The teaching of tones to foreigners

[ChristianPFC]

I made the big mistake of starting learning Thai with romanization (there was no other course available when I started), so I had about 20 hours of teaching in a group with romanization, which I wish I could make undone.

Even now, after working 1 year and holidaying 1 year in Thailand and reading simple Thai texts and doing most of my daily business (shopping, restaurant, taxi, traveling all over Thailand, hotel) in Thai, I sill associate the tones with:

movement of hand, movement of head, or with their representation by diacritics over the letter

and not as a combination of consonant class + vowel (short/long) / live/dead syllable / tone marks.

When I speak, I often still make these slight movements of head or hand, or imagine the diacritics.

Do others have similar experience and what can be done about it?

(I am German and speak some French and once learned Russian. French verb endings come naturally, I don't have to imagine conjugation tables. Similar for Russian cases, I don't have to think of the cases and tables, it comes naturally after some time. But these have equivalents in German, whereas tones have not.)

[scatalyst]

Sounds to me like you're doing well if you're being understood, and you're only using "slight" head and hand movements. But since you asked for suggestions . . .

Have you spent much time reading Thai text while listening to a native speaker read through it at the same time? That might help you retrain your mind to associate the tones with the Thai script without thinking about the hand gestures.

I found a website with a short Christian devotional for each day and an audio file so I can listen to it while following along with the Thai script. You can find it at thaiodb (Our Daily Bread). It's available in several other languages, too.

[bhthai]

I definitely did the head thing when I was started to practice speaking a tonal language.

Probably once you increase the speed of your speech, it will become more natural.

Don't consider it always as a bad thing. Adam Bradshaw said when he first started he would move his hand direction the tone, when speaking to Thai people. Could be a good may to make it more clear to Thai people, if you still need a lot of practice.

[EmptyHead]

Teaching Tones to Foreigners

[Johpa]

I use to use small hand movements in the beginning. There seems to be some neural muscular connections between the hand and the mouth. Watch people's face contort as they try to thread a needle. And good luck trying to find any Thai who can talk about consonant classes or open syllables.

[fire69water]

I sympathize with westerners struggling to learn Thai or Chinese because of this intonation hurdle. Being a Chinese, intonation in Thai is quite natural to me. I think the problem lies with westerners not given enough "handles" to grasp tones, other than their descriptive names as: Low, Falling, High, Rising and Neutral or Mid. I have thought about this and I have come up with more "handles" to address this problem. See if it helps.

Since intonation in western languages are used to convey emotions rather than to differentiate one word from the other, why not think of Thai tones as emotions with a representative color to boot. For Low, think of "sadness" and brown, for Falling, "anger, pain" and red, for High, "bliss" and blue and for Rising, "curiosity" and green (greenhorns are curious, as they should be).

Try putting this into Google translate and click on the text to speech speaker icon: จอดรถ ห้าบาท กินแล้ว จริงหรอ สิบห้าล้านหมา

Hope this helps.

[phuketsub]

I sympathize with westerners struggling to learn Thai or Chinese because of this intonation hurdle. Being a Chinese, intonation in Thai is quite natural to me. I think the problem lies with westerners not given enough "handles" to grasp tones, other than their descriptive names as: Low, Falling, High, Rising and Neutral or Mid. I have thought about this and I have come up with more "handles" to address this problem. See if it helps.

Since intonation in western languages are used to convey emotions rather than to differentiate one word from the other, why not think of Thai tones as emotions with a representative color to boot. For Low, think of "sadness" and brown, for Falling, "anger, pain" and red, for High, "bliss" and blue and for Rising, "curiosity" and green (greenhorns are curious, as they should be).

Try putting this into Google translate and click on the text to speech speaker icon: จอดรถ ห้าบาท กินแล้ว จริงหรอ สิบห้าล้านหมา

Hope this helps.

The tones are not 'automatic' for me. I have gone through the rules and understand them conceptually, but I don't have the practiced ability to come up with the correct pronunciation based solely on the written rules. Probably not enough time with flash cards.

I learned Thai by listening and, initially, through phonetics (which I regret now).

I think I can speak Thai pretty well and most basic words I read I know the correct tone for, but when I read it and come across a word I am unfamiliar with I am quite likely to get the tone wrong. It's even worse when I try to write in Thai.

I put the suggested Thai text (จอดรถ ห้าบาท กินแล้ว จริงหรอ สิบห้าล้านหมา) into GoogleTranslate and it doesn't really make sense to me. Why should จอด be associated with "sadness" or brown color?

There are many words that would not hold up to this rationale. หมา (dog,rising tone) is somehow curious?

I don't get it. I must be missing something.

It reminds me of my confusion over having to learn 'gender' articles when I was studying French: Why must it be Le Chat (the cat, masculine) and La Chien (dog, feminine)...it seems counter-intuitive to me, not to mention a waste of time and effort, to burn calories assigning 'gender' to each and every object, no matter how mundane. No speaker of French I have ever met has been able to explain the importance to me, yet they all insist that it is important.

I do appreciate the tones have a powerful ability to implant in the memory. Even my telephone number I have memorized in Thai and have more trouble remembering in English.

I appreciate your effort to help and hope you can bring me into the light with more explanation and examples.

[GuyL]

[...] It reminds me of my confusion over having to learn 'gender' articles when I was studying French: Why must it be Le Chat (the cat, masculine) and La Chien (dog, feminine)... [...]

Actually, it's "le chien" (for a male dog, but "la chienne" for a bitch), not "la chien" in French.

[SlyAnimal]

I think he's more referring to the "tone" as being "curious" etc, as opposed to the word itself.

Thinking about those emotions seemed to conjure the correct tones for me, and reminds me of Stuart J Raj's "Dennis the Menace" example, which I found quite good, it's included in the video below:

Although for identifying the tones etc, it's just a process of learning the rules. For myself, I have no problems with identifying the tones when reading something (Although I'm still slow at it, but then I also read pretty slowly anyway lol), but often have problems with hearing the correct tone, or even with pronouncing the correct tone. Particularly with saying the high tone, and getting falling/rising mixed up when listening/speaking (I think my impression of what is "rising" is simply off, which causes me to screw up the others, I've gotta get my wife to help me). But all of the tones usually go out the window for me anyway when I start speaking lol, as I usually can't remember the tones for most words lol (I usually just remember the ones where people have pulled me up for saying shirt instead of tiger, or new instead of no etc)

[ChristianPFC]

Teaching Tones to Foreigners

I don't know what you want to say with that post. I am not a native speaker, so I thought it is a grammar correction (and I'm always open for corrections), but then I asked a native speaker, and he said "The teaching of tones to foreigners" is correct for a headline.

[phuketsub]

[...] It reminds me of my confusion over having to learn 'gender' articles when I was studying French: Why must it be Le Chat (the cat, masculine) and La Chien (dog, feminine)... [...]

Actually, it's "le chien" (for a male dog, but "la chienne" for a bitch), not "la chien" in French.

Thanks for that, but it still doesn't help with my great mystery: why does the language need/continue to use gender associations with nouns at all?

Why haven't they just 'gone extinct'?

I tend to view language with a perspective similar to that of evolutionary biology, and from this viewpoint I have yet to see any 'value' in it that justifies all the mental calories that get burned having to remember all this [extraneous?] information.

My French-speaking friends insist on it's importance, but I have yet to find one who can explain to me precisely what that importance might be.

[phuketsub]

I think he's more referring to the "tone" as being "curious" etc, as opposed to the word itself.

Thinking about those emotions seemed to conjure the correct tones for me, and reminds me of Stuart J Raj's "Dennis the Menace" example, which I found quite good, it's included in the video below:

Although for identifying the tones etc, it's just a process of learning the rules. For myself, I have no problems with identifying the tones when reading something (Although I'm still slow at it, but then I also read pretty slowly anyway lol), but often have problems with hearing the correct tone, or even with pronouncing the correct tone. Particularly with saying the high tone, and getting falling/rising mixed up when listening/speaking (I think my impression of what is "rising" is simply off, which causes me to screw up the others, I've gotta get my wife to help me). But all of the tones usually go out the window for me anyway when I start speaking lol, as I usually can't remember the tones for most words lol (I usually just remember the ones where people have pulled me up for saying shirt instead of tiger, or new instead of no etc)

I would give you this advice: if you are 'approaching' a word in conversation and you are uncertain about how to pronounce the tone, think of that word in a phrase you are already familiar with. For example, many foreigners cannot pronounce ข้าว correctly. But if you know it in phrases such as

หิวข้าว or กินข้าว you can get it correct. It's kind of like a musical effect.

[GuyL]

[...] It reminds me of my confusion over having to learn 'gender' articles when I was studying French: Why must it be Le Chat (the cat, masculine) and La Chien (dog, feminine)... [...]

Actually, it's "le chien" (for a male dog, but "la chienne" for a bitch), not "la chien" in French.

Thanks for that, but it still doesn't help with my great mystery: why does the language need/continue to use gender associations with nouns at all?

Why haven't they just 'gone extinct'?

I tend to view language with a perspective similar to that of evolutionary biology, and from this viewpoint I have yet to see any 'value' in it that justifies all the mental calories that get burned having to remember all this [extraneous?] information.

My French-speaking friends insist on it's importance, but I have yet to find one who can explain to me precisely what that importance might be.

Sorry, but I can't help you with this 'great mystery' that you mentioned. Most gender associations with nouns in French originate from more ancient languages, such as Latin and classic Greek, for instance. French language still evolves though and its grammar and spelling tend to be simpler (last major reform occurred in the early 90s), but it's a long and slow process and we probably won't witness gender associations extinction in our lifetime, I suppose.

[Richard W]

Talking of French:

Thanks for that, but it still doesn't help with my great mystery: why does the language need/continue to use gender associations with nouns at all?

From a practical point of view, it does allow the use of contrasting third person pronouns il and elle, which may clarify tales.

Grammatical gender also helps to keep the lower classes in their place. There's a lot of that dysfunctionality in languages, though where it surfaces varies enormously.

[fire69water]

I think I can speak Thai pretty well and most basic words I read I know the correct tone for, but when I read it and come across a word I am unfamiliar with I am quite likely to get the tone wrong. It's even worse when I try to write in Thai.

I put the suggested Thai text (จอดรถ ห้าบาท กินแล้ว จริงหรอ สิบห้าล้านหมา) into GoogleTranslate and it doesn't really make sense to me. Why should จอด be associated with "sadness" or brown color?

There are many words that would not hold up to this rationale. หมา (dog,rising tone) is somehow curious?

I don't get it. I must be missing something.

No, I'm not suggesting you link the meaning of the Thai word with the prescribed emotions or colors, although that itself could be used as a 'crazy association' method for memorizing the tones for individual words, especially nouns, but that's another story. I just want to see if I can help Westerners better grasp and differentiate the different tones used in Thai or even Chinese. Whenever I meet people who have problems with Thai tones, I would tell them the above and act them out, e.g., stamping my feet in anger and say five in Thai, and have them act likewise. I just want to let them feel the different energy that each tone seems to convey.

[partington]

I think I can speak Thai pretty well and most basic words I read I know the correct tone for, but when I read it and come across a word I am unfamiliar with I am quite likely to get the tone wrong. It's even worse when I try to write in Thai.

I put the suggested Thai text (จอดรถ ห้าบาท กินแล้ว จริงหรอ สิบห้าล้านหมา) into GoogleTranslate and it doesn't really make sense to me. Why should จอด be associated with "sadness" or brown color?

There are many words that would not hold up to this rationale. หมา (dog,rising tone) is somehow curious?

I don't get it. I must be missing something.

No, I'm not suggesting you link the meaning of the Thai word with the prescribed emotions or colors, although that itself could be used as a 'crazy association' method for memorizing the tones for individual words, especially nouns, but that's another story. I just want to see if I can help Westerners better grasp and differentiate the different tones used in Thai or even Chinese. Whenever I meet people who have problems with Thai tones, I would tell them the above and act them out, e.g., stamping my feet in anger and say five in Thai, and have them act likewise. I just want to let them feel the different energy that each tone seems to convey.

This is the best suggestion I have ever heard to learn tones! I am absolutely tone deaf in the literal sense, so find it difficult to reproduce even when told what they are, or repeating a recording. I pretty much gave up on trying to learn to speak Thai because of this inability.

Associating each tone with an emotional state helps enormously. Now when I read a word that has a rising tone, I think of a stoned Californian saying "whaaaat?" with that rising inflection they have and it absolutely helps with the pronunciation.

Same with anger for falling-I remember when I first came here I mistakenly thought Thai people having normal conversations were really angry with each other, because of the inflections, but somehow I never formulated it into a useful rule, (probably because I'm too tone deaf to realise the angry tone was actually "falling" ).

I've copied this for when I get the energy to start practising again!

[ChristianPFC]

Genders in some European languages are a nuisance. For your mother tongue, it comes naturally, but for foreign languages you have to learn noun and gender as a couple, and the genders for the same noun can be different in different languages. In some cases, a noun has different meaning depending on its gender (you could argue if this makes things more clear or obfuscates them). There is little, if nothing, gained from assigning genders to nouns, but it poses a lot of difficulty to the learner.

In German we have the additional difficulty of writing nouns with capital letters. If it was just nouns it would be easy, but adjectives or verbs used as nouns are written with capital letters as well, and some pronouns. Even I, as an educated native speaker, can't be bothered to learn and adhere to all the intricacies of capitalization.

Thai shows that you need no genders and no capital letters at all! Not even punctuation!

[Richard W]

Thai shows that you need no genders and no capital letters at all! Not even punctuation!

Most Thai writing seems only to use space as punctuation. However, full stop is very common as one marker of abbreviation, complementary to paiyannoi (ฯ), and commas are frequently used to separate lists. Moreover, written dialogue is richly supplied with punctuation.