October 19, 2026
The Missing ั in อัว
Of the three diphthongs in your Week 2 pack, only อัว changes its spelling when a final consonant closes the syllable. The small ั above the first letter drops away, and ว on its own carries the full "ua" sound.
I found that easiest to see by holding two words side by side. In ตัว, meaning body or self and also the word you use when counting animals, the syllable stays open, so the ั is right there above ต and the ว belongs to the vowel rather than acting as a final, giving you "tua" on a mid tone. Close the same vowel with a different final and you get ขวด, bottle, where there is no ั above ข at all, just ว followed by ด. I checked this in two places, Learn Thai Like a Local and BananaThai, and both give the same rule and even use ขวด as an example. Because ด ends the syllable as a stop, it counts as dead, and a high class initial on a dead syllable takes a low tone, so ขวด comes out "khuaat" on a low tone.
The good news is that the other two behave more politely. เอีย and เอือ keep every piece in place when a final follows, wrapped around the initial consonant, in words from your pack like เรียน, to study, and เดือน, month, and เพื่อน, friend. With those, your job is simply to gather the pieces as one vowel before you add the final sound.
So when a Week 2 word stalls you in the morning, I would ask which diphthong you are looking at before anything else. If it is อัว and the ั seems to be missing, it probably is, on purpose. Keep an eye out for โรงเรียน, school, on gates and signs as well, since the เรียน inside it is a clean เอีย sighting waiting in ordinary life.