เ is some kind of thai vowel. In English, we have A E I O U which are also alphabet and vowel, but in Thai we have tons!! Thai language has 44 alphabets and 21 vowels!! (Of course, vowels in Thai dont use the same character as alphabet). Normally, we use single vowel to compound with alphabet to create the word (as u may notice in your question Random Thai sentence "ฉันกลับบ้านหลังจากไปโรงเรียน - I came home from school"). Moreover, we may compound 2 vowel together before compound with alphabet such as เรียน vowels here are เ and -ี . About ๆ, it's an adjective to emphasize the meaning of the word in front of them. มาก = much >> มากๆ = very much ฯลฯ = etc as the answer above said.

Thanks 마이클 for correct me about English's vowel. My bad... But I dont think that Thai has 21 consonants, I still believe that Thai has 44 consonant letters, which provide 21 sounds to initial and 8 sounds for final (as he said) ... About Thai's vowels, I'd like to explain like this. Thai's vowels has 21 written vowels which produce 32 vowel sounds. Unfortunately, I have no idea to explain about vowel sounds in English since i found that explanation in English (refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_language) has a lot different compare with Thai's study. I can say that 9 short and long vowels is acceptable, but I have no idea about diphthongs and triphthongs. (I am against wiki cause diphthongs and triphthongs shown in there are not exactly vowel sounds in Thai's study)

Ugh. My post messed up. I'm sorry, but I'm guessing Pipe is a native speaker. Thai doesn't have 44 consonants. He's thinking about the writing system. Writing systems are *not* language. They are inaccurate written representations of language. Thai supposedly only has 21 consonants at beginnings of syllables and 8 possible consonants syllable finally. There are 9 short vowels, 9 long vowels, 8 short diphthongs, 11 long diphthongs, and 3 triphthongs. As for what <เ> is, it can be different vowels depending on the surrounding characters. In <เ–ะ> it is a short [e] like the first half of the "ei" sound in the English word <mate>. In <เ–> it's a long [e:] sound. In <เ–อะ> it's a short [ɤ] sound, which doesn't have an English equivalent. Take the short (non-diphthongal) Spanish <o> and unround your lips. It'll be close enough. In <เ–อ> it's a long [ɤ:] sound. In <เ–าะ> it's a short [ɔ], like how Jersey people say <coffee>. I'm not going to go into pronunciation for the diphthongs. It's also used in two of the three triphthongs. Also, just for the sake of not letting lies spread about language, "a e i o u" are not English's vowels. They're our written vowels, which do no justice to the large number of vowels in English. General American English has, usually, 9 contrastive vowels. My dialect only has 8, because I'm a member of the Caught - Cot merger. Additionally, there are usually 5 contrastive diphthongs, as shown in "bait, bite, boy, boat, bout".

I'm sorry, but I'm guessing Pipe is a native speaker. Thai doesn't have 44 consonants. He's thinking about the writing system. Writing systems are *not* language. They are inaccurate written representations of language. Thai supposedly only has 21 consonants at beginnings of syllables and 8 possible consonants syllable finally. There are 9 short vowels, 9 long vowels, 8 short diphthongs, 11 long diphthongs, and 3 triphthongs. As for what <เ> is, it can be different vowels depending on the surrounding characters. In <เ–ะ> it is a short [e] like the first half of the "ei" sound in the English word <mate>. In <เ–> it's a long [e:] sound. In <เ–อะ> it's a short [ɤ] sound, which doesn't have an English equivalent. Take the short (non-diphthongal) Spanish <o> and unround your lips. It'll be close enough. In <เ–อ> it's a long [ɤ:] sound. In <เ–าะ> it's a short [ɔ], like how Jersey people say <coffee>. I'm not going to go into pronunciation for the diphthongs. It's also used in two of the three triphthongs. Also, just for the sake of not letting lies spread about language, <a e i o u> are not English's vowels. They're our written vowels, which do no justice to the large number of vowels in English. General American English has, usually, 9 contrastive vowels. My dialect only has 8, because I'm a member of the Caught - Cot merger. Additionally, there are usually 5 contrastive diphthongs, as shown in <bait>, <bite>, <boy>, <boat>, and <bout>.

More information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_language.