How To Learn Thai Vowels And Tone Rules?

[Mousehound]

I am not good at learning languages. Also. as I am at retirement age I don't seem to remember things as well as I did. I live in Australia at the moment and visit Thailand fairly regularly. I have been teaching myself to read Thai as best I can (14 months - 20mins a day). I have the consonants down pretty well. Still don't have the tone rules worked out properly though. But I am having a real problem remembering the vowels. Does anyone have any tricks to help out. Also if you have comments on remembering tonal rules.

Thanks

[KunMatt]

I taught myself so I can only tell you the way I learnt the tone rules (and for the record I still have trouble with the complex vowels sometimes!).

First, I memorised all of the Thai consonants from the 'Thai for Beginners' book including their sound.

Then I memorised which were the middle consonants including the Thai name for the letter, ie "gor gai".

Next I memorised which ones are the high consonants.

Everything you haven't learnt as a mid or high consonant is a low consonant.

Lastly memorise the tone rule table.

Try not to cram too much in 1 go. I spent about an hour or 2 a day for 10 days to make sure I had properly memorised everything from above.

Once you have learnt it, use it as much as possible. You will still make mistakes at first but it will slowly become habit to quickly recognise the tone from the script and you begin to do it automatically without trying to recall the class and tone rule.

Once you know the rules I found learning new vocabulary and speaking the correct tones came much quicker to me.

Even when I don't know the meaning of a word in a magazine I can still say it and remember it to look up later if I can read it in Thai.

Just stick with it and it will come. I don't think there is an easy route, you have to put the work in - although I admit mine wasn't the best method as I never learnt the names of the low class consonants.

For the vowels, I found this site very helpful http://www.thai-language.com/ref/vowels and there are a number of good Youtube videos that you can use daily to learn them.

And here's a decent version of the tone rule chart including the short and long vowel rules; http://www.thai-language.com/ref/tone-rules

Edited October 7, 2012 by KunMatt

[kokesaat]

I'm 62, wear dual hearing aids......not the best at the Thai language, but I manage. Don't convince yourself you're too old.......it seems to be the reason most people never try.

I'm sure some (maybe many) will disagree with me on learning to read.....but I'd say, stop trying to learn the alphabet. Instead, start learning to read something like the Maani series, available on line with pdf files and mp3. It's available at http://www.seasite.niu.edu/thai/language/reading.htm

You begin reading with lesson one.....you learn the few vowels/consonants used in that lesson only. Each lesson builds on the previous one. Repeated vocabulary. It broke the code for me. Give it a try.

[KunMatt]

I'm 62, wear dual hearing aids......not the best at the Thai language, but I manage. Don't convince yourself you're too old.......it seems to be the reason most people never try.

I'm sure some (maybe many) will disagree with me on learning to read.....but I'd say, stop trying to learn the alphabet. Instead, start learning to read something like the Maani series, available on line with pdf files and mp3. It's available at http://www.seasite.n...age/reading.htm

You begin reading with lesson one.....you learn the few vowels/consonants used in that lesson only. Each lesson builds on the previous one. Repeated vocabulary. It broke the code for me. Give it a try.

I've never seen this before but I think I would find it very useful. Thanks for the link, I'm gonna go try it right now!

[Mousehound]

I taught myself so I can only tell you the way I learnt the tone rules (and for the record I still have trouble with the complex vowels sometimes!).

First, I memorised all of the Thai consonants from the 'Thai for Beginners' book including their sound.

Then I memorised which were the middle consonants including the Thai name for the letter, ie "gor gai".

Next I memorised which ones are the high consonants.

Everything you haven't learnt as a mid or high consonant is a low consonant.

Lastly memorise the tone rule table.

Try not to cram too much in 1 go. I spent about an hour or 2 a day for 10 days to make sure I had properly memorised everything from above.

Once you have learnt it, use it as much as possible. You will still make mistakes at first but it will slowly become habit to quickly recognise the tone from the script and you begin to do it automatically without trying to recall the class and tone rule.

Once you know the rules I found learning new vocabulary and speaking the correct tones came much quicker to me.

Even when I don't know the meaning of a word in a magazine I can still say it and remember it to look up later if I can read it in Thai.

Just stick with it and it will come. I don't think there is an easy route, you have to put the work in - although I admit mine wasn't the best method as I never learnt the names of the low class consonants.

For the vowels, I found this site very helpful http://www.thai-lang....com/ref/vowels and there are a number of good Youtube videos that you can use daily to learn them.

And here's a decent version of the tone rule chart including the short and long vowel rules; http://www.thai-lang.../ref/tone-rules

Thanks for your reply - it all helps.

[Mousehound]

I'm 62, wear dual hearing aids......not the best at the Thai language, but I manage. Don't convince yourself you're too old.......it seems to be the reason most people never try.

I'm sure some (maybe many) will disagree with me on learning to read.....but I'd say, stop trying to learn the alphabet. Instead, start learning to read something like the Maani series, available on line with pdf files and mp3. It's available at http://www.seasite.n...age/reading.htm

You begin reading with lesson one.....you learn the few vowels/consonants used in that lesson only. Each lesson builds on the previous one. Repeated vocabulary. It broke the code for me. Give it a try.

Thanks kokesaat,

I'll give this a try. I am not the type to give up easily but I do get a bit down on how long it takes me to remember things.

[Richard W]

For the vowel symbols composed of a single element, I have a few suggestions that may ease the learning load.

Apart from the /a/ vowels, short and long forms differ by the latter having an additional vertical stroke, sometimes with a connecting piece. Thus, using the extended RTGS system of this forum, we get the pairs:

/i/ อิ /ii/ อี

/ue/ อึ /uue/ อื (These are SE Asian sounds, not Indian, so an extra mark is needed to show the non-Indian vowel. It's a bit confusing that the vowel quality mark is a circle for the short vowel and a vertical stroke for the long vowel.)

/u/ อุ /uu/ อู

The next two are only short and long if you think of the Sanskrit correspondences, though it can help if you think of simplifications that sometimes happen in other languages, if you are into that sort of thing:

/ee/ เอ /ai/ ไอ

/oo/ โอ /au/ เอา

The last ones a bit of a cheat - what happens is that the symbol gets a bit too heavy when you add the length mark, and so it breaks when it tries to stand up as โอ. You may find that far fetched, but it's pretty close to the actual history of the symbols.

For short /a/, the original scheme had nothing - it was the implicit vowel. However, there was one syllable that came to be used for a final /a/ followed by /h/ and then just a glottal stop, and this gives us /a/ อะ. (Confusingly, the implicit vowel of Thai is short /o/ in closed syllables.)

It seems to me that this symbol has come to be used for three related functions in three forms:

/a/ อั (in closed syllables)

/e/ เอ็ (short vowel in closed syllables)

/e/ เอะ (short vowel in 'open' syllables)

For /aa/, we start with nothing plus a vertical stroke. The vertical stroke has curled a bit, so we get อา.

I haven't yet addressed ใ แ ฤ ฤๅ.

I'm not sure where /ai/ ใ comes from. My best surmise is that it came from a comparison such as /ai/ ไอ is to /ai/ ใอ as /i/ อิ is to อึ /ue/, for ใอ was originally pronounced /aue/, and still is in some related languages.

Likewise, I am guessing for the origin of แ. In native Thai words, เอ is normally short in closed syllables whereas แอ is normally long - /aae/. I would therefore guess that แ is simply a doubling of เ just to show length. Nowadays, a short /e/ is explicitly marked as short if there is no tone mark.

/ruue/ ฤๅ is the long form of /rue/, /ri/, /roe/ ฤ ; the ๅ is just a contextual form of า.

[Mousehound]

Richard W

Thanks for the info - I just looked through the charts and indeed the extra or longer lines do seem to have the longer sound.

Just managed to learn the dead and live rules and the middle and high consonants yesterday. Trying to get the short vowels today.

Tone markers are next.

I am on hols so hope to get this broken by next week.

Then it is just practice I guess.

[Delight]

Edited October 14, 2012 by Delight

[Delight]

As a test I downloaded my own JPEG not too good.

So I have converted them to PDF -better I think

5 attached

VOWEL CHART 1.pdfVOWEL CHART 2.pdfTONE CHART for SYLLABLES without a TONE MARK.pdf

TONE CHART for SYLLABLES WITH TONE MARKS.pdf

Learning Thai Vowels was difficult for me.pdf

Edited October 14, 2012 by Delight

[Mousehound]

As a test I downloaded my own JPEG not too good.

So I have converted them to PDF -better I think

5 attached

VOWEL CHART 1.pdfVOWEL CHART 2.pdfTONE CHART for SYLLABLES without a TONE MARK.pdf

Again many thanks.

[rgs2001uk]

[attachment=176615:TONE CHART for SYLLABLES WITH TONE MARKS.jpg

VOWELS

Learning Thai Vowels was difficult for me.

So I came up with the charts attached

1 From a speaking point of view you only need to learn the LONG vowels. To speak a SHORT vowel (the vowels are listed in pairs)simply start as if you are planning to speak LONG then simply cut it off to achieve SHORT. When referring to vowels the LONG is spoken MID and the SHORT is low tone. As you are no doubt aware the name of the vowel is the sound of the vowel preceded by the Thai word for vowel สระ sà~​rà

2) The Thai vowel system is absolute –the pronunciation never changes –that cannot be said for the English Language system

3) Look to U TUBE for the actual vowel sounds.

4. The vowel อื and it‘s SHORT pair

( plus a diphthong that incorporates it ) are un-natural for Native English speakers . I watched the mouth /jaw movements of native Thai speakers.

I attach a couple of charts –whilst not comprehensive should give you a good start.

TONES

It seemed obvious to me that the job of analysing the TONES was given to a language academic.

I am not an academic –so again I came up with couple of charts.

I dont want to pick fault with your excellent post, but have you ever heard of irregular vowels?

Consider these two words, the same vovel,

กิน ปิด, gin as in to eat, try pronouncing peet pratu as pit pratu.

[Delight]

I dont want to pick fault with your excellent post, but have you ever heard of irregular vowels?

Consider these two words, the same vovel,

กิน ปิด, gin as in to eat, try pronouncing peet pratu as pit pratu.

Do not fully understand your point. If the final consonant is removed from both of these words -then that which remains is regular.

There is,however , a mistake on one of my attachments . This mistake relates to a diphthong at the bottom of the chart Vowel 2

I attach a revision

VOWEL CHART 2 rev 1.pdf