Easy Way To Learn Thai Tone Rules

[petepete]

Dunno if this will help anyone, but here's a way to learn the Thai tone rules in 10 minutes:

Thai Tone rules are facts that are keyed on two indexes - you need to know two pieces of information about a Thai syllable in order to know its tone.

These are:

a) The tone mark it has (although it's a tiny bit more complicated than that) - we pretend there are 6 to make it a little easier

The character class the first character is - confusingly, these are also called 'low', 'medium', and 'high' - these have to be learned by rote, but about half are low, so really, you only need to learn which are medium and high. If you don't have these down, there's an excellent ebook/application on the internet that'll teach both using some memory tricks...

OK, so tonal mnemonic. I'm using a location mnemonic, where I assign each tone mark to a room in a house with which I'm familiar.

So the tone marks are:

–่ - mai ek - I link this to my upstairs bathroom (looks a bit like a shower head)

–้ - mai tho - attic room (looks a bit like an up arrow)

–๊ - mai tri - the airing cupboard (looks a bit like folded laundry)

–๋ - mai chattawa - linked to the master bedroom (it's a plus sign)

and then:

no tone mark, live syllable (ends in a sonorant sound or long vowel) - living room (live/living, see? ;-) )

no tone mark, dead syllable (ends in a plosive or a short vowel) - the front-room (as there were only two downstairs rooms in the house I'm remembering)

In each of those rooms, there are three locations - the floor, the walls, the ceiling, which I use to correspond to the syllable classes.

Example: แม่ - which is the Thai word for mother. It has 'mai ek', and the syllable class of ม is low - corresponding to the floor of the upstairs bedroom.

Almost done :-)

Now you need to assign an object to each of the five tones, and imagine it in that place. I happen to use:

Rising: balloon

Falling: plasters

Low: cow

Mid: tapestry

High: joint

Then picture each of these items in the locations, according to the Thai tone rules - these you can find at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_alphabet#Diacritics

The one exception to this is: no tone mark, dead syllable; you'll need to remember two different items for if the vowel is long or short.

Took me about 15 minutes to remember the objects in the right places in the right rooms...

So a few worked examples...

แม่ - first consonant is maw ma, which is low class. mai ek is the tone. I remembered a picture of a joint on the top bedroom floor, so that means it has a high tone.

โรค - first consonant is raw ruea, which is low class. No tone mark, dead syllable, which means we're looking for the object we remembered on the floor of the front room. This is where the exception comes in. Sala Ohr (the vowel) is long, so it's the long item there, which I remembered as a plaster - falling tone

เป๋า - tone mark is mai chattawa, which is the master bedroom, which is stuffed, in the picture I made in my head, of balloons, on the ceiling, walls, and floor - it's rising tone.

Does that help? If you've not used visual mnemonics before, it's all likely to sound a little strange...

-P

[mangkorn]

If that convoluted method works for you, congratulations.

But teaching does not seem to be your strong suit.

[Rionoir]

*giggle* Glad I wasn't the only one thinking that.

I didn't need anything to remember the tone rules, but I have plenty of stupid tricks to remember other things that I would never share... LoL

[robertsonmartin]

errr?!? Are you sure you were not smoking something through the showerhead on the bedroom ceiling when you thought that up?

[Rikker]

Mnemonics really seem to work for some people. If you've ever listened to one of those super memory or speed reading courses (I think I downloaded one once), this is the type of stuff they talk about.

Personally I've never been a mnemonics guy, but I'll be very interested to hear how this works for someone who is still struggling with the tone rules. Thanks for posting your method, petepete.

[leah]

After taking a 6-week course in reading and writing, and feeling overwhelmed by all the rules to remember while reading, I was relieved to discover that Thais themselves are not thinking through the tone rules when they read. Many of them have only the foggiest idea that these rules even exist. Now I do what they do, which is ignore all the rules and remember the tone based on spelling. Even if I haven't seen the word spelled before, I can usually pick the right tone as there is only one pronunciation that makes sense in that context. If I'm unfamiliar with the word entirely, well, knowing the tone by rule wouldn't help me then anyway, since I'd still have to look it up.

[freddy123]

petepete, you definately have an interesting method of learning. I have tried some of the techniques you described but, I'm a very logical person and therefore tend to learn in a very structured way. I ended up learning the tones as described below, im a programmer by profession so I needed something to relate to, so I created a flow chart/table. I've posted it here incase it might help anyone else.

The columns are: Initial Consant, Sylable Type, Tone. (Sorry for some reason you cant actually do a table here.)

High -> Live -> Rising

High -> Dead -> Low

Middle -> Live -> Mid

Middle -> Dead -> Low

Low -> Live -> Mid

Low -> Dead -> Short (vowel) -> High (tone)

Low -> Dead -> Long (vowel) -> Falling (tone)

With this method all you really have to remember is the tones on the end, ie Rising, Low, Mid, Low, Mid, High, Fall. And its further simplified by rembering that it starts with a rising at the top and falling on the bottom, and then some nice repetition (low, mid, low, mid) and then the only tone you havn't done yet is high. If you know them then you can work out the tone of any (non tone mark) word pretty easily after a fair bit of practice. This framework is starting to drop away from my consious thought now when im reading, but I think it served as a good basis on which to learn.

The tone marks are pretty easy I suggest just doing some reading exercises after making up your own tricks to help memorise them. Mine are something like Mai Eek just drops everything low, and if its already low consant then it makes it fall. Mai dtow makes everything fall apart from if its alreday a low consant then it 'tows' it high. The other 2 are easy, you just have to remember which one is the high tone and which one is the rising one.

Now listening for the tones and pronouncing them is another story completly .....

[edit: tried to fix table formatting]

Edited September 11, 2009 by freddy123

[grandpops]

After taking a 6-week course in reading and writing, and feeling overwhelmed by all the rules to remember while reading, I was relieved to discover that Thais themselves are not thinking through the tone rules when they read. Many of them have only the foggiest idea that these rules even exist. Now I do what they do, which is ignore all the rules and remember the tone based on spelling. Even if I haven't seen the word spelled before, I can usually pick the right tone as there is only one pronunciation that makes sense in that context. If I'm unfamiliar with the word entirely, well, knowing the tone by rule wouldn't help me then anyway, since I'd still have to look it up.

You are right. My missus teaches me and cannot name the rules as such.

Thais learn when young and it involves so much repetition and rote that systems to explain/remember it are not required.

Ability to remember is not a problem if you read regularly and do the chanting repetitive excercises in thai text books. It's usually the case that we try to learn all the tones in one go, or in too big a batch.

[mangkorn]

ow I do what they do, which is ignore all the rules and remember the tone based on spelling.

Sorry, I'm not sure what you are trying to say there. The tone is based on spelling, yes: as per the rules! It is a system, clearly designed so that the writing signifies the appropriate spoken tones - not a random occurrence of letters that somehow "makes sense." Thai people don't "ignore" the rules; they know them intrinsically. They may not be able to explain them to you, any better than you might be able to explain what a participle does, but in each case the native speakers usually know how to use them.

I am also wondering what you mean by "there is only one pronunciation that makes sense in that context."

Which context would that be?

[Rikker]

Leah, it sounds like you've internalized the rules without realizing it!

[Thewayup]

errr?!? Are you sure you were not smoking something through the showerhead on the bedroom ceiling when you thought that up?

Hehe yes, more than a little psychedelic with your master bedroom full of balloons and a stray cow wandering around the kitchen

I think using visual associations is a good learning aid, but it's definitely more productive to come up with your own system than someone else's quirky one for something complex like the Thai tones.

It helps alot to involve kinesthetic learning as well - basically acting out what you are learning. It's how children learn to sing and play musical instruments, using solfege (do-re-mi) with different hand signals for each musical tone.

You can use the same approach when you are learning a new language, especially one which is tonal and mostly monosyllabic like Thai. When I first learned the Thai alphabet and the 5 different tones, I spent days acting out the tones: diving into a pool for the falling tone, peering over the garden wall for the rising tone, sitting up and raising my eyebrows for the high tone and slouching into my chair for the low tone. Ok I sound like a bit of a nut-job but I speak Thai well

There's a video of Stuart Jay Raj

where he uses the same approach to act out the Thai vowels.

I'm sure These Ladies will convince you too

[Rionoir]

After taking a 6-week course in reading and writing, and feeling overwhelmed by all the rules to remember while reading, I was relieved to discover that Thais themselves are not thinking through the tone rules when they read. Many of them have only the foggiest idea that these rules even exist. Now I do what they do, which is ignore all the rules and remember the tone based on spelling. Even if I haven't seen the word spelled before, I can usually pick the right tone as there is only one pronunciation that makes sense in that context. If I'm unfamiliar with the word entirely, well, knowing the tone by rule wouldn't help me then anyway, since I'd still have to look it up.

While a lot of what you say is correct... most of my Thai friends also said they FAILED Thai in school. LoL  A lot of Thai cannot spell correctly, and they cannot read the tone from a word they do not know, BECAUSE of their lack of knowledge of the Thai language.  I would not look-up to a Thai who cannot tell you tone rules as a role model for one's Thai language studies.

[leah]

Mangkorn, I realize there are rules behind the spelling and didn't mean to imply words are spelled via a random occurrence of letters. But when I see the word ตลาด I know it's low - low because I recognize the word by its spelling, not because of those rules. Maybe this is what's meant by internalization, though it seems like something less fancy to me ;-). And, if I came across the word ข้าว and didn't remember the tone, most likely the context of the sentence would tell me whether it meant rice or white and only one pronunciation would make sense.

Really I just want to give encouragement to people overwhelmed by all the rules, as I was once, since they seem to create a lot of confusion (and some interesting memorization systems...). In my experience regular reading and writing proved more useful than memorizing rules; of course other people may find them a useful learning aid, in which case they should carry on :-).

[Briggsy]

Nonsense syllables are a good method. Work on your speed like typing. After a week or so, it becomes second nature.

[leah]

Just checked this topic for updates and realized I mistakenly wrote low-low for ตลาด last time (I'm sure you all realized it's supposed to be mid-low and politely refrained from correcting me). Figures ;-) I think I have actually heard it pronounced that way in the south but it's obviously not standard.

[Rikker]

You're right, in normal speech ตลาด is mid-low, since the first syllable [ตะ] loses its tone because it's an unstressed short vowel in an open syllable. But if carefully enunciated, according to tone rules its canonical tones are low-low [ตะ-หฺลาด].

Different books and websites use different systems. Some mark every syllable with their canonical tone, so in general it's a nitpicky point that is only worth bringing up if it's crucial to the discussion.

[Johpa]

Sorry, I'm not sure what you are trying to say there. The tone is based on spelling, yes: as per the rules! It is a system, clearly designed so that the writing signifies the appropriate spoken tones - not a random occurrence of letters that somehow "makes sense."

The tone is not based upon the spelling, the spelling is based upon the tone. The tone of any word was based upon the original phonetic environment of the vowel and the length of the vowel. No different that in English when a vowel followed by an unvoiced stop leads to a short vowel with a higher tone and the same vowel followed by a voiced stop leads to a longer vowel with a lower tone such as in the pair <beat:bead>.

And the average Thai is no more able to articulate such rules on the spot as are typical native speakers of English able to articulate, when asked on the spot by say a Thai learner of English, why the plural suffix morpheme that creates a plural of a noun is sometimes an /s/ sound and sometimes a /z/ sound, again using the same pair <beats:beads>.

When I began to learn Thai I was taught all the tone rules as well as the general linguistic environments where in which those rules operate and it helped this left brain dominant retentive style learner that I am at that time. In the intervening decades I have all but forgotten the explicit rules, but for the most part I get the correct tone although it is not always produced correctly.

[Richard W]

The character class the first character is - confusingly, these are also called 'low', 'medium', and 'high' - these have to be learned by rote, but about half are low, so really, you only need to learn which are medium and high.

It's not even as bad as that - see Thai Consonant Classes Made Simple.

The tone is not based upon the spelling, the spelling is based upon the tone. The tone of any word was based upon the original phonetic environment of the vowel and the length of the vowel.

Are you ignoring the words with tone marks, or do you know something about the origins of the three original Tai-Kadai tones? If the latter, could you please share it with us, via a new thread if need be.

[Rionoir]

You're right, in normal speech ตลาด is mid-low, since the first syllable [ตะ] loses its tone because it's an unstressed short vowel in an open syllable. But if carefully enunciated, according to tone rules its canonical tones are low-low [ตะ-หฺลาด].

Different books and websites use different systems. Some mark every syllable with their canonical tone, so in general it's a nitpicky point that is only worth bringing up if it's crucial to the discussion.

ตะ by itself is low tone... but I was taught that in a word like ตลาด (I forget what that implied ะ is called) this word SHOULD be mid-low, even when enunciated carefully.  This was in my reading/writing textbook at Chula as a special rule, do you don't read that tone as if it were ตะ

Just passing along what i was taught... I don't care enough to argue about it. LoL

[Johpa]

The character class the first character is - confusingly, these are also called 'low', 'medium', and 'high' - these have to be learned by rote, but about half are low, so really, you only need to learn which are medium and high.

It's not even as bad as that - see Thai Consonant Classes Made Simple.

The tone is not based upon the spelling, the spelling is based upon the tone. The tone of any word was based upon the original phonetic environment of the vowel and the length of the vowel.

Are you ignoring the words with tone marks, or do you know something about the origins of the three original Tai-Kadai tones? If the latter, could you please share it with us, via a new thread if need be.

My intent was to demonstrate that the tones, which were in place well before the writing system, originally derived from the phonetic environment. I was hoping to show that even in English, vowels followed by an unvoiced stop tend to have higher tones and shorter length than the same vowel followed by a voiced stop. These features are phonetic in English but not phonemic. Tone marks are needed as the borrowed alphabet was not capable of addressing tones and many words, either having been borrowed or through language change, have long lost their original phonetic environment. I know little about the origins of the hypothesized original three tones. I think only S'kaw Karen, not a Tai-Kadai language,maintains the early three tone system.

[mangkorn]

You're right, Johpa: my phrasing was imprecise on that score. I was rushing to glide past the (to me) self-evident point that the writing system designed to render the tones is intricately related to pronunciation (i.e., based on a set of rules), to address the notion that one can read properly without some knowledge of that system. It may be possible if the level is as basic as ตลาด - a word that one both hears and sees written frequently enough to internalize - but for more advanced reading and vocabulary, I seriously doubt it. Cheers.

[Richard W]

I think only S'kaw Karen, not a Tai-Kadai language, maintains the early three tone system.

Hlai (a.k.a. Li), on the island of Hainan, preserves the system of three live tones in several dialects. I think it is highly convenient for linguists that Thai was reduced to writing just before its tone split. (Afterwards might have been better for the rest of us!)

[SoftWater]

This may not help

For me, I could never have learned the tone rules by memorising a chart. I had to work them out for myself following the exercises in Smyth's 'Teach Yourself Thai.' Once I'd worked out how the rules work, I made a chart like this in case I needed it for quick reference. There are 15 basic rules:

*tone mark: number 1, 2, 3, 4 refer to

__ ่________ ______้_______ ๊_________ ๋

respectively, but they don't show up too well in the post, hence the names.

----Consonant----------Syllable----------Tone mark----------TONE

1. High Class-------------Live----------------------------------RISING

2. High Class-------------Dead---------------------------------LOW

3. High Class-----------------------------number 1---------LOW

4. High Class-----------------------------number 2---------FALLING

5. Middle Class-----------Live----------------------------------MIDDLE

6. Middle Class-----------Dead---------------------------------LOW

7. Middle Class------------------------------number 1--------LOW

8. Middle Class------------------------------number 2--------FALLING

9. Middle Class------------------------------number 3--------HIGH

10.Middle Class------------------------------number 4--------RISING

11.Low Class--------------Live-----------------------------------MIDDLE

12.Low Class--------------Short & Dead------------------------HIGH

13.Low Class--------------Long & Dead-------------------------FALLING

14.Low Class---------------------------------number 1---------FALLING

15.Low Class---------------------------------number 2----------HIGH

Though this may look complex, in fact there are some common patterns that make the tones easier to remember. For example, notice that the number 1 tone mark always indicates a low tone with both high and middle class consonants.

The number two tone mark always indicates a falling tone with both high and middle class consonants. Also, when there is no tone mark, both high and middle class consonants result in a low tone with dead syllables. Finally, number 3 and 4 are only used with middle class consonants.

(note to self: never try to make a table in TV again )

Edited September 16, 2009 by SoftWater

[meadish_sweetball]

You might want to try creating any table with the [ code ] [ / code ] start and stop tags, that should honour the spaces. It's not perfect for creation straight in a post though, but if you do the table in Notepad first using tabs, I think this will transfer okay to the forum provided you use the code tags.

 
This	 is	 an	 example
of	 what	 it	 looks	 like	when	not	using	 tabs	 but	 5	 spaces	 in	 between	 words

[everydaysthesame]

I thought I had cracked the tone rules until I read this thread.. Can someone explain why ตลาด is low, low. Shouldnt it be low , falling? ลาด starts with a low class consonant and ends in a 'stop' consonant and has a long vowel in the middle. This should produce a falling tone. Where does the ห mysteriously come from to make it low low??

งงจังเลย!!

[SoftWater]

I thought I had cracked the tone rules until I read this thread.. Can someone explain why ตลาด is low, low. Shouldnt it be low , falling? ลาด starts with a low class consonant and ends in a 'stop' consonant and has a long vowel in the middle. This should produce a falling tone. Where does the ห mysteriously come from to make it low low??

งงจังเลย!!

That's a stunningly smart question! (The sort which makes language teachers shrug and go 'cos it just does'!)

I'm sure (I hope...) the linguistic experts will have an answer. I'd never thought about it, but it does remind me that a long time ago I was forever pronouncing สะพาน incorrectly (much to the confusion of many a taxi driver) because I assumed, like with ตลาด, that the initial consonant sort of set a 'master tone' for the whole word, so I wrongly pronounced the second syllable with a rising tone. Only later did I learn that tones were syllable specific not word-specific.

If we compare สะพาน with ตลาด the only reason I can see for applying different rules is that the syllable is implicit rather than explicit in the spelling. Imagine if ตลาด were spelled ตะลาด - I think it would be unquestionable that the tone would be what you would expect (low-falling). Indeed, you can see lots of words in the dictionary where the first syllable is (explicitly) spelled ตะ and the second syllable's tone remains independent. Likewise you can see lots like ตลาด (ตลอด ตลก ตวาด) where the tone of the second syllable is 'set' by the tone rule for ต with a dead syllable ending.

Why this should be so I don't know - but I too would be interested to hear what others have to say.

Edited September 19, 2009 by SoftWater

[Richard W]

I thought I had cracked the tone rules until I read this thread.. Can someone explain why ตลาด is low, low.

That's a stunningly smart question! (The sort which makes language teachers shrug and go 'cos it just does'!)

I'd never thought about it, but it does remind me that a long time ago I was forever pronouncing สะพาน incorrectly (much to the confusion of many a taxi driver) because I assumed, like with ตลาด, that the initial consonant sort of set a 'master tone' for the whole word, so I wrongly pronounced the second syllable with a rising tone.

If we compare สะพาน with ตลาด the only reason I can see for applying different rules is that the syllable is implicit rather than explicit in the spelling. Imagine if ตลาด were spelled ตะลาด - I think it would be unquestionable that the tone would be what you would expect (low-falling).

Why this should be so I don't know - but I too would be interested to hear what others have to say.

For a lot of these words, it makes sense to think of them as being monosyllabic, but with Thais inserting a vowel because they are unable to pronounce the initial clusters. You must also reckon with pedants who actually got things wrong but have influenced Thai spelling or pronunciation. Most of these clusters are not Thai, but Khmer (or possibly Mon, but they're harder to confirm).

Now, in Khmer, this transfer effect does spread from the first syllable to the second, and it is known as 'register spreading'. One striking rule is that only resonants are overridden. In Thai this effect only applies to clearly distinct written syllables when the vowel of the first syllable is sara am. This chiefly affects obvious (or apparent derivatives) like ตำรวจ, seemingly from ตรวจ, though the regular enhanced form is ดำรวจ. If the words are not obvious derivatives, Thai spelling inserts ห, as in สำหรับ.

The rule about resonants also applies to (orthographic) clusters, so แสดง is pronounced สะ-แดง and เฉพาะ is pronunced as ฉะ-เพาะ. These words would be monosyllabic in Khmer, with the vowel determined by the second consonant.

An example of an unetymological spelling (not reflected in the pronunciation) is เปรียญ pronounced ปะ-เรียน. The second vowel is odd too, but it's part of an old pattern I don't fully understand. A regular related word is ปริญญา.

The rules break down with Indic words, and the presence or absence of ะ no longer works, e.g. ประวัติ pronounced ประ-หวัด.

This behaviour is fascinating, but it soon ceases to be useful just for learning to use Thai. It rapidly becomes an academic rather than a practical interest. After all, there are homographs whose pronunciation depends on the meaning, e.g. ตนุ.

[RickBradford]

An alternative way to learn the tone rules is to spin the question around and ask: How does Thai script make a syllable with the mid-tone. The answer is simple: Only a low-class or mid-class consonant with an open syllable will do it. Similarly, how is the low tone created? Only a mid-class and high-class consonant with a dead syllable, or with the tone mark as in ก่า)

The full table looks like this:

Mid tone: Low-class or mid-class consonant, live syllable

Low tone: Mid-class or high-class consonant, with dead syllable or with ไม้เอก (mai ek)

Rising tone: High-class consonant with live ending, mid-class consonant with ไม้จัตวา (mai jat dta waa) as in ก๋ง

High tone: Low-class consonant in a short syllable or with ไม้โท (mai thoh, as in ไม้); or mid-class consonant with ไม้ตรี (mai dtree, as in โต๊ะ )

Falling tone: Low-class consonant with long closed syllable, or with ไม้เอก (mai ek, as in ใช่); mid-class or high-class consonant with ไม้โท (mai thoh, as in ผู้)

...and you need to remember that the letter ห in a consonant cluster makes the consonant high-class, and there are four words where -อ- makes the following consonant mid-class.

[tgeezer]

I thought I had cracked the tone rules until I read this thread.. Can someone explain why ตลาด is low, low. Shouldnt it be low , falling? ลาด starts with a low class consonant and ends in a 'stop' consonant and has a long vowel in the middle. This should produce a falling tone. Where does the ห mysteriously come from to make it low low??

งงจังเลย!!

That's a stunningly smart question! (The sort which makes language teachers shrug and go 'cos it just does'!)

I'm sure (I hope...) the linguistic experts will have an answer. I'd never thought about it, but it does remind me that a long time ago I was forever pronouncing สะพาน incorrectly (much to the confusion of many a taxi driver) because I assumed, like with ตลาด, that the initial consonant sort of set a 'master tone' for the whole word, so I wrongly pronounced the second syllable with a rising tone. Only later did I learn that tones were syllable specific not word-specific.

If we compare สะพาน with ตลาด the only reason I can see for applying different rules is that the syllable is implicit rather than explicit in the spelling. Imagine if ตลาด were spelled ตะลาด - I think it would be unquestionable that the tone would be what you would expect (low-falling). Indeed, you can see lots of words in the dictionary where the first syllable is (explicitly) spelled ตะ and the second syllable's tone remains independent. Likewise you can see lots like ตลาด (ตลอด ตลก ตวาด) where the tone of the second syllable is 'set' by the tone rule for ต with a dead syllable ending.

Why this should be so I don't know - but I too would be interested to hear what others have to say.

Words like that are 'called 'akson nam' อักษรนัม the inherent a อะ is sounded in a 'gung siang' กึงเสียง (half sound) so it is pretty difficult to tell what the tone is, whatever comes out is ok provided you dont scream it high. The second takes the tone which it would have if the second consonent were not there ie; ต(ล)าต ตาต however, if the second consonent is a อักษรคู่ 'akson coo' then the second sylable tone is governed my that consonent ie: สภาพ ภาพ falling. อักษรคู่ are low class consonents which have the same sound as a high class consonent ซ is pair to ษ ศ ส and ภ พ are pair to ผ for instance.

[Richard W]

The second takes the tone which it would have if the second consonent were not there ie; ต(ล)าต ตาต however, if the second consonent is a อักษรคู่ 'akson coo' then the second sylable tone is governed my that consonent ie: สภาพ ภาพ falling. อักษรคู่ are low class consonents which have the same sound as a high class consonent ซ is pair to ษ ศ ส and ภ พ are pair to ผ for instance.

'Akson khu' doesn't quite work - it doesn't account for words like แสดง and ฉบับ, where the middle consonant (both senses!) determines the tone of the second syllable. The more phonetic class of 'non-resonant' is required for the rule.