Trouble with tones

[Sally Salvatore]

I do not hear great and not real good with tones. In English it is not that important but when I think I am saying exactly like she does she tells me I am not. (So frustrating) I can not hear the difference in some of the tones so it all sounds the same to me.

will this get better or will I just hope to talk like a person with a strong accent that is just learning the language. I see it all the time with people learning English, some people after 40 years in America still speak with broken English, I am starting to think I will be one of those people but trying to speak broken Thai.

[HeavyDrinker]

I am starting to think I will be one of those people but trying to speak broken Thai.

You won't be alone. "mastering the tones" is possibly the one biggest stumbling block Westerners face when learning Thai, few ever do.

One nice device I was given when learning was to choose several words of each tone and literally repeat them over and over and over with a native speaker until the 'shape' of the tones is embedded in your learning.

Others have found using hand gestures useful so they literally 'motion' the tone of the word as they speak it.

[kriswillems]

If you don't have a hearing problem and you find a good teacher to help you, I think you can learn it.

You need a teacher with a clear voice that is willing to exaggerate the tones when talking to you - preferably a teacher will a long experience of teaching Thai to foreigners. Take private lessons.

As for speaking broken Thai after many years in Thailand....

I think speaking broken Thai after many years in Thailand would be a very nice achievement.

I met very few foreigners that really sound like a Thai. The ones I know are either language gurus (and even those tend to have an accent) or they grew up in Thailand.

Actually, for first generation foreigners coming from Asia or the middle east, it's also a nice achievement to be able to speak broken English when living in the US.

Edited December 31, 2013 by kriswillems

[bunnydrops]

One trick that has helped me is using my head . For a rising tone start with your head lowered and end with your head looking up a little.. This is of course for learning as you would look a little silly in public, but it gets you use to pronouncing the tones.

[Ajaan]

One trick that has helped me is using my head . For a rising tone start with your head lowered and end with your head looking up a little.. This is of course for learning as you would look a little silly in public, but it gets you use to pronouncing the tones.

This is an excellent technique, especially for learning individual vocabulary items. I lift my head up (and then lower it) and stand on my tiptoes for rising/falling tone, dip my head down and then back up for rising tone, lower my jaw and keep it there for low tone, etc.

In general (and I'm a language teacher), it's always better to link memory of a new vocabulary item to non-audio stimuli (in addition, of course, to the audio stimuli, i.e. sound of the word!): an image, a physical sensation, or, as in this case, a physical movement. I do similar things with my students all the time, though the language I teach is not tonal.

I've been speaking Thai for about 14 years, and while I don't claim to be fluent, I do alright, and I still use this head-movement trick to memorize the tone of a new vocabulary item while learning it (and I used it for learning Vietnamese and Cantonese before Thai). Once you've got it memorized it, of course, you can dispense with the head motion, so as not to appear crazy in public, haha.

[CaptHaddock]

to the OP,

If you are determined to learn to speak Thai correctly and have a competent Thai teacher to work with you one-on-one, you can definitely learn to pronounce the tones correctly. And it won't even take that long. You will be speaking "clearly" long before you are fluent.

However, if you think that being able to pronounce the tones is an inherent ability that you lack, or that it is simply impossible for foreigners to use tones, or that it is optional for speaking Thai, or that speaking Thai itself is optional because you can get what you want in the 7/11 anyway, then you will never be able to pronounce the tones correctly.

When I started learning Thai on my own three years ago, I also could not recognize the tones demonstrated on the audio clips, at least not consistently. After two years study in Thailand, most of it one-on-one with very competent teachers who always correct my mispronunciations, I can definitely speak the tones correctly. Sometimes native Thais remark on how "clearly" I speak Thai, by which they mean I get the tones correct, at least sometimes. (Thai speakers have very low expectations for foreigners speaking Thai.) On the other hand when I am narrating some longish story with complex sentences I often forget the tones completely and revert discourse-level intonation changes from English, which the Thais find disconcerting, although they can still understand me.

So, yes you can certainly do it, but the price is that it may take you years of daily practice and correction to get there. It's worth it to me. Is it worth it to you?

[Sally Salvatore]

Thanks for the tips everyone.

I am not deaf but I do have problems with hearing everything. Took a job when I was young building Jet Engine test pads, we build the first one then they used it as we built the other 5, 10 hrs a day wearing ear plugs and ear muffs like on a gun range and still heard the dam engines, they were so loud that you were sore, felt like someone was beating on your chest all day, you would still hear them with the double ear protection. We would scream at the top of our lungs 2 inches from each other with the ear plugs out and couldn't hear what you were saying.

I downloaded Teach yourself Thai and was looking at highspeedthai.com, I think these are better then getting frustrated with the girl.

[sdanielmcev]

As I am just beginning to learn Thai, excuse me if this has been done before. I write the words the same as musical notation. Anybody else try this?

[GotR1GHT]

As I am just beginning to learn Thai, excuse me if this has been done before. I write the words the same as musical notation. Anybody else try this?

I don't get,how do you do it? Have an example?

[bifftastic]

As I am just beginning to learn Thai, excuse me if this has been done before. I write the words the same as musical notation. Anybody else try this?

Whilst that does sound interesting, I would strongly recommend anyone starting out learning Thai to learn the Thai script right from the start.

It's what I should have done, and what I would do differently if I could start again.

All the tones are there for you to see in the Thai script, even if you don't learn the tone rules, you recognise words and know their tones.

Like หมา ม้า and มา

Also, in normal conversation things can get a bit quick. So if you are having trouble hearing the tones, you might benefit from a teacher who initially speaks slowly enough for you to hear the difference when they are giving you an example.

Often your partner isn't the ideal teacher, for many reasons. The main one being that although they can, obviously, speak the language, that doesn't make them able to teach it effectively.

My wife is a case in point.

Lovely woman, not a teacher by any stretch of the imagination.

[sdanielmcev]

As I am just beginning to learn Thai, excuse me if this has been done before. I write the words the same as musical notation. Anybody else try this?

I don't get,how do you do it? Have an example?

I just take 4 lines (3 spaces) and write the translated sounds in their proper elevations. This is for speaking, not writing.

[jpeg]

Edited January 19, 2014 by jpeg

[BudRight]

I had invented my own tone and writing system - I threw it away after a month. That was 14 years ago.

Take the time to learn to read Thai at the same time you're learning the tones, it will integrate better in your mind and make more sense.

I'm fact, learning to read is critical; I daresay you will never speak or understand Thai properly without this. You don't need to understand every word you read, just all the letters and grammar rules. I learned from bar girls. After three years I was reading Doramon comics.

[SanukDii]

Best of luck with your studies. You have my sympathies.

Here's how I managed to master the tones, you may or not find it useful

As I spent most of my professional life as a musician and also have a languages batchelors degree I thought mastering Thai would be quite straightforward - Wrong!!

One of the confusing things about the tones is that some of them do not (musically speaking) do what they say they do - High tone actually rises in pitch for example....I found that sooooo confusing at the beginning.

English has many tones we just don't write them as part of the language. Asking a question and lifting the pitch of the last word is one example. EG: You speak English.....or.....You speak English? We use tones to convey mood and intent. This is one of the reasons why English is such a difficult language to master for the non native speaker.

Anway I digress....So..... I first found ways of correlating my own language phonetics to Thai tones. The Thai falling tone as in Khao (Rice) is spoken as if one was calling a friend some distance away (maybe across a street) The High tone as in Naam (water) ..... imagine the sound a motorbike makes as it accelerates from a standing start. Naaaaaaam ... Those are just two examples but I'm sure if you study the sounds you make when speaking your own language you can find more correlations.

Not very scientific but I found all the above useful aides, you'll never grasp tones by taking only group lessons or just learning from a book. You have to hear them spoken only by a native speaker - group lessons used to drive me crazy listening to everyone mangling the tones.

If you can, do some private lessons where you only concentrate on vowel sounds (that will be the other issue) and tones. Practice. Practice. Practice. If you want to go deeper Linguistics study is a useful tool for learning the position of the tongue in the mouth whilst saying certain words....but maybe that's too much for most.

Best of luck and well done for trying to learn the language. Your time here will be far more enjoyable because of it.

[steveromagnino]

If I could offer one small piece of advice, try to understand the tones not from a point of how they sound but how your mouth and neck changes to achieve them.

Find someone who knows how to speak Thai correctly. Listen to them do all 5 tones, then repeat after them. Run through the tones tons of times with various consonants, with someone correcting them if you get it wrong, and think carefully as you go, where does the sound originate from, what happens to make it rise, what happens to make it fall. So you then have clear positions for mid low falling high rising.

Low = sound comes low in the throat (wide fully open)

Mid = sound comes middle of the throat (mostly open)

High = sound comes from top of throat (and closing it off slightly)

rising - starts low goes to high position

falling - starting high position goes to low

try to forget adding in emotion into the tones as you would in English, with excitement, questions, lists etc - just get the exact tone sound for that syllable ONLY.

Then start reading Thai and knowing which tone goes with which word - soon enough its like riding a bike :_)

This way, even though you may not have a great set of ears, you know exactly which tone you are trying to achieve, and you can speak without hearing yourself because you have focused on the mechanics of getting it right (rather than just the sound coming out).

This is also really useful also for ป and ต both sounds which do not exist in English, and is rare to hear a foreigner get right consistently; if you know the mechanics of forming those sounds as opposed to บ and ด then you are well on your way to getting the words coming out correctly.

Edited February 19, 2014 by steveromagnino

[olddoc]

My "mouth and neck" will not , however much i try produce the "tones" !

I have a good Thai vocabulary but can reduce my Thai friends to tears/laughter when attempting to speak !

Thais I do not know are much more polite and attempt to decipher my garbled attempts to speak their language

[sms747]

I don't see how you can learn to speak the tones if you cannot even identify them, I know I can't after 20 years. Listening to any Thai talking, even correct Thai on the tv I can never hear any tones being used.

Edited February 20, 2014 by sms747

[FiftyTwo]

I don't see how you can learn to speak the tones if you cannot even identify them, I know I can't after 20 years. Listening to any Thai talking, even correct Thai on the tv I can never hear any tones being used.

Tones aren't used much in sentences.

Mainly used in individual words.

Use complete sentences and you won't have as many problems.

People who attempt one or two Thai words slowly rarely progress.

PS

OP doesn't say who is telling them, experienced educational professional or friend.

Edited February 20, 2014 by FiftyTwo

[sms747]

not used in sentences? I never heard that before either, interesting

[danphuket]

The best way to learn tones for me was to go to a language school and get myself trained to recognize tones and pronounce them through straightforward repetition. Books and even audio books lack ability to correct you when you even don't realize that you are mispronouncing. Hearing tones and being able to produce them in at least a recognizable way is crucial for future learning experience

[sdanielmcev]

I don't see how you can learn to speak the tones if you cannot even identify them, I know I can't after 20 years. Listening to any Thai talking, even correct Thai on the tv I can never hear any tones being used.

Tones aren't used much in sentences.

Mainly used in individual words.

Use complete sentences and you won't have as many problems.

People who attempt one or two Thai words slowly rarely progress.

PS

OP doesn't say who is telling them, experienced educational professional or friend.

Could you please explain this? I had thought each word, even used in sentences, had to be spoken tonally. I am a beginner.

[Richard W]

Tones aren't used much in sentences.

Mainly used in individual words.

Use complete sentences and you won't have as many problems.

Could you please explain this? I had thought each word, even used in sentences, had to be spoken tonally. I am a beginner.

A mispronounced sentence is easier to understand than a mispronounced word. Listening usually works by half-guessing what will come next as some one speaks. That is why a totally unexpected word can cause bafflement in a listener - even when both are talking their native language. If only isolated words are used, there is far less context on which to base guesses.