do you say these words like they are high tone or rising tone?

[BananaBandit]

let's take these few examples:

 

เชื้อ

 

เนื้อ

 

going strictly by the book, i'm reasonably sure they should be high tones  (พยัญชนะอักษรต่ำ + วรรณยุกต์ไม้โท).  

 

but my wife along with two other in-laws say i should pronounce them like rising tone.  we have been over this multiple times now.  each time, i pronounce such words as high tone and then as rising tone  -- and they say the rising tone version is correct (or at least closer to correct).  

 

have you guys had a similar experience?

 

in case it makes a difference, i am in an isan village.

[Delight]

 According to my dictionary they are both 'High' tones.

These are Thai words for 'seed' and 'beef' respectively.

Not had similar experience.

[ThaiNotes]

I suspect the confusion is over the use of the term "high tone".  High tone used to be that, and the charts showing the profiles of tones show it as that.  That is now wrong, and high tone has evolved to become mid-rising.

 

According to Teeranon & Rungrojsuwan (2009):

 

"The Thai high tone was found to have changed its height and shape between the years 1911 and 2006 (Bradley 1911; Abramson 1962; Tumtavitikul 1992; Morén and Zsiga 2006). The tone changed its shape from mid falling (1911) to high level (1962), and then to mid rising (2006)."

 

http://www.manusya.journals.chula.ac.th/files/essay/Phanintra_p.34-44.pdf

[BananaBandit]

15 hours ago, ThaiNotes said:

I suspect the confusion is over the use of the term "high tone".  High tone used to be that, and the charts showing the profiles of tones show it as that.  That is now wrong, and high tone has evolved to become mid-rising.

 

Oh, that is interesting. 

 

I think I share your suspicion!

[Badger18]

เหนือ is also a word. If you get her to say it a few times you should be able to figure out whether she really is pronouncing เนื้อ with a rising tone or whether it's just that a high tone doesn't sound quite the way you thought.

[BananaBandit]

On 11/4/2021 at 7:49 PM, ThaiNotes said:

I suspect the confusion is over the use of the term "high tone".  High tone used to be that, and the charts showing the profiles of tones show it as that.  That is now wrong, and high tone has evolved to become mid-rising.

Before I embark on another few years' worth of bad habits, might you confirm for me that the low tone is indeed a real low tone.  Or is it more like mid-falling?

[Oxx]

21 hours ago, BananaBandit said:

Before I embark on another few years' worth of bad habits, might you confirm for me that the low tone is indeed a real low tone.  Or is it more like mid-falling?

The most useful diagram of tone contours that I know of is this:

 

It's from Thubthong, Nuttakorn & Kijsirikul, Boonserm & Luksaneeyanawin, Sudaporn. (2001). Stress and tone recognition of polysyllabic words in Thai speech.

 

The full text is available at researchgate.net.

[BananaBandit]

2 hours ago, Oxx said:

The most useful diagram of tone contours that I know of is this:

 

It's from Thubthong, Nuttakorn & Kijsirikul, Boonserm & Luksaneeyanawin, Sudaporn. (2001). Stress and tone recognition of polysyllabic words in Thai speech.

 

The full text is available at researchgate.net.

 

Good stuff, Oxxman. 

 

I might get this diagram tattooed!

[daveAustin]

Yep, as Thainotes says, the high tone also rises, albeit starting somewhere above mid, while a rising tone starts lower. No tone is sustained. Listen to native speakers saying dog หมา and horse ม้า. 
 

Prefer this diagram from Evan, Pocket Thai Master:

 

[Oxx]

10 hours ago, daveAustin said:

Prefer this diagram from Evan, Pocket Thai Master:

I don't.  It has the high tone rising from the start and falling at the end.  I believe this to be incorrect.

 

I would rate a chart backed by sound academic research over one by Evan Winget (who he?) 

[Badger18]

I prefer the first one because it shows the delayed rise that is typical of the high tone.

 

There are loads of these diagrams out there and some do show a fall at the end of the high tone.

 

I also think a reality check is in order. If you look at the pitch contours of real Thai sentences (using an app) it's easy to see that things are way more complicated than these diagrams imply. In many cases the same tone looks different. In others different tones look similar. Most importantly, whichever diagram you plump for, you will find that only a few of the contours in your real-life sentence look much like the idealized contours on your diagram. So even if, when you hear a word, you can visualize the pitch contour, you aren't going to get that far trying to compare it against a memorized diagram. Visualizing it strikes me as a completely weird and artificial thing to do anyway. I mean you're hearing a sound and wanting to produce a sound. Trying to convert the heard sound into a picture and then the picture into a new sound is just bizarre if you ask me.

 

Also, if you get people to try to make a pitch contour just based on a diagram (and I've seen this done a couple of times) they aren't generally very good at it. So it's not a very promising approach from that point of view either.

 

I'm not saying that diagrams are no use at all, but I very much doubt they're a good way of learning to produce and recognize the tones. Obviously, when they're used in academic papers, that's not the aim.

[Badger18]

@Oxx PS the fall at the end is only really a continuation of the levelling off shown in the diagram you posted. Or maybe the levelling off is all that's left of a fall. I don't know where to get samples of old time speech but I've definitely seen it claimed that the high tone has changed a lot over the last century.

 

It's the high starting point and the fact that the whole thing is basically convex that makes it look off to me. The others are a bit suspect too, if you ask me, but as I was trying to say in my previous post I don't really think it's worth arguing about.

Edited November 28, 2021 by Badger18

[Oxx]

12 minutes ago, Badger18 said:

I've definitely seen it claimed that the high tone has changed a lot over the last century.

Possibly the paper I linked to earlier in this topic?

 

http://www.manusya.journals.chula.ac.th/files/essay/Phanintra_p.34-44.pdf

[Badger18]

2 minutes ago, Oxx said:

Possibly the paper I linked to earlier in this topic?

I realize now that point had already been made higher up the thread... That's what I get for not reading the whole thing.

 

That's not where I originally got it from but the change seems to have been noted a good few times. One interesting question is why the high tone should be less stable than the others. Don't know if the linked paper addresses that but will have a look.

[MarcelV]

I think the last syllable tends to have a higher pitch too. It's like they like to stress the final syllable of a word or sentence.

But, on topic, high tones sound like they're rising in the end for sure to distinguish them from mid tones.

[EricTh]

On 11/8/2021 at 9:52 AM, BananaBandit said:

Before I embark on another few years' worth of bad habits, 

 

I think the confusion stems from the fact that your wife didn't learn all this rising and high tone terminology which is very confusing. Who the heck invented these misleading terms?

 

Both are actually rising tones.

 

In Thai schools, the Thai kids learnt them as Aehk, Thoh, Dtree, Jat Dta Waa with all the complex rules to determine the final tone.

 

Thai kids don't learn them as high or rising...

 

Edited December 27, 2021 by EricTh

[Oxx]

7 hours ago, EricTh said:

Who the heck invented these misleading terms?

I don't know, but I suspect it goes back at least several decades when the terms accurately described the pitch contours in standard (i.e. central region, well educated) Thai.  The problem is that Thai pronunciation has moved on since then, but the terms haven't changed.

[Badger18]

On 12/28/2021 at 12:17 AM, Oxx said:

I don't know, but I suspect it goes back at least several decades when the terms accurately described the pitch contours in standard (i.e. central region, well educated) Thai.  The problem is that Thai pronunciation has moved on since then, but the terms haven't changed.

I'm sure that's right, but then they ought to have anticipated that and realized that it wouldn't be a problem if they numbered the tones as is done in Mandarin learning... or maybe they did.

 

On 12/27/2021 at 5:15 PM, EricTh said:

 

In Thai schools, the Thai kids learnt them as Aehk, Thoh, Dtree, Jat Dta Waa

 

Thai kids don't learn them as high or rising...

 

That's a very different situation though... Thai kids are learning to put a name on something they already know very well. They don't need a descriptive label to help them remember how the tones go. For most adult learners, when they are given the names of the tones they are still trying to make sense of the whole concept and can't yet recognize or produce the tones. That could be the reason why descriptive terms were chosen, even though people probably realized that the tones were likely change and leave the descriptions behind.

 

Vietnamese kids do "learn" the tones by descriptive names, by the way, and the descriptions aren't accurate for all dialects. I don't think this matters, because as native speakers they're not relying on the descriptions to recognize or produce the tones anyway. Come to think of it, Thai native speakers do use descriptive terms like เสียงต่ำ as well.

 

You're right of course that the fact that foreign learners and Thai kids use different terms for some of the tones is bound to lead to confusion, and I think it's up to us to switch to their system.

Edited December 29, 2021 by Badger18