Five tones, four marks and word rhythm

Standard Thai has five tones: mid, low, falling, high and rising. Tone can change a word’s meaning. Listen to these five syllables: the consonant and long vowel stay the same while the pitch changes. The first is also the word for crow. The others are practice syllables, not five everyday nouns.

Thai has four tone marks written above the consonant. A syllable without a mark still has a tone. The tone depends on the initial consonant’s class, any tone mark, the ending and, for some syllables, vowel length. A consonant called “high class” does not make every word high-toned. Later units build this decision process step by step.

Thai rhythm often gives the final syllable of a word or phrase more prominence, while earlier unstressed syllables may be reduced. Stress and sentence intonation are not extra tone marks. Listen to complete words and phrases as well as isolated syllables.

Regular spellings give strong clues to pronunciation, but vowels can be unwritten, letters can be silent, and borrowed words have conventions you must learn. This is why we teach complete syllables and include recordings. For now, hear the five tones; you do not need to calculate them.