Learn to read Thai - Tutorial 14

Tone Rules

I have learnt all the basics from two authors: David Smyth and Benjawan Poomsan Becker. Both of these authors are excellent and can be highly recommended. In fact, they are almost gods in the small world of farangs learning Thai.

I have found that one or the other sometimes explains certain things better. I discovered that tones of certain words didn't follow the tone rules but Benjawan explained why. On the other hand, I find her description of the rules quite confusing.

I think that David Smyth explains the tone rules in a very simple way and that is the way I have learnt.

The first thing I look for in a word or syllable is a tone mark. There are four of these but just like Thai consonants, there is a big variation in their usage. The first two get used all the time but the third and fourth don't appear very often.

After checking to see whether a tone mark is used I then check the initial consonant class:

If a word or syllable doesn't use a tone mark, is it a live or dead syllable? A quick way to check if it is a live syllable is if you can continue voicing the sound. If it uses a long vowel (such as 'aa') you can continue voicing the sound. You can also do this if it ends with an 'ng', 'n' or 'm' sound. If it ends with a short vowel or an unreleased 'p', 'k' ot 't' sound, then you can't continue voicing it so it is a dead syllable.

If it is a dead syllable, you then need to check if the vowel is long or short. An 'aat' sound would be a dead syllable with a long vowel but an 'ut' sound would be a dead syllable with a short vowel.

Once you have determined this, you can use the following rules:

Recommended books

If you are serious about learning how to read Thai, I highly recommend the following two books. These two books taught me almost everything I know and I still use them almost every day for reference purposes.

Most of the phrase books and text books for beginners that I have bought sit on my bookshelf accumulating dust. They are next to useless and good only to fuel the fire, except that it is never cold enough here to need a fire. However, if a sudden cold snap happens to descend, I will be grateful to Lonely Planet.

If you want to learn how to speak Thai, learning to read Thai will assist your pronunciation enormously. If you are trying to learn to speak Thai from books that use hopeless transliteration systems you are wasting your time because Thais won't be able to understand you.