ฤ ฦ ฤๅ ฦๅ are vowels-ish
ฤ ฦ ฤๅ ฦๅ are these weird looking things at the end of your vowel list. They are vowels-ish. They have their own rules that you can't really apply vowel rules to them.
Once you learn a lot more vocabulary you'll see that no word uses ฦ or ฦๅ anymore, but some words still use ฤ and ฤๅ. At this level of Thai, we'll focus only on the words that you will use often but I'll leave a separate example table on the more poetic vocab just for those who are curious.
There are 3 different ways to pronounce "ฤ"
- "ริ" : imagine if you replace the ฤ letter with ริ. This happens when ฤ follows ก ต ท ป ศ ส.
For example,
| Word | Meaning | Pronunciation | Is this a common word? |
|---|---|---|---|
| อังกฤษ | England | Yes, duh. | |
| กฤษณา | agarwood | It can be; if you like plants. | |
| ตฤษณา | yearning | No, this is purely to show you the rule. | |
| ทฤษฎี | theory | Yes, when talking academically. | |
| ปฤจฉา | Question | No, but if you want to get into grammar ปฤจฉาวิเศษณ์ means interrogative adverb and ปฤจฉาสรรพนาม means interrogative pronoun. | |
| ศฤงคาร | harem, good things in life | No, unless you're into historical soap operas. | |
| สฤต | pass by, go through | No |
- "รึ" : imagine if you replace the ฤ letter with รึ. This happens when ฤ follows ค น พ ม ห.
For example,
| Word | Meaning | Pronunciation | Is this a common word? |
|---|---|---|---|
| คฤหาสน์ | Mansion | Yes, if you know rich people. | |
| นฤมิต | to create | Yes, if you're into old literature. | |
| หฤโหด | mercilessly | Yes, trauma :). | |
| หฤหรรษ์ | delight | Yes, if you are hanging out with poetic people. | |
| พฤกษ์ | plant | Yes, mostly about something that has to do with plants, not the plant itself. พฤกษศาสตร์ means botany. ศาสตร์ means the study of. | |
| พฤศจิก | Scorpio (The constellation) | Yes, to all the astrology girlies. | |
| พฤศจิกายน | November | Yes | |
| พฤษภ | Taurus | Yes | |
| พฤษภาคม | May | Yes | |
| วันพฤหัสบดี | Thursday | Yes, but people usually say วันพฤหัส. Nobody's got time for the whole thing. | |
| พฤติกรรม | behavior | Yes | |
| มฤดก | inheritance | Yes, but they usually use มรดก instead. |
- If the word starts with ฤ, then good luck. You have to remember word-by-word what the pronunciation is. Don't worry too much. Thai people don't even get all of them right a lot of the time. There is one word that is neither the two sounds we mentioned before. It is ฤกษ์ it uses "ฤ" as "เรอ" so ฤกษ์ is pronounced as เริก.
For example,
| Word | Meaning | Pronunciation | Is this a common word? |
|---|---|---|---|
| ฤกษ์ | auspicious occasion | Yes, Thai people are very superstitious. They need to know when is a good day to do something important. | |
| ฤทธิ์ | supernatural power, strength, effect | Yes, in terms of effects, like my medicine I took has an effect on me now. | |
| ฤษยา | envy | Yes, but you will see the alternate spelling more (ริษยา). | |
| ฤดู | season (summer, fall, winter, spring, rainy season, etc.) | Yes | |
| ฤทัย | heart (the poetic way) | Somewhat, in a normal conversation: no, if you want to be dramatic and write a song/poem about it: yes. |