Let's do the basics first.
Remember the first time you heard a Thai spoke to you? And there was this sing-song rhythm to the words? Or why when they speak English, they tend to have this funny accent, of sounding oddly tonal in a non-tonal language.
Yes. We are going to talk about Tones. Thai is tonal, and this is an inevitable part of learning the language. Might as well tackle it head on and early on.
Luckily, modern Central Thai only has 5 tones, well, we'll number them but a better way is to describe them by their tonal effects.
| Number | Tone | Thai |
| 0 | Common/Mid | เสียงสามัญ |
| 1 | Low | เสียงเอก |
| 2 | Falling | เสียงโท |
| 3 | High | เสียงตรี |
| 4 | Rising | เสียงจัตวา |
The reason the first tone in the series is numbered 0 is because the others have been numbered 1 to 4, in Pali. Yes, เอก โท ตรี จัตวา are numbers themselves, and are still in present use in Thai. Often, we call the Leading Actor and Actress in movies as พระเอก นางเอก
โท has fallen out of use but it was once used instead of สอง when calling a number, back in the days when people still had to dial a number through a operator. Connectivity was poor then and using โท was a good way to differentiate between สอง and สาม. It sounds like two anyway, and that's because it shared a common origin.
Anyway, enough about the numbering. The important thing are the tones themselves. Here we shall end with a video that helps to make sense of these tones.
The best way to learn the tones, is to practise.
Chatbox