The Thai language is a “Tonal Language” which means that a word may have two or more distinct and quite unrelated meanings depending on the tone in which it is pronounced.

Altogether there are five tones but there is no single word which is pronounced in all five although there are a number which may be pronounced in two or three and carry a different meaning in each.

Most newcomers to the language are rather appalled at the apparent difficulty of the tones but they are not as hard as is generally imagined even for people with no musical ear.

A great many words in common use take only one tone and even where a word has two or three tones, each with a different meaning, in most cases the word you intend to use will be made clear by the context provided you get the construction of the sentence right even though your tone may not be quite correct.

The five tones are;

1. The High Tone.

   This is a uniform tone pitched well above the level of the speaker’s normal voice and is similar to the tone used in English to denote alarm.

   e.g. “keep away”

   It is indicated in the vocabularies by “h”.

   	A bird	NOK	h	นก
   	To love	RUK	h	รัก
   	Small	LEK	h	เล็ก

2. The Rising Tone.

   This as the name implies has a rising inflection and is something like the tone used in English to denote surprise or a question.

   e.g. “Are you going home now?”

   It is indicated in the vocabularies by “r”.

   	A question word	MY	r	ไหม
   	Three	SAHM	r	สาม
   	A stone	HIN	r	หิน

3. The Common Tone.

   This is spoken in the speaker’s ordinary tone of voice without any inflection. It is the tone used in English for ordinary conversation.

   It is indicated in the vocabularies by “c”.

   	Come	MAH	c	มา
   	Go	PY	c	ไป
   	To eat	GIN	c	กิน

4. The Low Tone.

   This is a level tone with no inflection but lower in pitch than common tone.

   It is indicated in the vocabularies by “l”.

   	A flower	DORK	l	ดอก
   	A box	HEEP	l	หีบ
   	To keep	GEP	l	เก็บ

5. The Dropped Tone.

   This is an emphatic and heavily accented tone with a falling inflection and is similar to the tone used in English to denote emphasis.

   e.g. “I told you not to go there”

   It is indicated in the vocabularies by “d”.

   	Rice	KAOU	d	ข้าว
   	Five	HAH	d	ห้า
   	Not	MY	d	ไม่

	A rose	GOOLAHP	l-l	กุหลาบ
	Human being	MANOOT	h-h	มนุษย์
	Papaya	MALAGOR	h-h-c	มะละกอ
	Movie	PAHPA-YON	d-h-c	ภาพยนตร์
	Government	RUTABAHN	h-l-c	รัฐบาล

You may find it difficult at first to pronounce all of the syllables of a polysyllabic word in the correct tone but luckily there are very few words of more than two syllables where tonal values of the syllables vary, so that even if the tone of one or more syllables is not quite correct the combination of syllables alone will usually distinguish the word without ambiguity. The tone of each word in the vocabularies is indicated as shown above and the same system is used for all words in the extended vocabulary at the end of the book but for clarity and simplicity of printing the tones are not shown in the Romanised version of the examples throughout the text.

By far the best way to learn the tones at the beginning is the way a Thai child does, i.e. by copying a natural Thai speaker, and as this book is intended to be used with the help of a Thai teacher we recommend you just to listen to your teacher and try to imitate the way he pronounces the words and correlate this with the tone given in the vocabularies.

In Thai writing the tones are quite clearly indicated by the use of Tone Marks coupled with a rather complicated set of rules but as the understanding of these rules depends on a thorough knowledge of the Thai alphabet it is quite meaningless to discuss them until you have first mastered the alphabet. The full consideration of the tone rules has therefore been left until lessons 10 to 19.

Generated by Lyndon Hill on Thu Jul 20 18:40:31 BST 2006.

Copyright remains with the original authors.