Thai Tones

[DavidUK21]

Hi, dont know if anyone can help, but.... I can understand the falling and rising tones but cant really get my head round the high/middle and low tones. What i mean is how high is 'high' and how low is 'low'? Aren't these relative to how high or low a person's voice is naturally? so how can u tell if they are speaking in a high or low tone? doesn't this vary from person to person? I know I'm not understanding it properly, so please can someone help me out? thanks if u can.

[sabaijai]

Hi, dont know if anyone can help, but....  I can understand the falling and rising tones but cant really get my head round the high/middle and low tones.  What i mean is how high is 'high' and how low is 'low'?  Aren't these relative to how high or low a person's voice is naturally?  so how can u tell if they are speaking in a high or low tone?  doesn't this vary from person to person?  I know I'm not understanding it properly, so please can someone help me out? thanks if u can.

Yes the tones are relative to the pitch of an individual's natural voice. The way you tell them apart is within the context of that person's voice, i.e., comparatively.

That's the simple answer, and the best way to think about it if you have to think about it at all. Once you know tones, you won't think about it.

A more complex tip is to listen to the tension in the voice. There's a certain quality to the tension in the voice that also identifies the tones, regardless of pitch. The mid tone, for example, is more relaxed, both the high and low tones more tense.

And just to anticipate your next question (if I may be so bold), a knack for music has nothing to do with it. Some people do seem to pick up the tones faster than others however. You need to sit down with a patient native speaker and let them model the tones for you while you try to copy them. You'll know when you're getting it right, because Thais will begin understanding you instead of looking at you with puzzled looks. Don't give up ...

[DavidUK21]

Thanks, that answer helped a lot.

I will continue to annoy my gf until i get it right.

Cheers

[chanchao]

Note that the high tone for example is not completely flat. It tends to pitch up at the end, making it harder to tell from teh rising tone (which starts a lot lower)

Also the middle tone may drop off a little at the end. Still very differen from the falling tone which is perhaps the easiest one to catch.

Cheers,

Chanchao

[Spee]

I can understand the falling and rising tones but cant really get my head round the high/middle and low tones.

so please can someone help me out? thanks if u can.

May I suggest .... available from amazon.com ....

"Improving Your Thai Pronounciation"

by Benjawan Poomsan Becker

Small book and audio CD for $15USD.

I bought this a couple of months ago, to add to my collection of Thai language resources, but more importantly to help with proper pronounciation.

The CD more or less follows the book with the primary emphasis on pronounciation, not on learning new words and phrases.

There is a big section on how to pronounce words that may look the same with a romanized spelling, but mean entirely different things with different tones:

- For example, kao and kaao with falling, rising, mid, high and low tones create 8 or 10 different words

- The audio CD walks through how to speak the words properly with the proper tone.

- The words are also spelled in Thai script, in addition to the romanized form, which helps to look for recognizable character patterns.

There are also good practice exercises like a section on tongue twisters, where nonsense sentences are created using words that are spelled similarly but pronounced differently. Sort of like "Susie sells sea shells by the sea shore" only with Thai words. Very helpful.

It is one of my most valued Thai language resources.

Hope this helps.

[katana]

Here's a graph of frequency versus time for the 5 Thai tones (originally produced by Gandour). The graph is produced by an electronic device that actually records a native Thai speaker's voice as they say the 5 tones, so its quite accurate.

As you can see, the high tone actually rises somewhat it pitch and the low tone falls a little in pitch. The mid tone also falls slightly in pitch at the end.

Hope that may be of some help.

http://thaiarc.tu.ac.th/thai/pix/tones5.jpg

http://thaiarc.tu.ac.th/thai/pix/tones4.jpg

[Richard W]

As you can see, the high tone actually rises somewhat it pitch and the low tone falls a little in pitch.

Do you have data for the high tone in checked syllables? It used to be quite different to the high tone in unchecked syllables. Using pitch levels 1 to 5, Li described them as 55 and 453 respectively, though it would seem that over the past 50 years in unchecked syllables it has fallen from 453 to 343.

[Spee]

doesn't this vary from person to person? I know I'm not understanding it properly, so please can someone help me out? thanks if u can.

Another book recommendation that I've tried when practicing speech with proper tonality is to overemphasize my breathing patterns. For example:

- With a low tone or mid tone, I try to think about breathing out.

- With a high tone I try to think about breathing in.

- With a falling tone, I try to think about breathing in then out.

- With a rising tone, I try to think about breathing out then in.

It's not really practical to think about this or try this, when trying to actually speak with someone. But it does work when I'm alone trying to work out proper pronounciation.

[DavidUK21]

thank you very much, all. things are getting clearer now!

[sabaijai]

As you can see, the high tone actually rises somewhat it pitch and the low tone falls a little in pitch. The mid tone also falls slightly in pitch at the end.

What I see in those graphs, and what I also hear in the real world, is that the high rises a bit but then it also falls.

Other tests like this show similar results, and -- as I think Richard W is alluding to (not sure because his technical vocabulary for applied linguistics is way beyond mine) -- are a little more complete in that they have native speakers model the so-called high tone twice, once for Thai words spelt with the mai thoh (plus low class consonant, long vowel and non-stop final, eg, แล้ว [láew]) that are assigned the canonical high tone and again for Thai words assigned a high tone without the mai thoh(but with low class consonant and short vowel, eg, และ [láe] or low class consonant, short vowel and stop final, eg, ลด [lót]). Is this what you mean, Richard, by checked vs unchecked?

When Thais teach these in the classroom the standard practice is to say that แล้ว [láew] and และ [láe] have the same tone. But if you graph them, the latter doesn't fall at all. So some scholars claim Thai actually has six tones, with a high falling as well as a high tone.

George McFarland's classic 1944 Thai-English dictionary uses a six-tone system, and on page x of that tome he inserts a graph that looks much like the one at http://thaiarc.tu.ac.th/thai/pix/tones4.jpg, except that it accounts for this proposed sixth tone.

McFarland called these two the circumflex (what Lao instructors usually call high falling) and high staccato (ie, high), the latter being particularly apt for Thai words that don't have mai thoh but are pronounced with a high tone, since the vowels are always short.

I suppose you could explain away the sixth tone by saying the vowel length accounts for the difference. But they do record differently.

Now Richard can explain all this in a much more erudite way.

[meadish_sweetball]

When I say "láe?" and "láe:w" out loud to myself, I see what you mean about the "sixth" tone, although I was never made conscious of it at the time I was studying.

To me though, I would consider this contextual variation of the high tone as a "tone allophone", which is regulated by its surroundings. Allophones are a common linguistic feature which occurs within all languages, and so, "[l]" as in "lion" in British English is pronounced differently in different surroundings, whereas it still constitutes the same "phoneme".

[Richard W]

Other tests like this show similar results, and -- as I think Richard W is alluding to (not sure because his technical vocabulary for applied linguistics is way beyond mine) -- are a little more complete in that they have native speakers model the so-called high tone twice, once for Thai words spelt with the mai thoh (plus low class consonant, long vowel and non-stop final, eg, แล้ว [láew]) that are assigned the canonical high tone and again for Thai words assigned a high tone without the mai thoh(but with low class consonant and short vowel, eg, และ [láe] or low class consonant, short vowel and stop final, eg, ลด [lót]). Is this what you mean, Richard, by checked vs unchecked?

These are indeed the two groups. The ones ending in a long vowel or a nasal are the unchecked syllables, sometimes known as the live syllables, a literal translation of the Thai term คำเป็น, and the others, ending a short vowel or a stop consonant are the checked syllables, sometimes known as dead syllables, a literal translation of the Thai term คำตาย. (Should we have a poll to decide what we call them?) The syllables ending in a short vowel are supposed to end in a glottal stop, but one rarely hears it.

When Thais teach these in the classroom the standard practice is to say that แล้ว [láew]and และ [láe] have the same tone. But if you graph them, the latter doesn't fall at all. So some scholars claim Thai actually has six tones, with a high falling as well as a high tone.

George McFarland's classic 1944 Thai-English dictionary uses a six-tone system, and on page x of that tome he inserts a graph that looks much like the one at http://thaiarc.tu.ac.th/thai/pix/tones4.jpg, except that it accounts for this proposed sixth tone.

Thanks. I can't reconcile Li's numeric contour descriptions - Low = 22, Mid = 33, High = 453 (live), 55 (dead), 24 (rising), 41 (falling) with Gandour's graphs. The shapes are roughly there, but, for example, I can't see what he means by pitch level 4. I am poor at hearing tones. Li also remarks on the mid and low tones falling before a pause - see Meadish Sweetball's comment on allophones. (Allophony gets really complicated with unstressed short dead syllables.)

I suppose you could explain away the sixth tone by saying the vowel length accounts for the difference.  But they do record differently.

Now Richard can explain all this in a much more erudite way.  .

The only erudition I can add is that the live and dead syllables form two separate systems (with a little cross-over). It's much clearer to say that Siamese has 5 live and 3 dead tones. Li complains in his Handbook of Comparative Tai that simple tone counts can be inconsistent depending on whether all the dead tones (typically 2 to 4 in a dialect) can be identified with live tones.

[Richard W]

To me though, I would consider this contextual variation of the high tone as a "tone allophone", which is regulated by its surroundings. Allophones are a common linguistic feature which occurs within all languages, and so, "[l]" as in "lion" in British English is pronounced differently in different surroundings, whereas it still constitutes the same "phoneme".

But for the ancient 'sixth tone' words (such as นก), the phonetic conditioning was once by short vowel plus stop consonant, which distinguished them from other dead syllables with low class initial but long vowel or final nasal. Among the dead syllables, at some point, the association of vowel length and tone was broken, and today we have many dead syllables with high tone and long vowel (many from English!), but interestingly most of the dead syllables with short vowel and falling tone end in a short vowel/glottal stop.

The close but imperfect relationship between the tone of dead syllables and the tone(s) represented by mai ek ( ่) - tone class B in the terminology of non-Chinese students of Tai philology - is quite widespread, as is the tendency for the tones of dead syllables to split according to tone length. A possible learning aid for the Thai tone rules is to remember that dead syllables follow the same rule as mai ek, except that that ones with short vowels don't have time to fall and so stay high. Of course, คะ and ค่ะ are different.

(Jargon is wonderful once you've mastered it - in some quarters one could just say that we are discussing the tone of D2S words, and whether they truly have the same tone as C2 words.)

[sabaijai]

Hadn't heard or thought about live vs dead in Thai, but it makes a lot of sense.

By contrast in Lao the distinction between high falling and falling doesn't fall along live/dead lines -- any word with a low-class consonant, long vowel and non-stop final is pronounced with a high tone. Add a mai thoh to that and you get the high falling tone. In Chiang Mai I can hear kham meuang doing the same thing.

Meanwhile in Lao, the regular or low falling tone is reserved for words starting with middle class or high class consonants, and marked with mai thoh.

The big debate in Lao is whether the low tone (used for words with an initial middle class consonant followed by a long vowel and non-stop final) rises at the end (as in kham meuang again)...

I could see where some added jargon could be helpful. There's probably a shorthand way to refer to 'words with an initial middle class consonant followed by a long vowel and non-stop final', right?

[Richard W]

What you say about Lao is illustrated in Lao Tones.

As the jargon seems useful, I will explain it now. The jargon classifying ancient Tai monosyllables and their tones relates to diagrams such as the one referenced above(sometimes called 'Gedney boxes') as follows:

The tone classes are A, B, C, D:

A = Live, no tone mark.

B = Live, mai ek

C = Live, mai tho

D = dead

(I wish they'd used the names of the tone marks, but perhaps there was embarassment that this system can be taken straight from the Sukhothai spelling system.)

These are subdivided acording to the features - initial consonant and vowel length - affecting the development at the time the feature took effect.

The initials are classed:

2 = low class (i.e. anciently voiced)

1 = high or middle class (i.e. anciently not voiced)

Class 1 can be split in several ways:

1M = middle class (unaspirated stop, or preglottalised.)

1H = high class (aspirated stop, fricative, or voiceless resonant หม- etc.)

or

1G = (Pre-)Glottalised (Lanna middle class?), i.e. บ, ด, อ, อย

1N = others

Some dialects in Vietnam and points North require a different split.

Where vowel length needs to be distinguished, as in most discussions of dead syllables, they may be distinguished by suffixing S or L.

Thus the 'sixth tone' we were discussing would apply to D2S (D= dead, 2= low, S = short) syllables, and the development ot the usual 5 tones could be summarised as saying the tones of Siamese are A1H, A1M=A2, B1=D1, B2=C1=D2L, C2=D2S. The tones of six-tone Ventiane Lao are A1H, A1M, A2=D1S, B1=B2=D2S, C1H=D1L, C1M=C2M=D2L. (This split of the tones of the live syllables is widespread in Laos and Isaan, though I don't know how much the actual tone contours vary.)

The big debate in Lao is whether the low tone (used for words with an initial middle class consonant followed by a long vowel and non-stop final) rises at the end (as in kham meuang again)...

Five-tone Ventiane Lao has merged A1M (low tone in the six-tone pronunciation according to Kerr in 1972) with A1H (low rising); in Luang Prabang they merge A1M with A2. Is the 'big debate' over whether the five-tone pronunciation is acceptable?

As to length, I wonder if we should count length in morae (short vowel = 1 mora, long vowel = 2 morae) and count a final nasal as a further mora. Then Sabaijai's 'long-vowel and non-stop final' can be simplified to 'long rhyme (2 or 3 morae)'.

I mentioned the Sukhothai spelling because Thai spelling makes it more difficult to assign a Thai word to the historically correct class. Subsequent to the merger B1=C2, quite a few C2 words are written as though B1, as I have mentioned before. The other change causing difficulties is the spelling changes of อย to ย or หย, ญ to ย, and หญ to หย. If the word starts y- in Lao, then it used to start อย in Thai. Lao has merged, if I may use the historically equivalent Thai spellings, initial ย and ญ as ñ (spelt ย, historically the same as the Thai letter but in the alphabetic position of ญ) and initial หย and หญ as ñ (spelt หย). Lao uses a modified form of ย, in the same alphabetical position as the original Thai ย, for the development of original อย-. For other changes affecting spelling, see Diller, and for the consequences on Lao, also see all the gaps in the Lao Unicode page.

[sabaijai]

I got more than I bargained for here. By the time I memorised those abbreviations I could write 'long-vowel and non-stop final' a hundred times or so!

What is meant by 'anciently'? The rest I understand, more or less.

[Richard W]

I got more than I bargained for here. By the time I memorised those abbreviations I could write 'long-vowel and non-stop final' a hundred times or so!

But you should also want to add 'or short vowel plus nasal'!

The abbreviations are most useful when dealing with lists. However, it would be difficult to say, e.g. 'with low class initial and no tone mark' when talking of a dialect written without tone marks or a contrast of low and high consonants.

What is meant by 'anciently'? The rest I understand, more or less.

'Anciently' means before the great consonant shift. The reconstructed sequence of systems was voicing contrast > register contrast ('breathy' v. 'non-breathy') > extra tones. The phonemic history of the tones is complicated - for example, the tone of A1M (A1G in Northern Thai) did not originally contrast with the tones of A1H or A1L, and has merged differently in different dialects, sometimes becoming a different phoneme to either.

Dating it is more difficult. Proto-Tai counts as ancient. If the Thai alphabet had been adapted directly from an Indian source with a voicing contrast, we would happily say that the Sukhothai period counted as ancient, at least for Siamese. The tone splitting has been dated to around the 16th century AD for Siamese. See discussion at Historical Background of Thai Language. However, the alphabet is generally seen as being derived from Khmer or Mon, which also underwent the system shift of voicing contrast > register contrast, so such a date for the loss of voicing contrast is not secure. (In Standard Khmer, the register contrast has now been replaced by vowel splits.) 'Ancient' might need to be as old as the adoption of Indian writing for SE Asian languages.

[Richard W]

The close but imperfect relationship between the tone of dead syllables and the tone(s) represented by mai ek ( ่) - tone class B in the terminology of non-Chinese students of Tai philology - is quite widespread, as is the tendency for the tones of dead syllables to split according to tone length.

Another example is that the two were counted as the same in khloong poetry.

[JoshJ]

Thanks for the book recommendation, Spee. I just ordered my copy off of Amazon.