Vowels that Change Form when there is a Final Consonant
Eight vowels change form when there is a final consonant:
Exercise 7
หัก
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อะ; หะ + ก = หัก to break
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เป็น
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เอะ; เปะ + น = เป็น to be
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แข็ง
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แอะ; แขะ + ง = แข็ง hard
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*ป็อป 
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เอาะ; เปาะ + ป = ป็อป pop music (loan word)
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ฝน
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โอะ; โฝะ + น = ฝน rain
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เปิด
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เออ; เปอ + ด = เปิด open
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ตื่น
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อือ; ตื่อ + น = ตื่น to wake up
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ขวด
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อัว; ขัว + ด = ขวด bottle
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*When ป is used as a final consonant, like in ป็อป, it sounds the same as final consonant บ. More on secondary final consonants later.
When you write these out, the little diacritic ◌็ (ไม้ไต่คู้) as in เป็น, is drawn as ๘, which is shaped similar to the Thai number eight. We’ll cover numbers later. ◌็ is a vowel shortener and, in theory, can be applied to any vowel that doesn’t have an established short form. In dictionaries, you’ll probably only find it applied to เอ, แอ and ออ. Natives may tell you that it’s not applied to the complex vowels that don’t have established short forms (เอย, เอียว, อวย, เอือย, อย, โอย, อุย, อิว or แอว), and you just need to memorize the few cases when these are pronounced short. They might also tell you that it’s not applied to the short vowels that don't have a version with a final consonant (เออะ, เอียะ, อัวะ, เอือะ). But if you google them with ◌็, you’ll often get hits, and sometimes you’ll come across them while reading too, so it’s good to know what it means.
ก็
Since we’ve been talking about ◌็, this is a good time to introduce ก็, which by itself is a very common word and has pronunciation that may surprise a learner:
ก็
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pronounced ก้อ; also, therefore, even, etc.
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Read 7
Read this passage out loud. From here on the readings will have two parts. The first part is a list, just like in all previous units. But the second part is an essay. Notice that there normally aren’t spaces between words in Thai. We’ll talk more about punctuation later.