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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 ถ, ฐ , ฎ and ฏ. Do you remember how to write them all?
In this lesson, you’re going to learn how to write 2 more low class consonants.
Ready to start? Then let's go!
Here is the consonant ฑ (thaaw mon-thoo). The letter is named after the character (mon-thoo) from Thailand's national epic poem. As an initial consonant, ฑ usually makes the sound "th" just like ท ทหาร, but sometimes it can also make the sound “d” just like ด เด็ก. As a final consonant, it makes a T-stop.
The shape of ฑ looks almost the same as the letter ท. The only difference is that ฑ has a little bump after drawing the head before making the first vertical line. ฑ and ท make the same sound. So that should help you to remember ฑ.
Let's practice writing ฑ. Got your pen ready. OK, here we go.
Start with a small clockwise head. Then make a curved line with an indentation. Draw a line straight down. Then come back up and make a hump going to the right side.
The next letter is ฒ (thaaw phûu-thâo).
The word ผู้เฒ่า (phûu-thâo) means "old man". ฒ also makes the same sound as ฑ and ท.
If you look at the shape of ฒ, you can see that it appears like a combination of the letters ต and ม
Let's practice writing ฒ.
Start with a clockwise head, and draw the shape of the letter ต. Then blend this into the shape of the letter ม.
ฑ and ฒ are both very rarely used. But one word that contains ฒ is พัฒนา (phát-thá-naa), which means "to develop".
When you look at the word พัฒนา you might see only 2 syllables, but it is actually said with 3 syllables.
The first syllable has the initial consonant พ, the vowel สระ อะ written with ไม้หันอากาศ , and the final consonant ฒ. Then we use ฒ again to be the initial consonant for the second syllable, which has an unwritten vowel สระ อะ. The third syllable has an initial consonant น followed by the vowel สระ อา.
There are many words in Thai where one letter will get used twice. First as the final consonant for one syllable, and also as the initial consonant for a syllable with an unwritten สระ อะ . It's not always obvious where this will happen, so you have to pay attention when you are learning new words.
We can use ฑ to write the word ครุฑ (khrút), which is the Thai name of the mythical animal, Garuda. The word ครุฑ begins with an initial consonant cluster.
If you remember, ร is one of only 3 letters that can make a cluster when you put it after another consonant. So the 2 consonants ค and ร combine to make the sound "khr".
Then the short vowel สระ อุ is written underneath. And finally ฑ is the final consonant. ครุฑ is said with a high tone because of the rule: low class consonants with dead syllables and short vowels make high tone.
Now it's time for Pradthana’s Points.
Getting the wrong tone can totally change the meaning of a word in Thai. If you say the wrong tone when speaking, Thai people can sometimes figure out what you mean from the context. But other times they will think they hear a different word, and they'll be totally confused. This is where learning to read and write Thai really helps. If you can remember how to spell a word then you should automatically know the correct tone for it as well once you know all the tone rules.
Do you know how to say "new" in Thai? In the next ตัวอักษรไทย Made Easy Lesson you'll learn this new word, and most importantly, how to write it! See you there! สวัสดีค่ะ!

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