Thai Tones

Thai tones are one of the most challenging area of the Thai language for when learning the Thai language. There are five Thai tones. Thai people learn all the five Thai tones from a very young age by singing each letter of the Thai alphabet in all five Thai tones.

Thai tones explained - easy Thai tone rule

Thai tones are not as difficult as they seem at first. Learning easy Thai tone rule by singing letters of the Thai alphabet in all Thai tones is similar to singing "dough - rey - me - far - sun - la - tea - dough" C major scale or any other musical scale. One you know the musical scale, you can sing the same tones using any words, right?

Now sing the same tone as dough - rey - me - far - sun - la - tea - dough above using just 'la'. Then again, using 'ta', and so on. Thai tones work the same way, except that there are only five Thai tones in the 'Thai tones scale' and the Thai tones are not so musical, of course.

The five Thai tones

The Thai language uses five tones which we shall call

• Tone #1: mid or flat
• Tone #2: low (called Ake)
• Tone #3: high (called Toh)
• Tone #4: rising (called Three)
• Tone #5: falling (called the Chat-ta-wa)

Many Thai tones textbooks show the graph below which illustrates the average fundamental frequency contour for tones as illustrated by Jackson Gandour (1976).