Vocabulary

Learn New Words FAST with this Lesson’s Vocab Review List

Get this lesson’s key vocab, their translations and pronunciations. Sign up for your Free Lifetime Account Now and get 7 Days of Premium Access including this feature.

Or sign up using Facebook
Already a Member?

Lesson Notes

Unlock In-Depth Explanations & Exclusive Takeaways with Printable Lesson Notes

Unlock Lesson Notes and Transcripts for every single lesson. Sign Up for a Free Lifetime Account and Get 7 Days of Premium Access.

Or sign up using Facebook
Already a Member?

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 about อ, สระ ออ and สระ เอาะ. Do you remember the difference?
In this lesson, you’re going to learn about high class consonants.
The first high class consonant to learn is ข (khǎaw khài). It is named after the word ไข่ (khài), which means "egg". The sound of ข as an initial consonant is "kh". And as a final consonant it makes a K-stop.
Do you remember the letter ค?
Both letters, ข and ค make the same sound. The only difference is that ข is a high class consonant and ค was a low class consonant.
ข looks almost the same as the letter ช that we learned in lesson 4.
The only difference is ข doesn't have the tail sticking out on top. Maybe you can remember that ข is named for the word "egg" and eggs don't have tails.
Let's practice writing ข.
Start at the head, go down, and then come back up on the right side. ข
Speaking of ช, the next consonant makes the same sound.
The name of this letter is ฉ (chǎaw chìng). It's named after the word ฉิ่ง (chìng), which means "small cymbals".
ฉ makes the sound "ch" as an initial consonant, and a T-stop as a final consonant just like ช.
The difference is ฉ is a high class consonant, and ช is a low class consonant. To write ฉ, it is a little bit like writing a short letter น with a tail on top.
Start with a clockwise head at about mid height. Draw a line down to the corner then go across and make a loop in the bottom right corner. Then draw a line going up, and make the line curve back to the left once it gets above the head. ฉ
We can use ฉ to write the word ฉัน (chǎn), which means "I" or "me".
The initial consonant is ฉ. The vowel sound is สระ อะ which we write using ไม้หันอากาศ because there is a final consonant. And น is that final consonant.
Let's write it together.
ฉ, ไม้หันอากาศ, น, ฉัน
ฉัน is our first word using a high class consonant, so we need to learn a new tone rule for this type of letter.
The rule is:
High class initial consonants + live ending = rising tone.
We can use the same rule to make a word using ข. This is the word ขา (khǎa), which means "leg". ขา just has 2 parts. The initial consonant is ข, and it has the long vowel สระ อา. So once again, a high class consonant with a live syllable ending results in a rising tone. ขา
Now let's learn a new vowel pair.
They are called สระ เอียะ (sà-rà ìa) and สระ เอีย (sà-rà iia). The vowel sound they make is (ia), like the IA at the end of the phrase "Mamma Mia".
The long vowel, สระ เอีย, is used much more often, so let's focus on it. You can see that it has 3 parts. สระ เอ is written to the left of the consonant. สระ อี is written above the consonant. And ย is written after the consonant.
If we wanted to make it a short vowel, then we can add สระ อะ after the ย to change it into สระ เอียะ
We can use สระ เอีย to write the word เขียน (khǐian), which means "to write".
เขียน has ข as the initial consonant.
ข is surrounded on three sides by the parts making up the vowel สระ เอีย. And then it has น as the final consonant.
เขียน is said with a rising tone because it has a high class consonant and a live syllable ending.
Let's write เขียน together.
สระ เอ, ข , สระ อี, ย, น. เขียน
Now it's time for Pradthana's Points.
The 2 new consonants in this lesson made the same sounds as other letters that you already learned. You will have noticed that many Thai letters make the same sounds as other letters.
The reason for this is that the Thai alphabet is based on the Sanskrit alphabet from India. All of the letters originally represented different sounds, but many sounds were not natural for Thai speakers to make. So a lot of letters ended up changing pronunciation to match the sounds that the Thai language used. When you see a word using one of the more uncommon Thai letters, it is most likely a vocabulary word that came from an Indian language.
Have you ever seen statues of giants from a Thai temple? Do you know what they're called? In the next ตัวอักษรไทย Made Easy Lesson You'll learn that word and how to write it! See you there! สวัสดีค่ะ!

Comments

Hide