Overview Of Thai Tones

[djayz]

I've tried to summarize the Thai tones and tone rules to make it easier for me to remember them (see attachment).

I'd much appreciate it if someone here who speaks/understands Thai very well would check it for me.

Thanking you in advance.

3 groups of consonants.2.pdf

[Dancealot]

I dont.

But i am happy to see more people are serious about learning the Thai luangage.

[AyG]

A few things missing I think (but I only quickly scanned the document):

ใ and ไ are both usually short vowels, but the tone follow the rules for long vowels.

No reference to leading ห and อ.

No reference to which consonant determines which rule to apply when the word begins with a consonant cluster.

No reference to how with maitaikhu the tone mark can't be shown, so you can't actually determine the tone from the writing.

No reference to how consonants "killed" by karan are ignored in determining whether a syllable is live or dead.

And then there are all the irregularities ...

[tgeezer]

It looks good to me, now that you have made up your own table you probably won't need it again. I certainly don't see any irregularities in it.

ไ and ใ need to be considered short vowel with closing consonant อัย then no special rule required.

Tones for a pair of initial consonants are consistent; the first letter is the initial consonant for tone, both voiced (with a half อะ between) and unvoiced (อ,ห) leading letters follow this rule except if the second letter is a paired letter in the case of voiced initial letter. The same applies when the second letter is ร,ล or ว.

No need to consider อ็ other than as showing a short vowel where the odd exceptional case can be learned.

[djayz]

A few things missing I think (but I only quickly scanned the document):

ใ and ไ are both usually short vowels, but the tone follow the rules for long vowels. - If I understood it correctly, ใ and ไ don't determine the tone rules...

No reference to leading ห and อ. - I think I know these rules off by heart, hence I didn't include them in my chart.

No reference to which consonant determines which rule to apply when the word begins with a consonant cluster. "Consonant clusters" is a concept that I am still struggling with - that's why I left them out completely (I'll add them as soon as I've rapped my head around the whole concept and the ins and outs of consonant clusters.

No reference to how with maitaikhu the tone mark can't be shown, so you can't actually determine the tone from the writing. I'm still practicing that one...

No reference to how consonants "killed" by karan are ignored in determining whether a syllable is live or dead. IF I understood it correctly, this doesn't affect/determine the tone... feel free to correct me if I'm wrong and please explain how it changes the tone...

And then there are all the irregularities ...

Am still a far, far way off from these... ;o) Thanks for the feed back!

Edited March 24, 2013 by Maestro
Fixed quote tags

[Richard W]

For the final sonorants, '/o/ อ' should be '/u/ ว' - <o> is a consequence of 'au' for เอา being too confusing for English speakers.

As suggested above, it is worth noting that ไ and ใ imply final /i/ and เ-า implies final /u/ (or <o> if you prefer).

I would add the 4th final stop sound, /ʔ/ ะ.

You might wish to note that mai tri and mai chattawa are sometimes used used with high and low consonants. In these cases, the meaning is the same as for mid consonants. The commonest examples I know are เค๊ก (misspelling of เค้ก) and จ๋ะ. Rising tones on dead syllables are at best marginal in Standard Thai, and I am not sure of the actual pronunciation of จ๋ะ. The RID implies that rising tones on dead syllables should be written with low consonants rather than high consonants; I've only seen high consonants used.

[makescents]

Typo on the top of page 2.

คาเป็น (live) and คาตาย (dead) syllables - was missing the เ

[Nuna]

No reference to how consonants "killed" by karan are ignored indetermining whether a syllable is live or dead.

IF I understood it correctly, this doesn't affect/determine the tone.

That's right. And you don't have to know about ตัวการันต์ when it come to tone system.The job of ตัวการันต์ is just to tell apart the original language of words because we use ทัณฑฆาต to shorten its full original form from Pali and Sansakrit. When you want to compose a poem, you can remove ทัณฑฆาต to activate the ending sound.

The marker that kills the ending sound is ทัณฑฆาต

The killed consonant is ตัวการันต์

[Richard W]

And you don't have to know about ตัวการันต์ when it come to tone system.

Just so long as one remembers to completely ignore the silenced consonants at the end of a syllable. It may seem obvious, but not everyone realises this.

When you want to compose a poem, you can remove ทัณฑฆาต to activate the ending sound.

Shouldn't such words end in an explicit vowel?

[Nuna]

And you don't have to know about ตัวการันต์ when it come to tone system.

Just so long as one remembers to completely ignore the silenced consonants at the end of a syllable. It may seem obvious, but not everyone realises this.

>When you want to compose a poem, you can remove ทัณฑฆาต to activate the ending sound.

Shouldn't such words end in an explicit vowel?

Let see an example, ลักษณ์(Lak) ล is low tone consonant combined with short vowel ะ and the final consonant ก. It's dead syllable absolutely so this word is pronounced Lak (/). Whether with or without ตัวการันต์, ลัก Lak(/) is the same with ลักษณ์ Lak(/)

For the ending sound when ทัณฑฆาต removed, pronuciation will comply with consonant class and leading consonant rules. In this case, the leading consonant is ษ which is high tone while ณ is low. Therefore, ณ follow high tone rules then ลักษณ is read Lak(/)-sa(\)-na(\).

Sorry for my English.

[Richard W]

For the ending sound when ทัณฑฆาต removed, pronuciation will comply with consonant class and leading consonant rules. In this case, the leading consonant is ษ which is high tone while ณ is low. Therefore, ณ follow high tone rules then ลักษณ is read Lak(/)-sa(\)-na(\).

But according to the RID, there is no such word as ลักษณ! What you are describing is the word ลักษณะ. Confusingly, as the initial element of a compound word, ลักษณ is pronounced the same as the word ลักษณะ.

[AyG]

For the ending sound when ทัณฑฆาต removed, pronuciation will comply with consonant class and leading consonant rules. In this case, the leading consonant is ษ which is high tone while ณ is low. Therefore, ณ follow high tone rules then ลักษณ is read Lak(/)-sa(\)-na(\).

But according to the RID, there is no such word as ลักษณ! What you are describing is the word ลักษณะ. Confusingly, as the initial element of a compound word, ลักษณ is pronounced the same as the word ลักษณะ.

The final comment isn't strictly true. The final two syllables of the initial compound are unstressed, and in normal speech are toneless. In ลักษณะ the first of the final two syllables is similarly unstressed, but the second one is stressed, has a tone and is terminated by a glottal stop.

[Nuna]

For the ending sound when ทัณฑฆาต removed, pronuciation will comply with consonant class and leading consonant rules. In this case, the leading consonant is ษ which is high tone while ณ is low. Therefore, ณ follow high tone rules then ลักษณ is read Lak(/)-sa(\)-na(\).

But according to the RID, there is no such word as ลักษณ! What you are describing is the word ลักษณะ. Confusingly, as the initial element of a compound word, ลักษณ is pronounced the same as the word ลักษณะ.

Poet use it to create rhythm without marker. If you do know some poem, there might be several words you never imagine that they really exist and used in literature only and even the Thais have to guess meanings from the context!!

In addition, we can change words appearance just to fit in with Thai poem rules. But we are not talking about it. I use this word just to explain how tone rules function.

As you mentioned about compound word, some beautiful girly names that use ลักษณ as initial word such as ลักษณวดี (Lak-Sa-Na-Wa-Dee) ลักษณวลัย (Lak-Sa-Na-Wa-Lai). Once ลักษณ is connected with suffix, ณ after ษ won't follow high tone rule anymore. It becomes Lak(/)-Sa(\)-Na(--)-Wa(--)-Dee(--) not Lak(/)-Sa(\)-Na(\) as it stand alone.

Sorry for causing you confused due to my low English skill.