Tone Rules Chart

[jamiesensei]

Hi all,

Created this tone rules chart the other day and thought I would share it in case it helps anyone else.

I think it is helpful because it boils down the town rules into one sheet of paper.

• Read it from the top. First work out what the consonant class of the syllable is. (the Thai at the top of the page reads "Middle", "High", "Low")
  • For middle refer to the first column,
    
  • for high refer to the second
    
  • and for low to the third.
    

  [*]Then if the syllable has a tone mark refer to the top half of the page. If not then refer to the bottom.

  [*]Remember a short vowel with no ending consonant is a dead syllable and a long vowel with no ending consonant is a live syllable so there is no need really to separate these out into separate tables.

The image should print out nicely on an A4 sheet of paper and will fill the whole sheet.

Can't upload the photoshop file unfortunately but would be happy to send it to anyone who wants to edit the file.

Jamie

[jamiesensei]

Just decided to add some more info to the chart. I added the possible ending consonants. I attach a new copy.

Thanks to Mike of http://thai2english.com and his excellent electronic dictionary and Thai grammar / reading and writing reference from which I have copied and pasted. I followed the reading and writing reference making flash cards from business cards to drill myself and found the explanations very straight forward. Am now doing the AUA reading and writing course here in Chiang Mai to cement my learning of the basics.

Could the rule for what is a live or dead syllable be boiled down to :

• that a dead syllable is :
  • anything ending in the consonants
    

• • • p ปบพ k คกข t จดสตถทช
      

• or anything including -ั -ิ-ึ-ุ-ะ-็
  

• And that a live syllable is :
  • anything ending with another consonant ie.
    • m ม n นลร ng ง w ว y ย
      

    [*]or a syllable with a vowel not including -ั -ิ-ึ-ุ-ะ-็

I wonder if we can treat anything ending in w ว y ย as a vowel for the purposes of this rule to avoid having to remember when w ว y ย are part of the vowel and when they are an ending consonant. Are there cases where the vowel includes -ั -ิ-ึ-ุ-ะ-็ but ว or ย are an ending consonant and not part of the vowel and so making a live syllable???

The tone rules chart is available as a gif or a photoshop file from my web site http://jamiep.org/

Edited August 16, 2009 by jamiesensei

[Harcourt]

As a beginner, I can't give any critical appreciation, but if you have condensed things to one page, THANKS for sharing.

[tgeezer]

Could the rule for what is a live or dead syllable be boiled down to :

• that a dead syllable is :
  • anything ending in the consonants
    

• • • p ปบพ k คกข t จดสตถทช
      

• or anything including -ั -ิ-ึ-ุ-ะ-็
  

• And that a live syllable is :
  • anything ending with another consonant ie.
    • m ม n นลร ng ง w ว y ย
      

    [*]or a syllable with a vowel not including -ั -ิ-ึ-ุ-ะ-็

I wonder if we can treat anything ending in w ว y ย as a vowel for the purposes of this rule to avoid having to remember when w ว y ย are part of the vowel and when they are an ending consonant. Are there cases where the vowel includes -ั -ิ-ึ-ุ-ะ-็ but ว or ย are an ending consonant and not part of the vowel and so making a live syllable???

The tone rules chart is available as a gif or a photoshop file from my web site http://jamiep.org/

The system is confusing, the dictionary defines 'dead' as 'words with short vowels, and words ending in K P T' then for live words, used to say 'words which are not dead' This was brilliant, but I have just looked on-line to be sure and they have decided to expand the definition of live words which shouldn't be necessary if you are clear that there are only nine possible endings 3.5 of them are dead the rest are live. (.5 refers to short ก กา endings)

There are many arguments but I think that the best way is to get it straight according to your personal wireing, and you have achieved that, well done. The chart is good too. By the way, I don't think I would think too much about วัว=วัวะ เมีย=มียะ endings are cancelled out by the vowel, I think!

[ranger74]

Ah!

I've been trying to come up with a way to make it make sense to me and this has helped a lot. Looking at this chart breaks it down to a managable amount of code that needs to be cracked. Thanks!

[Richard W]

Just decided to add some more info to the chart. I added the possible ending consonants. I attach a new copy.

You might find it useful to abut the lower part (no tone marks) on top of the bottom part (tone marks), to capture the Central and Northern rule that long-vowelled dead syllables are read as though they were written with mai ek.

I wonder if we can treat anything ending in w ว y ย as a vowel for the purposes of this rule to avoid having to remember when w ว y ย are part of the vowel and when they are an ending consonant.

Yes.

Are there cases where the vowel includes -ั -ิ-ึ-ุ-ะ-็ but ว or ย are an ending consonant and not part of the vowel and so making a live syllable?

It's the final element that counts, so อัว is live and อัวะ is dead.

[jamiesensei]

Thanks a lot Richard! Your pointing out of the similarities between the tones for a dead syllable and the dead long vowel tones and clarification of the tone rules for complex vowels are very helpful! Not going to move the live / dead rules to the top of the chart for now but it does make a lot of sense to do so, have done so in my mind and noted the similarities. I put the live / dead rules at the bottom to indicate that if there is a tone mark that takes precedence. But maybe it is more natural to have a line at the top for the 'no tone mark' part of the tone mark table.

[jamiesensei]

Decided I would move the dead / live rules to the top of the page as discussed above. Here is a new copy of the chart.

[jamiesensei]

Wow. That really feels like fitting the last piece of the jigsaw into place. Obviously the live / dead rules should have been at the top to start with. I like how all the irregularities in the chart now are just a shifting of tone by one row :

• rising tone for the high class consonants is a shift of one row, effectively, from the top of the chart rolling around to the bottom.
  
• dead syllables are almost the same as syllables with low tone markers a shift of one row
  • except the dead syllable with a short vowel that is shifted an extra row.
    

  [*]low class consonants with low and falling tone markers are shifted one row.

[tgeezer]

[quote name

It's the final element that counts, so อัว is live and อัวะ is dead.

Actually it isn't, the final element is the sound of วะ in both cases, it is the vowel that matters อัว=อูวะ อัวะ=อุวะ

[krading]

This isn't the chart I learned from but it's similar. When I get back to Oz I'll check out the one I printed out and glued into the back of my dictionary. It makes everything so simple.

http://www.lyndonhill.com/FunThai/TONE.html

[Richard W]

It's the final element that counts, so อัว is live and อัวะ is dead.

Actually it isn't, the final element is the sound of วะ in both cases, it is the vowel that matters อัว=อูวะ อัวะ=อุวะ

I'll clarify - I meant it's the final written element that counts. In my two examples, the final phonetic element in the first case is a vowel and in the second case is the glottal stop /ʔ/, which isn't written after high vowels and is otherwise written syllable-finally as ะ. The complication is the instance of sentence-final particles with short vowels and no final consonant, whose existence most grammatical descriptions deny. I'm not sure if one can claim that the glottal stops are underlyingly present.

[krading]

To be able to interpret these tone charts you need to learn the consonants in their separate classes, high, medium and low class, then they will start to make sense. Once you know the class of the consonant the tone mark and the ending will determine the tone.

Having said that I asked my missus about how she learned tone rules,

"Huh? We just learned the words." Like the 5 tones of 'mai'. Learned by rote.

It's only us falangs who have to learn the rules.

[tgeezer]

It's the final element that counts, so อัว is live and อัวะ is dead.

Actually it isn't, the final element is the sound of วะ in both cases, it is the vowel that matters อัว=อูวะ อัวะ=อุวะ

I'll clarify - I meant it's the final written element that counts. In my two examples, the final phonetic element in the first case is a vowel and in the second case is the glottal stop /ʔ/, which isn't written after high vowels and is otherwise written syllable-finally as ะ. The complication is the instance of sentence-final particles with short vowels and no final consonant, whose existence most grammatical descriptions deny. I'm not sure if one can claim that the glottal stops are underlyingly present.

I guess that we just learned it differently; I was wrong the final sound is not วะ You were right the vowel in อัว is long I should have put อู+อา the vowel in อัวะ is short อุ+อะ

I was saying that the condition he wanted existed(อัว) but was not a problem because the ไม้หันอากาศ only appeared to be a short vowel used with ว. The other endings he refers to are decided by both vowel and ending ie. any syllable with a short vowel and not closing with KPorT is live. eg. คุย คุ้ย

[thpitsch]

Because ไม้ตรี and ไม้จัตวา can not occur on high and low class consonants the red and blue coloured bars (on the chart introduced by the original posting) are to long and should cover only the mid class area.

Apart from this, this chart in the first version is clear if you know the consonant class and what is a live syllable and what a dead. For the consonant class it is presupposed, but for the type of syllable you have added some information in the following versions of the chart. This makes the chart confusing. Try to understand in a separate step why on syllable is dead and another is living. And in another step learn the consonant classes. Then you need only a small chart like the first version to work with. And after a short while you will see, you don't need even this.

I saw so many charts for this purpose and believe, they are only clear for those who make the charts for own use. If you want to share "your personal" chart to others, you have to explain things that are clear to you.

Look at the approach of Lyndon Hill. It is not wrong. But he use uncommon descriptions and numbers for the 5 tones. Ok, it's McFarland's system. But it's not common. And this table is everything else than clear.

[jamiesensei]

Because ไม้ตรี and ไม้จัตวา can not occur on high and low class consonants the red and blue coloured bars (on the chart introduced by the original posting) are to long and should cover only the mid class area.

Thanks that is useful info. Will adjust my chart.

Apart from this, this chart in the first version is clear if you know the consonant class and what is a live syllable and what a dead. For the consonant class it is presupposed, but for the type of syllable you have added some information in the following versions of the chart. This makes the chart confusing. Try to understand in a separate step why on syllable is dead and another is living. And in another step learn the consonant classes. Then you need only a small chart like the first version to work with. And after a short while you will see, you don't need even this.

I believe the extra info on the chart will help me remember what is a live and dead syllable and also help with remembering the prononciation of the endings. It can be ignored of course. They are more notes for someone who already knows the tone rules. It is not intended that you will learn the tone rules from this chart but that the chart is good :

• As a reference / memory jogger.
  
• The colors hopefully aid in seeing patterns in the chart.
  
• Hopefully through frequent reference the picture will stick in your head.
  

I saw so many charts for this purpose and believe, they are only clear for those who make the charts for own use.

It is probably true that making your own chart is best, in the way that makes sense to you. Maybe this chart will give people some ideas and may be good for use by other people. The photoshop doc is available for download from my web site http://jamiep.org and may or may not be useful as a starting point for creating your own chart!

If you want to share "your personal" chart to others, you have to explain things that are clear to you.

Not sure this is true. Although I did give some explanation of the chart above, trying to understand the chart is probably a useful exercise for someone who is grappling with the tone rules. It is not that difficult I think!

[Richard W]

Because ไม้ตรี and ไม้จัตวา can not occur on high and low class consonants the red and blue coloured bars (on the chart introduced by the original posting) are to long and should cover only the mid class area.

Thanks that is useful info. Will adjust my chart.

While it is incorrect to use them in Siamese with any but a mid consonant, there are three exceptions that one may encounter. Firstly, dead syllables with a high tone are often misspelt with a low class consonant and mai tri instead of a low class consonant and mai tho - เค๊ก is a freqeunt misspelling of เค้ก. Secondly, when recording the Chiangmai dialect, it is common to represent the rising tone on a dead syllable with a high consonant and mai chattawa. Thirdly, ค๋ะ is quite common in forums.