I've been trying to learn Thai for a couple of years now and can speak ok now. My tones are quite ok, so I'm told. I can pronounce them and recognize them. Obviously in 2 years, I'm not really good but my skill in tones is better than my general speaking, my listening ability and my vocab. My reading is quite good and therefore I understand which tone every word is when I read it.

I don't have a good understanding of the high and low tones that Thai people use. For example the word "Thai" is a low tone. I don't mean siang aek, I mean it's a flat tone (siang saaman) but is pronounced with a flat lower tone of voice. Also the "nai" in bpai nai?, this tone is obviously jatawa but it is pronounced with a high level rather than a middle or lower tone.

Can anybody explain this to me or point me in the right direction to learn about these high and low tones? Good books?

2nd question would be can somebody tell me what kam bpen and kam dtai are?

Where are you located? What you're describing sounds like dialect Thai. Especially the high level tone--that's not found in so-called "standard" (Bangkok) Thai, although obviously Bangkok has tons of people who are natively from other parts of the country, so you can hear plenty of other Thai dialects there.

As for คำเป็น and คำตาย, the distinction is thus:

Dead syllables: Those ending in a final stop sound ก ด บ (no matter what letter is used to spell this sound)--including glottal stops (e.g. และ พระ สระ).

Live syllables: Those ending in a sonorant sound น ม ง ว ย--including open syllables (e.g. ตา ปี แม่).

I think that's right... anyhow their status as live or dead determines which tone rules apply.

คำเป็น - Live syllables - A syllable that ends with a long vowel (including อำ, ไอ, ใอ, เอา which are short vowels ) or a sonorant final consonant.

คำตาย - Dead syllables - A syllable that ends with a short vowel(not including อำ, ไอ, ใอ, เอา which are short vowels ) or a stop final consonant.

Rikker,

Thanks for the notes on both my questions. When you mentioned bpen and dai were simply deal and live ending, I remembered that from when I learned all that stuff 1.5 years ago. I simply forgot what the h_ll bpai and dai were. Thanks for clarifying my dumb question.

Now to my other question. Even dumber. I have an answer to it now too. I had posed the question "why do some people seem to speak Thai with such a nasally high pitched tone of voice and some others with a (for lack of a better word and for me) a normal sounding tone of voice. I used the example of "bpai nai" because I frequently hear it as a high nasally sound. In fact, it's a little game my wife and I play. I try to effect sounds like a native Thai person. My wife needs to close here eyes because if she looks at me (a farang) she can't even hear my tone of voice. So she closes her eyes and I'll say a sentence and ask if it sounds like a Thai person and we'll go word for word through the sentence and I'll work on each word until I get the tone as close as is humanly possible for me to a native Thai sound. It may sound goofy but actually it's kind of a fun game for us to play. We do it in reverse too as her English isn't that great, albeit much better than my Thai. Anyway, I digress. The "Bpai nai" was the phrase we used when we first played that game and I can really nail it now but I use a very nasally tone of voice when I do it. So the high and low tones that I asked about in the OP were based from my question about why that "nai" was so high pitched and nasally. The answer turns it seems is that in music, when people are singing, they use higher and lower tones for some words. That wasn't explained to me initially thus my question about it.

All's well that ends well I guess. Mystery solved. Thanks again for your input.

Well actually that still doesn't explain why some words are high and low after all. I guess the answer is what you said, some people are from regions with different dialects than BKK's. I think my next step is to ask some native Bangkokian to say "bpai nai" and see if it still is high and nasally.