The five tones
Thai is a tone language: the pitch of a syllable is part of the word, as much as its consonants and vowel. ขาว khǎao with a rising tone means white; ข่าว khàao with a low tone means news; ข้าว khâao with a falling tone means rice. Standard Thai has five tones.
| Tone | Thai name | How it sounds | Written here |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mid | เสียงสามัญ siang saman | level, in the middle of your voice | kaa |
| Low | เสียงเอก siang ek | level and low, often sinking a little | kàa |
| Falling | เสียงโท siang tho | starts high and drops, like a firm “no!” | kâa |
| High | เสียงตรี siang tri | high, and in Bangkok speech often rising at the end | káa |
| Rising | เสียงจัตวา siang chattawa | dips low, then rises, like a surprised “oh?” | kǎa |
The romanisation on this page marks tone and length, as most learner books do: a doubled vowel is long, and accents show the tone (à low, â falling, á high, ǎ rising, no mark for mid). The official RTGS romanisation on signs marks neither, which is why it cannot tell you how to say a word.
The four things that decide a tone
- The class of the first consonant. Every consonant is mid, high or low class. The alphabet page lists them. In a cluster such as กล or ปร, the first letter counts.
- The tone mark. One of four marks (◌่ ◌้ ◌๊ ◌๋) written over the first consonant, or none.
- Live or dead. A syllable is live if it ends in a long vowel or in m, n, ng, y or w, and dead if it ends in a short vowel or in k, t or p. The short vowels of คำ, ไป, ใจ and เขา count as live, because they end in m, y or w.
- Vowel length, which matters only for a dead syllable that starts with a low-class letter and has no tone mark.
The complete table
Find the row for the class of the first consonant. With a tone mark, read the mark’s column; without one, read the live or dead column.
| Class | Live | Dead, short | Dead, long | Mai ek ◌่ | Mai tho ◌้ | Mai tri ◌๊ | Mai chattawa ◌๋ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mid | Mid | Low | Low | Low | Falling | High | Rising |
| High | Rising | Low | Low | Low | Falling | – | – |
| Low | Mid | High | Falling | Falling | High | – | – |
Three patterns are worth holding on to. Without a mark, live syllables are mid except in the high class, where they rise. Mai ek and mai tho give the same pair of tones to mid and high letters (low and falling) and push low letters one step higher (falling and high). Mai tri and mai chattawa appear only on mid-class letters, which is why the mid class is the only one that can carry all five tones: ปา, ป่า, ป้า, ป๊า and ป๋า.
Worked examples
| Word | Reasoning | Tone | Said |
|---|---|---|---|
| มา | ม is low class; long open vowel, so live; no mark | Mid | maa to come |
| หมา | silent ห in front moves ม to the high row; live; no mark | Rising | mǎa dog |
| ไก่ | ก is mid class; mai ek | Low | kài chicken |
| ข้าว | ข is high class; mai tho | Falling | khâao rice |
| ค้า | ค is low class; mai tho | High | kháa to trade |
| ค่า | ค is low class; mai ek | Falling | khâa value, price |
| นก | น is low class; ends in k, so dead; short vowel; no mark | High | nók bird |
| มาก | ม is low class; ends in k, so dead; long vowel; no mark | Falling | mâak much, very |
| ปาก | ป is mid class; ends in k, so dead; no mark | Low | pàak mouth |
| สุข | ส is high class; ends in k, so dead; no mark | Low | sùk happy |
| ใจ | จ is mid class; ใ ends in y, so live; no mark | Mid | jai heart, mind |
| สาม | ส is high class; ends in m, so live; no mark | Rising | sǎam three |
| จ๊ะ | จ is mid class; mai tri, which only mid letters take | High | já a friendly particle |
| ก๋วย | ก is mid class; mai chattawa | Rising | kǔai first syllable of ก๋วยเตี๋ยว, noodles |
| อยู่ | silent อ in front moves ย to the mid row; mai ek | Low | yùu to be at; to live |
| คะ | ค is low class; short open vowel, so dead; no mark | High | khá polite particle in a question |
| ค่ะ | ค is low class; mai ek, which overrides live and dead | Falling | khâ polite particle in an answer |
Leading ห and อ
Ten low-class letters, the sonorants ง ญ ณ น ม ย ร ล ว ฬ, have no high-class twin, so on their own they could never spell a rising tone or a low tone in a live syllable. Thai solves this with a silent ห written in front: the syllable then follows the high-class row. มา maa (come) is mid; หมา mǎa (dog) is rising. หนู nǔu (mouse), ใหญ่ yài (big) and หลาย lǎai (many) work the same way, and a tone mark goes over the sonorant, not over the ห.
A silent อ does the same job for the mid class in exactly four words, all with ย: อย่า (don’t), อยู่ (to be at), อย่าง (kind, way) and อยาก (to want). All four have a low tone, which a plain ย could not give them with these spellings.
Vowel length and dead syllables
Vowel length changes the tone in one cell of the table: a dead syllable on a low-class letter with no mark is high when the vowel is short and falling when it is long. นก nók (bird) has a short o and a high tone; มาก mâak (much) has a long aa and a falling tone. Everywhere else, length changes the word but not the tone, so it pays to hear the difference between คะ khá and ค่ะ khâ, the polite particles of a question and an answer, and between short and long vowels in general.
Dead syllables can carry a tone mark too, mostly in short words and loans. The mark wins over the live and dead columns: ค่ะ khâ is falling, like any low-class syllable with mai ek, and จ๊ะ já is high, like any mid-class syllable with mai tri.
Words that break the rules
A handful of the most common words are said differently from their spelling: ฉัน (I) is usually chán rather than chǎn, เขา (he, she) is kháo rather than khǎo, and the question word ไหม is often said mái. Some words spelled with a short vowel are said with a long one: น้ำ náam (water), เก้า kâao (nine). Loanwords from English often keep the tone a Thai speaker hears in the original, with or without a mark to show it. Learn these as words; the rules are still right for everything else you will read.
Making the rules automatic
- Learn the classes with the alphabet. Mid has nine letters and high has eleven; everything else is low.
- Read with a pencil for a week: over each syllable, write its class, live or dead, and the tone, then check it against a recording.
- Practise the five-tone sets out loud: ปา ป่า ป้า ป๊า ป๋า, then pairs that differ by class, such as ข่า khàa and ค่า khâa.
- Train your ear as well as your eyes. The listening guide and the research summary say what helps.