Guide to Pronunciation (1)

Guide to Pronunciation

Tones

Because Thai is a tonal language, its pronunciation presents new challenges for English speakers. If the tone is wrong, you will not be easily understood even if everything else is correct. Thai use five tones. For example, to pronounce a rising tone, your voice starts at a low pitch and goes up (much like asking a question in English). The phonetic transliteration in this blog uses tone marks over the vowels to show the tone for each word. Note that the tone marks used for transliteration are different from those used in Thai script.

Tone Marks

Tone                           Tone symbol                    Example

Mid                                   -                          paa

                                                                     ↓

Low                                  ↓                          paa

                                                                      ↷

Falling                              ↷                          paa

                                                                      ↑

High                                 ↑                           paa

                                                                      ↶

Rising                               ↶                          paa