The ITS4Thai Method

Thai Language Tones

As mentioned in the Introduction to Thai Language, Thai has five tones or pitches. Different tones in the same root word will have different meanings, so you have to be careful when you are speaking Thai. If you use the wrong tone with a word, you might be misunderstood (or not understood at all!)

Learning the tone for each word (both speaking and listening) is perhaps the hardest part of learning Thai for native English speakers. But don’t worry, it definitely does take time and effort, but if you practice, you can learn to understand and speak the five tones.

ITS4Thai uses International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) characters to show the tones. The tone marks are found above the vowel (a, e, i, o, u) in a word (except for the mid tone, which doesn’t have a mark) as seen here:

 
Tone NameSymbolExample WordAudioEnglish
Mid Tonea tam-mai why
Low Toneà mài new
Falling Toneâ mâi no, burn
High Toneá mái wood, or not?
Rising Toneǎ mǎi silk
 
Try not to think too much about the Tone Names, as they can be a bit confusing. Just focus on which symbol is used and the way that the word sounds.

Here are some other examples of words that are similar, but have different tones and therefore different meanings:

 
Phonetic ThaiAudioEnglish
 þoo  crab
 þòo  grandfather
 yah  medicine
 yàh  do not
 yâh  grandmother
 glai  far
 glâi  near
 kôw  enter
 kǒw  he
 sèe  four
 sěe  color

Again, it will take some time and practice before you can fully understand the Thai language tone system. But it’s not impossible. As you go through the lessons at ITS4Thai, pay attention to the tone markers and how that compares to the audio for each word.

Coming soon: ITS4Thai's approach to romanizing Thai consonants and vowels...