ฦๅ are still taught and still found in the dictionary, you will almost certainly never encounter a word that contains them. They are part of the Thai writing system due to the Sanskrit origins of the Thai alphabet. But even in India, there were very few Sanskrit words that included these two letters. However, every Thai elementary school student is taught these two letters, as they are part of the official 32 vowels in Thai. |
| The letters ฦ and ฦๅ are not easy to find in any words, but ฤ and ฤๅ on the other hand are used in some common words. One example is the word ฤดู (rúe-duu), which means "season". |
| The short vowel ฤ acts like a combination of ร and สระ อึ for the tone rule, as well as for the sound. So the word ฤดู has two syllables. The first syllable is made up of the letter ฤ. It is high tone because it acts like a low class consonant with a dead syllable ending and a short vowel. |
| Let’s practice writing ฤดู together. |
| ฤดู |
| Here is the word อังกฤษ (ang-grìt), which means "English". อังกฤษ has 2 syllables. The first syllable has the initial silent consonant อ, the vowel สระ อะ written with ไม้หันอากาศ, and the final consonant ง. The second syllable has the initial consonant ก, the vowel ฤ pronounced as ริ (ri), together they make the sound “กริ” (gri) like a consonant cluster ก and ร with the vowel สระ อิ. Then the final consonant ษ makes a T-stop. The last syllable has a low tone because it has a middle class initial consonant with a dead syllable ending. |
| Let's practice writing อังกฤษ together. |
| อ, ไม้หันอากาศ, ง, ก, ฤ , ษ. |
| อังกฤษ (ang-grìt). |
| Now let's move on to a new tone rule. |
| Here is the tone mark mái-thoo, which you first learned about in lesson 17. |
| In that lesson, we learned that the rule for using mái-thoo with middle class consonants is: |
| Middle class consonants with mái-thoo make falling tone. Like in the word แก้ว (gâaeo). |
| The good news is that mái-thoo affects high class consonants in the exact same way. So the rule is: |
| High class consonants with mái-thoo make a falling tone. |
| Now let's apply these rules to some real-life example with common Thai words. |
| Here is an extremely important word for Thailand. It says ข้าว (khâao), which means "rice". The word ข้าว has the initial high class consonant ข. Then the vowel is สระ อา , and the final consonant is ว. |
| Without a tone mark, we'd have the word ขาว (khǎao) with a rising tone, which is the color "white". |
| However, when we write mái-thoo over the initial consonant, it gives ข้าว a falling tone. |
| Another very important word is ให้ (hâi), which means "to give" or "to allow". ให้ is one of the most common words used in the Thai language. So we should memorize how to spell it correctly. From left to right we have the vowel สระ ใอ ไม้ม้วน, the high class consonant ห , and the tone mark ไม้โท written above. |
| ไม้โท gives the word ให้ a falling tone. |
| Now it's time for Pradthana’s Points. |
| After learning how to read Thai, if you ever visit Thailand's neighbor Laos you'll notice that their writing looks very similar. Thai and Lao are in fact very closely related languages and their alphabets are closely related too. So once you can read Thai, learning to read Lao is relatively easy. |
| Did you know that there is a special way to write numbers in Thai? In the next ตัวอักษรไทย Made Easy Lesson you'll learn how to write the first 3 Thai numerals! See you there! สวัสดีค่ะ! |
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