( ์ ) is the invisibility cloak
Sometime borrowed words from another languages will have ์ (การันต์) on top of a letter to make that letter silent.
You'll see that a lot of borrowed words or proper nouns that are in another language will have this symbol on it. When it is a foreign word written in Thai, they'll usually include the letter that would otherwise be pronounced in their original language but that ending sound does not exist in Thai, so the sound will turn silent. That's how you can speak any language with a Thai accent.
For example,
| Word | Meaning | Pronunciation | Original Language |
|---|---|---|---|
| เบียร์ | beer | English | |
| สัตว์ | animal | Sanskrit | |
| มนุษย์ | human | Sanskrit | |
| ศูนย์ | zero (0) | Kmer | |
| สัปดาห์ | week (formal) | Sanskrit | |
| ตังค์ | money (casual) | Pali | |
| เบอร์ | number | English | |
| พิมพ์ | to type | Sanskrit | |
| คอมพิวเตอร์ | computer | English | |
| โชว์ | to show | English | |
| ลิฟท์ | elevator, lift | English | |
| โทรศัพท์ | phone | Pali | |
| พระจันทร์ | the moon | Sanskrit | |
| พระอาทิตย์ | the sun | Sanskrit | |
| วันศุกร์ | Friday | Sanskrit | |
| แอร์ | Air conditioning | English | |
| รถเมล์ | a bus | English | |
| ทัวร์ | tour | English |
A lot of silent borrowed words are written with no tone mark, but will be pronounced with the tones pronounced in the original language, or what Thai people could decipher.
Some words like พระจันทร์ has 2 silent letters which are ท and ร. It would only be pronounced as พระจัน. If there are multiple ending consonants, just pronounce the first letter and leave the rest silent.
If you wonder why รถเมล์ is called รถเมล์ and how it is borrowed from English, there's a mini history lesson. Back in the day, the only public cars were own by the post office to deliver mail so they called the first public transport bus a mail car. รถ means car เมล์ is mail. Today, we still call public bus รถเมล์ although they don't deliver mail anymore.
เบอร์ is used for numbers as in phone number, a wait line number, or numbers used in any identification, not numbers for calculations. For calculations we'll use เลข