Although as has already been mentioned, the best way to learn the tones correctly is to imitate a natural Thai speaker, you will undoubtedly come across new words in your reading from time to time or want to look up words in a Thai dictionary and it is necessary to understand the manner in which tones are indicated in the written language.

The tone rules are undoubtedly complicated because of the number of factors involved and it may be mentioned here that a considerable number of otherwise quite well educated Thai people do not know them.

Although it will be some time before you can be expected to apply these rules correctly and rapidly, this is an appropriate stage at which to introduce them.

Generated by Lyndon Hill on Thu Jul 20 18:40:32 BST 2006.

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