Learn Thai with Flashcards / Tones

Thai tones

The five Thai tones: what each one sounds like, the words in this course that differ only by tone, and the rule that tells you a word's tone from its spelling.

The five shapes

The line is the pitch of your voice through the syllable. The dashes are where your voice sits at rest.

mid
low
falling
high
rising

Where it changes the word

52 sets of words in this course are the same sounds with different tones. These are the ones worth getting right — press ▶ to hear the difference.

Reading the tone off the spelling

Thai does not write the tone down. It follows from four things: the class of the first consonant, whether the syllable is live or dead, the length of the vowel, and the tone mark. Learn this once and you can say a word you have never seen.

no mark, liveno mark, dead (short)no mark, dead (long)◌่◌้◌๊◌๋
midmidlowlowlowfallinghighrising
highrisinglowlowlowfalling——
lowmidhighfallingfallinghigh——

A low-class consonant cannot make a rising tone on its own, which is why ห is written before one to lend it a high class — หมา is mǎa, not maa. Across two syllables the same trick is อักษรนำ: ขณะ is khà-nà because ข hands its class to ณ.