A Question About Thai Vowels

[Delight]

Would it be true to say that only syllables with LONG vowels can

Have all 5 tones

Syllables with SHORT (Even complex vowels that have no LONG vowel element to them) are limited to HIGH MID and LOW

I ask, because if this is true then it seems to me that the best way to learn to speak tones is to learn to speak vowels only- in their various tonal forms.

Constructive comments invited

[Dancali]

I may be misunderstanding your question, but the common word with a short vowel ค่ะ features a falling tone and sounds different from ค้ะ. BTW, I'm not at a level yet where I make any distinction between the two practically.

Personally, I learned the tones from stepping through the rules, and doing flash cards of sample words daily until things stuck.

Good luck.

[Delight]

Thanks Dancali

I don't think that you have misunderstood my question.

You have succeeded in answering it.

The answer is no i.e SHORT vowels are not limited to HIGH ,MID LOW

Thanks

[Richard W]

There are at least three categories of syllables relevant to discussing tone limitations - live, dead short, and dead long. Live syllables can have all five tones, whether short or long. Dead syllables with long vowels appear to be limited to low, falling (the two inherited categories) and high tones (very often English loan words).

The regularly inherited dead syllables ending in /p/, /t/ or /k/ are restricted to low and high tones. I have seen denials in print that the falling tone can occur on short dead syllables. One quoted example of a falling tone on such a syllable is the non-standard, apparently archaic form พรุ่กนี้ of พรุ่งนี้ 'tomorrow'. (Reconstruction from modern SW Tai languages yields *พรูกนี้.)

Mid tones on dead syllables occur when they are unstressed and do not end in /p/, /t/ or /k/, at which point they have completely lost the final glottal stop. A main group of short dead syllables with falling tones is sentence final particles, and final particles have other oddities. For rising tones on dead syllables, I can only think of the final particle จ๋ะ, and not every one agrees that this is not an exaggerated way of writing จ๊ะ.

[AyG]

Mid tones on dead syllables occur when they are unstressed and do not end in /p/, /t/ or /k/, at which point they have completely lost the final glottal stop.

Lost? I'm curious. What reason is there to think they ever had a final glottal stop?

[fire69water]

Can one really hear the difference between a short syllable that is falling and one that is high, e.g., between ล่ะ and ละ? Sure, ล่ะ is a legitimate Thai word but for all practicality I think there is no difference between these two short syllables. I always thought that to make a falling or rising thing, we need enough "vocal space" to enunciate them. So to try to enunciate a falling tone - short syllable is, IMHO, the equivalent of a short high tone.

Any native Thai would like to help us clarify this issue?

Anyway, I think legitimate Thai words with falling short syllable are few and they are commonly used as particles, if I am not wrong.

Thanks.

[kriswillems]

(I am not a native speaker but) I can clearly hear the difference between ล่ะ and ละ or ค่ะ and คะ. I agree that falling tones are much easier to recognize in long syllables.

Edited April 18, 2012 by kriswillems

[Delight]

I quote fire69water :

. I always thought that to make a falling or rising thing, we need enough "vocal space" to enunciate them.

That statement precisely describes my motive for starting this post.

Having now established that at least FALLING tone with vowel อะ exists -I am now curious about the scale of this combination i.e. is it a main stream combination or so limited it could be regarded as an anomaly ?

[kriswillems]

I quote fire69water :

. I always thought that to make a falling or rising thing, we need enough "vocal space" to enunciate them.

That statement precisely describes my motive for starting this post.

Having now established that at least FALLING tone with vowel อะ exists -I am now curious about the scale of this combination i.e. is it a main stream combination or so limited it could be regarded as an anomaly ?

I can't think of any other dead syllable which has falling tone. But there there are many live syllables with a short vowel that have falling tone (f.i. ต้น)

So, what you're asking in your initial post is not so much about the vowel length but about the fact if the syllable is a live syllable or a dead syllable. Very few dead syllables have falling tone and I don't know any dead syllable that has rising tone.

(just as Richard explained).

Edited April 19, 2012 by kriswillems

[Richard W]

Mid tones on dead syllables occur when they are unstressed and do not end in /p/, /t/ or /k/, at which point they have completely lost the final glottal stop.

Lost? I'm curious. What reason is there to think they ever had a final glottal stop?

The citation form of short 'open' vowels ends in a glottal stop. This is probably related to the marked reluctance of Thais to use short 'open' vowels for stressed vowels when transcribing English names. Note that the symbol for a syllable-final glottal stop, ะ, originally represented final /h/ (visarga), as it still does in Khmer.

[kriswillems]

I can't think of any other dead syllable which has falling tone. But there there are many live syllables with a short vowel that have falling tone (f.i. ต้น)

So, what you're asking in your initial post is not so much about the vowel length but about the fact if the syllable is a live syllable or a dead syllable. Very few dead syllables have falling tone and I don't know any dead syllable that has rising tone.

(just as Richard explained).

I made a mistake in this post. In the category of words you describe in your initial post the vowel length is also important, because the are many dead syllables with a long vowel and a falling tone (f.i. มาก).