Problems With Tones

[ninjat]

Hi,

I have been practicing Thai for quite some time and can get my meaning across in most situations... but my pronouncation continues to be really, really bad.

The problem is the tones. I started out learning Thai by myself, so I never really got down to learning them probably. Today, I speak everything in more or less the same tone - and it happens way to often that I have to repeat myself a few times before the locals understand me

What can I do to learn the tones probably? Is the some kind of resource on the internet I can use to learn the tones (especially considering I have already been practicing Thai for quite some time).

Thanks,

Ninjat

[mikenyork]

I will pass on my own experience. Someone told me once that tones are a matter of rhythm. And I find this to be true in my own speaking. When I get the rhythm of a phrase right, the tones take care of themselves. Conversely, on days when my rhythm is off, I spend the day blowing tones, frequently to the great amusement of the Thais who listen to me. I can't explain why this would be true. I can only say that it has proven to be true for me. Therefore, I encourage you to find Thai speakers whom you can "model"--probably these days by means of software--and then mimic their speech as closely as you can. Tonality is the great challenge for us westerners in learning Thai, since our own languages don't use tone for meaning in the way that Thai does, but only to clarify meaning (question versus statement, for example). Finally, be patient. For the vast majority of us who are blessed with only modest innate ability in speaking a foreign language, Thai takes lots and lots of time. I once studied Spanish. I made more progress in Spanish per month than I could make in Thai per year! I don't know if that will help much, but it's the best I can do.

[KIWIBATCH]

You are not alone with the difficulty you are having with the tones....it is not easy....I attend a Thai language school....and have done so for 8 months...we have spent alot of time learning the tones...from the instructor/whiteboard/books at the school...but actually speaking or relaying a sentence in real life yourself to a thai shopkeeper/taxi driver etc will get you some funny looks and at the same time generally create some good hearted laughter.

I also think you have to give your brain and face/throat muscles quite some time to "get it right" as well.....some of the thai words, tones etc, will have your face looking very contorted.

I have found that being with or near Thai folk very helpful...(polite eavesdropping).....simply listening to them...you dont have to necessarily understand what they are saying....but just listen to them...it becomes to click after a while.

Buried somewhere in my web address book is a site that is excellent for exactly what you require and more.... I need time to locate it but will post it up for you later today....it covers all of the thai language scenarios comprehensively, tones, reading, writing, transcript, speaking....and its free.

Make sure you have a good set of speakers for your PC....and listen to it as it walks you through stage by stage anything you want to know or learn or hear on learning the thai language...including tones...it is partly interactive...ie you proceed at your own pace....good luck.

[sarahsbloke]

Forget learning tones, this is a false path many follow.

Spend your time increasing vocab.

Learn to read and write.

[bhoydy]

Forget learning tones, this is a false path many follow.

Spend your time increasing vocab.

Learn to read and write.

Maybe it's too early in the morning for me, but i know you can learn to read and write without learning the tones, because i did it myself and then i was lazy to learn the tones. My pronunciation was terrible due to this and i therefore got my head down and learnt them proplerly and i can now speak (most days) in the correct tones. My question though is how can this possibly help, because the tone is still wrong, or non-existent. Please elaborate on this concept.

[HappyInCM]

Internet resources for listening there's thai language.com's listening to one syllable tone test. For paid, I think byki is about 1500 baht ($50 US) and well worth it as it gives you a score on your pronunciation _including_ a graph of your actual tone [of course a native thai won't get 100% score, so it does have to be taken with a grain of salt, but still helped me immensely to see how to produce the tones as I like the interface better than the free one and it gives you more info]. There's also a free version of this from someone who lives in pai that was I believe posted by someone in my similar post to this one a few months ago: Tools For Speaking/hearing The Tones - Thailand Forum After using byki, I bought some reading practice books (in thai at se-ed also noted in the above thread) and worked with a Thai elementary school teacher.

After a couple of months of this, many words just come naturally with the right tone - I don't think about it (kind of like a native US speaker doesn't think about the difference between saying record in "i'm making a record of this" versus "I'm going to record this"). And of course, some I still struggle with. Once you get a word down, you need to practice it a while to get it ingrained in your brain and not thinking about it. Like the others, I have my bad and good days.

Of course, I'm pretty sure that listening for the tones is a separate skill - one that I seem to as of yet have very little aptitude for. But it's all about practice I guess.

Incidentally, I agree with bhoydy about learning the tones, but although I did it late, I don't think all my work before that was a waste - I just needed to go back and re-practice my vocabulary. But, better to get it straight the first time although at first you won't have any ear for it at all so it may be tough. Maybe there should be a thread on the optimal time to tackle the tones although it may vary a lot from individual to individual.

[dvc]

Forget learning tones, this is a false path many follow.

Spend your time increasing vocab.

Learn to read and write.

Every so often someone pops up with one of these, 'no need to learn tones', or perhaps, 'ignore reading and writing', proclamations.

Every one of the nearly sixty five million Thais in Thailand speaks Thai with the inclusion of tones. What makes you think such a fundamental part of the language can be ignored?

I've observed and listened to foreigners speaking Thai without reference to tones, and what an appalling sound results. The only Thais who understand this form of Thai are those who make daily contact with foreigners, and have learned to decipher meaning from context alone. When confronted with such a distorted version of their language, I've noticed that the Thai interlocutor will nearly always have an expression of pain, (like a wince), on his/her face.

Surely it's better to attempt a correct and pleasing sound than to butcher the language, even though it may be understood by a small number of speakers.

[mikenyork]

Advising someone to forget about tones in Thai is like advising someone learning English to forget about tenses and person in English verbs, forget about singular and plural, forget about the difference between "l" and "r". forget about final s, aspirated t, final pronounced d (as in decided), and so forth. The result of such a truncation of English is a kind of pidgin English, generally comprehensible by a native speaker, but not pleasant (at least for me) to listen to. Moreover, I must confess that it is almost impossible for me to give the same weight and respect to a person speaking this way that I more or less automatically give to someone who speaks non-pidgin English. (I know this reflects my own prejudices and limitations, but I doubt that I am alone in this reaction). Actually, tones are even more central to Thai than the examples above are to English and so the analogy is only partial. Therefore, there just isn't any choice to learning tones unless, as an earlier response pointed out, one wants to limit ones communication to those few Thais who have so much contact with westerners that they can guess the meaning of the words being said. And in my experience, such Thais almost always speak English anyway. So what's the point of subjecting them to the pain of listening to tone-free Thai in the first place?

[sarahsbloke]

You don't need tones to read, write and understand spoken Thai.

3 out of 4 ain't bad!

You only need tones to speak to male Thai strangers and they pretty much don't want to talk to you anyway. I certainly don't want to talk to them.

(my mum warned me not to speak to strangers)

Unless you go around on your own normal Thais won't interact with you anyway, if you are with a Thai, you usually get totally ignored.

If you just want to impress the locals, learning to write a few words or sing a Thai song is much more impressive to them.

PS

which set of tones do you learn, different regions use different tones.

[bhoydy]

You don't need tones to read, write and understand spoken Thai.

3 out of 4 ain't bad!

You only need tones to speak to Thai strangers and they pretty much don't want to talk to you anyway. I certainly don't want to talk to them.

Unless you go around on your own normal Thais won't interact with you anyway, if you are with a Thai, you usually get totally ignored.

If you just want to impress the locals, learning to write a few words or sing a Thai song is much more impressive to them.

PS

which set of tones do you learn, different regions use different tones.

If you're going to all the bother of learning to read and write, the extra step of learning the tones is not that much compared with what you've already learnt, consonants, vowels, final sound etc. Agreed putting the tones into practice is a slower process than without them, but having done them both i know which one is more beneficial. Do you never speak to strangers? My mother also taught me this but as i grew older i found that i could decide for myself which strangers were good and which were bad. I also speak to people i don't know when i'm shopping and looking around. I do go around by myself quite often, so this does attract conversation from strangers a lot more. If my reasoning for learning the tones was to impress the locals i would have tried other things first, like pulling a car with a rope tied round my waist or perhaps pulling a 2 baht coin from their ear. I was, however, tired of not being understood so i went the extra length and learned the tones.

I thought there was only one set of tones, they are just used in different ways, in different regions.

[anchan42]

Advising someone to forget about tones in Thai is like advising someone learning English to forget about tenses and person in English verbs, forget about singular and plural, forget about the difference between "l" and "r". forget about final s, aspirated t, final pronounced d (as in decided), and so forth. The result of such a truncation of English is a kind of pidgin English, generally comprehensible by a native speaker, but not pleasant (at least for me) to listen to. Moreover, I must confess that it is almost impossible for me to give the same weight and respect to a person speaking this way that I more or less automatically give to someone who speaks non-pidgin English. (I know this reflects my own prejudices and limitations, but I doubt that I am alone in this reaction). Actually, tones are even more central to Thai than the examples above are to English and so the analogy is only partial. Therefore, there just isn't any choice to learning tones unless, as an earlier response pointed out, one wants to limit ones communication to those few Thais who have so much contact with westerners that they can guess the meaning of the words being said. And in my experience, such Thais almost always speak English anyway. So what's the point of subjecting them to the pain of listening to tone-free Thai in the first place?

That is what I did and I still suffer from the result today. To be specific I ignored -ed and -s suffixes when I started learning English. It was not a good idea at all but I had no one to tell me better at the time.

Ignoring the tones can't be a good idea.

[phomsanuk]

If you''re like me, tone deaf it's almost impossible, immesion helps.

French, Chinese as well, Ja[anese, Spanish and German are easier.

Got no rhythm either:rolleyes:.

[keo]

Forget learning tones, this is a false path many follow.

Spend your time increasing vocab.

Learn to read and write.

your havin a giraffe, surely! Tones are a fundamental part of the language, ignore them at your peril.

You don't need tones to read, write and understand spoken Thai.

3 out of 4 ain't bad!

You only need tones to speak to male Thai strangers and they pretty much don't want to talk to you anyway. I certainly don't want to talk to them.

(my mum warned me not to speak to strangers)

Unless you go around on your own normal Thais won't interact with you anyway, if you are with a Thai, you usually get totally ignored.

If you just want to impress the locals, learning to write a few words or sing a Thai song is much more impressive to them.

PS

which set of tones do you learn, different regions use different tones.

Bizarre, absolutely bizarre! What planet are you on!

[Tod Daniels]

You don't need tones to read, write and understand spoken Thai.

3 out of 4 ain't bad!

You only need tones to speak to male Thai strangers and they pretty much don't want to talk to you anyway. I certainly don't want to talk to them.

(my mum warned me not to speak to strangers)

Unless you go around on your own normal Thais won't interact with you anyway, if you are with a Thai, you usually get totally ignored.

If you just want to impress the locals, learning to write a few words or sing a Thai song is much more impressive to them.

PS

which set of tones do you learn, different regions use different tones.

Seeing as last time I checked, every single one of the 63 odd million thais here is compelled to learn CENTRAL THAI when they attend ANY school (as it's the ONLY government approved version) My advice; stick with bangkokian thai, and give the regional dialects a pass until you've got central thai down fairly proficiently. Even is extremely rural areas, I've had NO problem getting thais to both speak and understand central thai.

Funny you say thais don't want to talk to you, because I find (even given my serious demeanor ), that most thais will interact with me just fine, and once they know I can speak thai, they'll even go out of their way to chat with me after they've seen me walk past their shop a few times.

As far as being interested in impressing the locals. .. I personally didn't undertake learning the thai language to impress anyone, but to communicate with them in their language instead of what passes for engrish in this country.

I would hazard a guess that speaking clearly toned thai would impress them (the indigenous natives ) more than either writing a few simple thai words or parroting a few lines of any b/s thai song. Then again, maybe the thais around you are easier to impress than the ones around me. True you're likely to get smiles if you know some lyrics, or can scratch out a few words in thai, but IMHO I believe a person would garner far more accolades being able to speak clear understandable thai with both good pronunciation and correct language structure than either of the other two novelties .

Ill concede your point about not needing to know the tones to read/ write. Both of those require only memorization of hundreds and hundreds of words, as well as knowing how similar sounding yet completely different words are spelled differently.

However to understand spoken thai, other than the most basic 'frozen phrases', I think a good grasp of thai pronunciation/toning is most definitely at the top of the frickin' list . True, when reading, a lot of the words can be gleaned via context; but can you differentiate the thai words for; white, rice, knee, enter, news or he/she, or the words; tiger, shirt, or mat just by hearing them as stand alones? (Granted the previous words are some simple examples )

Given thai is a totally tonally dependant language and emotion cannot be imparted by changing the pronunciation of words like it can be in english; saying you don't need the tones to speak clear thai is one of the most ludicrous statements I've ever read concerning the learning of the thai language.

Until you know the tones youre out in left field as far as speaking clear thai is concerned.

[KIWIBATCH]

Agreed.....learning the tones is so very important....to ignore them is at your peril when moving ahead and learning the language...... our Thai language learning school has a long list of words...prepared by the Thai teacher...... having upto 5 different meanings each....depending on the tone used....when speaking them.......

The link to the hepful site is www.thai-language.com and I stand corrected by an earlier poster....one of this companies sites is for free the other is around 1500 THB...try the free one it may be just what you need

[sarahsbloke]

However to understand spoken thai, other than the most basic 'frozen phrases', I think a good grasp of thai pronunciation/toning is most definitely at the top of the frickin' list . True, when reading, a lot of the words can be gleaned via context; but can you differentiate the thai words for; white, rice, knee, enter, news or he/she, or the words; tiger, shirt, or mat just by hearing them as stand alones? (Granted the previous words are some simple examples )

I'm pretty sure if I order 'cow su-ay' somewhere that serves food, they will know which type of 'cow' I want without any tonal clues

I'm also pretty sure if I'm wiping my shoe on some grass and say 'khee maa' nobody is going to thing I am riding a horse.

or even mix'n'match your examples 'ow su-am su-ar see-cow', I'm hardly likely to be wanting to wear a rice tiger.

Do Thais talk about colours without using 'see'? I've never noticed that.

But to be fair, in a noodle shop I tried to order 'gu-ay tee-ow gai naam sai' and they didn'y understand because I had the rythm wrong ......

Although in a noodle shop I don't understand how they could possibly be so stupid as to not understand I wanted noodles ........ so I memorised the entire phrase for future use.

'Naam dtaan' is another word nobody seems to recognise no matter how I try, so I just write it on a piece of paper.

[HappyInCM]

Advising someone to forget about tones in Thai is like advising someone learning English to forget about tenses and person in English verbs, forget about singular and plural, forget about the difference between "l" and "r". forget about final s, aspirated t, final pronounced d (as in decided), and so forth. The result of such a truncation of English is a kind of pidgin English, generally comprehensible by a native speaker, but not pleasant (at least for me) to listen to. Moreover, I must confess that it is almost impossible for me to give the same weight and respect to a person speaking this way that I more or less automatically give to someone who speaks non-pidgin English. (I know this reflects my own prejudices and limitations, but I doubt that I am alone in this reaction). Actually, tones are even more central to Thai than the examples above are to English and so the analogy is only partial. Therefore, there just isn't any choice to learning tones unless, as an earlier response pointed out, one wants to limit ones communication to those few Thais who have so much contact with westerners that they can guess the meaning of the words being said. And in my experience, such Thais almost always speak English anyway. So what's the point of subjecting them to the pain of listening to tone-free Thai in the first place?

It also seems impractical to not enunciate words correctly the longer your sentences are - or maybe the more words you use that are beyond hello, how much, no thanks, you're beautiful/unlucky, ... - as those stock words they may be more accustomed to hearing. I would bet too that if you aren't paying attention to the tones, your vowels may not be that clear either. Especially if your vowels aren't crisp, tone will be very important in helping you sound more clear.

I wish I didn't have to practice the tones - more fun to learn new words or phrases, idioms, etc, but ultimately if you want to be understood, you have to tackle them.

But, I think the OP gets their importance already and is motivated to tackle them.

[MikeyIdea]

OK, tones are music and you can't learn music from a book. Hence, you can't learn the tones using your eyes. Only your ears will do. Anyone who don't learn and use the tones when he speaks "Thai" is in fact not speaking Thai, he is speaking something that all Thais have to guess what it is. It's something but it's not Thai.

Remember the HBO original movie about the tsunami? There was a British woman who was supposed to have lived in Thailand for years and years and spoke Thai. I spent the whole film trying to understand what she said, yet I have spoken more Thai than English for over 10 years now. How can it be that a person who is a professional actress, a person who lives her life acting other people and copying other people cannot learn simple pronounciation? Esay, no one told here where it is important for her to concentrate

Westerners are concentrating on trying to correct the wrong place, that's one of the reasons why it is so difficult for many foreigners to get he tones right. A westerner is automaticlally looking for the beginning and especially the ends of the words, and at the consonants - that's where the important information is in western languages. He is programmed to do it he and does it automatically. The problem is that the important information in tonal languages normally doesn't sit in the beginning or the end and certainly not on the consonants. Ladies and Gentlemen, it is the VOWEL that is important in tonal languages, the vowel carries the tone. You can't get a consonant to carry a tone...

Thais are bad at guessing vowels but they are pretty good at guessing consonants.

It is clearly going to help to speed up vocabulary to learn to read and write, but beware, the consonants are very important the way westerners learn reading and writing Thai so that will make you concentrate even more on the consonants, and that could very well be detrimental on your ability to be able to learn to speak Thai. FYI: Thai children first learn to memorise the sound of each letter combination, then they learn the rules later.

One more thing; Anyone who tries to speak or learns to read and write before he can hear the difference between the different tones are creating habits that are very difficult to break. If you can't clearly hear the differences between the tones, then you are not going to be able to pronounce them decently of course, or think them decently in your head, and you will get them wrong. If you wait with the speaking/reading/writing part until you hear the differences then you will pronounce better and will have less to correct

[Tod Daniels]

I forgot to add, that something which I feel goes hand in hand with learning the tones. That is learning proper vowel length when pronouncing thai words.

In engrish, no matter how I say the word; hello , whether I say, heeeello, hellllo, heelllooo it's the same word and carries the same meaning.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the thai language. I find a lot of foreigners go 'off the script' when trying to clearly pronounce a word, especially if a thai doesn't understand it the first time around. They'll either shorten the word or draw it out; both can and are counterproductive to a thai knowing <deleted> you're going on about.

Drawing out the pronunciation of a thai word which has a short vowel, will NOT make the thais understand it better, in fact it's just the opposite. Learning the tones and vowel length are critical when speaking this language with any high degree of comprehension on the part of the thais. Especially so when meeting new thais, who you haven't interacted with before.

I know my male thai friends on the soi where I live understand me fine when we sit and drink Blend 285, and SangSom at nite. I think it is more a fact they learned to understand my foreign accented (and sadly mispronounced) thai, than that I am speaking clearly.

I have seen situations where new thai people will join our group for the first time. There is a definite learning curve for them to dial their hearing in to where they get past the accented thai I speak and start understanding what I'm saying. I can almost see the light come on above their heads, as my accent finally sinks in and they can hear me without having to ask someone what I just said. It's both a testament to just how badly a person can speak thai and yet be understood IF the listener is motivated, and just how far I still hafta go to speak clear thai...

As an aside to the poster known as 'sarahsbloke', you are again using frozen phrases, or groups of words which are 'locked together' which the thais hear and use every day because it is specific to their job requirements. Especially so in any thai food stand that ever gets a foreign customer. It's the same at the shoe repair shop, the 7/11, the supermarket. No matter how you mangle it, if you say it enough they'll probably get it as they know the vocab first and foremost as their job requirement. True you might hafta run thru the pronunciation a few times, trying to get the rhythm down closer to how a thai'd say it, but it’ll sink into them eventually.

I will completely agree with you that especially in 'frozen phrases' the rhythm or cadence is important to them catching what you're saying the first time around. If you pause at the wrong time, or break the sounds wrong, they go blank.

I still stand by my assertions, If you don't learn the tones or vowel length you close the door on almost EVERYTHING this country has to offer once you manage to break the sizeable language barrier.

While you might get away with speaking thai in a monotone for the most basic mundane every day things, you're severely limiting yourself in actually unlocking what's going on in these peoples heads, how they perceive things, and more importantly what their opinions are of the world at large.

[Peppy]

You only need tones to speak to male Thai strangers and they pretty much don't want to talk to you anyway. I certainly don't want to talk to them.

Huh?

'ow su-am su-ar see-cow', I'm hardly likely to be wanting to wear a rice tiger.

But if that's what you say, that's what your listeners will hear, regardless of how unlikely it is. I mean, if you go up to a hotdog stand and order up a couple of hitdigs or homdots or wombats or whatever, you can hardly blame the hotdog guy for giving you a funny look and perhaps not understanding you at all, even if it's clear from context what you want.

And even if you can sometimes get your message across through context (though hand-waving and figure-pointing would probably be just as effective), how do you talk about things out of context? Like, what if you want to talk about rice or tigers or shirts or knees or bedmats or buffalo horns and there aren't any around for you to point at and say, "This is what I'm talking about"?

Tones are very important. เสือ is as close to เสื้อ as cat is to hat. What if somebody told you their hat had kittens?

[keo]

I'm pretty sure if I order 'cow su-ay' somewhere that serves food, they will know which type of 'cow' I want without any tonal clues

I'm also pretty sure if I'm wiping my shoe on some grass and say 'khee maa' nobody is going to thing I am riding a horse.

or even mix'n'match your examples 'ow su-am su-ar see-cow', I'm hardly likely to be wanting to wear a rice tiger.

Do Thais talk about colours without using 'see'? I've never noticed that.

And what about when the situation/context doesn't lend itself to helping the Thais understand what you are trying to say. What are you going to do then? Play charades?

But to be fair, in a noodle shop I tried to order 'gu-ay tee-ow gai naam sai' and they didn'y understand because I had the rythm wrong ......

Although in a noodle shop I don't understand how they could possibly be so stupid as to not understand I wanted noodles ........ so I memorised the entire phrase for future use.

'Naam dtaan' is another word nobody seems to recognise no matter how I try, so I just write it on a piece of paper.

Maybe the problem isn't the noodle vendor's level of intelligence, but the fact that your Thai pronunciation is clearly way below par. I don't understand how you can possibly be so stupid as to not understand the importance of tones in a tonal language.

[anchan42]

I'm pretty sure if I order 'cow su-ay' somewhere that serves food, they will know which type of 'cow' I want without any tonal clues

I'm also pretty sure if I'm wiping my shoe on some grass and say 'khee maa' nobody is going to thing I am riding a horse.

or even mix'n'match your examples 'ow su-am su-ar see-cow', I'm hardly likely to be wanting to wear a rice tiger.

Do Thais talk about colours without using 'see'? I've never noticed that.

But to be fair, in a noodle shop I tried to order 'gu-ay tee-ow gai naam sai' and they didn'y understand because I had the rythm wrong ......

Although in a noodle shop I don't understand how they could possibly be so stupid as to not understand I wanted noodles ........ so I memorised the entire phrase for future use.

'Naam dtaan' is another word nobody seems to recognise no matter how I try, so I just write it on a piece of paper.

So you are having problem communicating with the locals? No wonder

[bhoydy]

น่าสงสารซาร่ามีแฝนนิสัยแบบนี้นะครับ

[MikeyIdea]

น่าสงสารซาร่ามีแฝนนิสัยแบบนี้นะครับ

That may be true for what is discussed in this thread but we all have good and bad in us, I'm not perfect either

Edit: Forgot either

[bhoydy]

น่าสงสารซาร่ามีแฝนนิสัยแบบนี้นะครับ

That may be true for what is discussed in this thread but we all have good and bad in us, I'm not perfect either

Edit: Forgot either

I'm not perfect either, just think that it's funny to call someone stupid when they've not understood you, even though you're speaking the incorrect tones, therefore probably the wrong words.

[sarahsbloke]

Insulting other members is against forum rules .... 2 more persons for the ignore list.

[MikeyIdea]

Insulting other members is against forum rules .... 2 more persons for the ignore list.

Do feel free to put me and others on the ignore list if you wish,but I rather suggest reading my post above. It's a long post with what I think is insightful help how to easier learn the tones. That and the importance of short vs long vowels, which I forgot.

Better solution isn't it?

[keo]

Insulting other members is against forum rules .... 2 more persons for the ignore list.

On the ignore list - along with the tones?!

[MikeyIdea]

Enough guys, tones ARE difficult

[HappyInCM]

Westerners are concentrating on trying to correct the wrong place, that's one of the reasons why it is so difficult for many foreigners to get he tones right. A westerner is automaticlally looking for the beginning and especially the ends of the words, and at the consonants - that's where the important information is in western languages. He is programmed to do it he and does it automatically. The problem is that the important information in tonal languages normally doesn't sit in the beginning or the end and certainly not on the consonants. Ladies and Gentlemen, it is the VOWEL that is important in tonal languages, the vowel carries the tone. You can't get a consonant to carry a tone...

Yes, this is an excellent point I've noticed over and over and should be stressed more in books on learning Thai. Especially for English speakers as the vowel and stress vary so much from region to region. But as an American living in Thailand, I do know how hard it is to understand someone with a strong English or Scottish accent when they speak quickly.

One more thing; Anyone who tries to speak or learns to read and write before he can hear the difference between the different tones are creating habits that are very difficult to break. If you can't clearly hear the differences between the tones, then you are not going to be able to pronounce them decently of course, or think them decently in your head, and you will get them wrong. If you wait with the speaking/reading/writing part until you hear the differences then you will pronounce better and will have less to correct

This is an interesting point, but one I think is somewhat impractical unless you're being given a big pot of money to speak Thai fluently within 2 years and therefore decide to devote your first few months to this and not get bored or demotivated. For me, I can definitely hear the tones when someone else speaks but for some words although I can easily say the word myself and I can hear the tone I almost have to manually decipher it. i.e., I think ok, its some variation of this word and the vowel is long and the tone is falling, so it must be this spelling and therefore this word. So, might take 10 seconds to decode - in which case, it's sometimes better to just guess the word from context. I'm assuming that automating this will come with time just as I know the two versions of the word "record" - verb versus noun w/o having to think about it at all - they are totally different words to me.

A counter point to your theory is that fahrangnarak (I believe) posted something about the US teaching its embassy employees (I believe it was them) to ignore the tones (at least in speaking I think he said) during their 6 month intensive course. Maybe he will comment here on this and how it contrasts with the take care of the tones up front theory.