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Tag Archives: tones

The Dreaded Thai Kows Posted by on May 20, 2013

When I teach a new set of beginning learners in my class, the very first lesson I give is on Thai tones. To scare them a bit I present various words that sound the same, but change meaning depending on the tone. While most teachers prefer to give the famous ‘mai’ example, I prefer the…

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Thai Tones, Part 3 Posted by on Mar 23, 2012

Like Chinese, Thai is a tonal language. It should only take about a week to learn the tones, but more than a year to really get the hang of them. And then plenty more years before you no longer need to ask what the tone is for a particular word. The tones are extremely important…

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Thai Tones, Part 2 Posted by on Mar 19, 2012

Like Chinese, Thai is a tonal language. It should only take about a week to learn the tones, but more than a year to really get the hang of them. And then plenty more years before you no longer need to ask what the tone is for a particular word. The tones are extremely important…

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Thai Tones, Part 1 Posted by on Mar 15, 2012

Like Chinese, Thai is a tonal language. It should only take about a week to learn the tones, but more than a year to really get the hang of them. And then plenty more years before you no longer need to ask what the tone is for a particular word. The tones are extremely important…

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Guessing the Thai Tones, part 2 of 2 (Beginner) Posted by on Aug 4, 2010

As you may know already, tone marks alone do not define the tone of the word. All consonants in each syllable influence the tone. The actual influence is determined by the location of the consonants within the syllable, whether the consonant class is low, mid, or high, whether the syllable is open or closed, and…

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Guessing the Thai Tones, part 1 of 2 (Beginner) Posted by on Jul 30, 2010

The rules for reading Thai are fairly complex, especially when it comes to determining the tone of the word based on the spelling. When I first started learning Thai, I preferred to memorize the tone of each word and not bother so much learning the actual rules. In reality, memorizing the tones allows for faster…

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