Learn Thai

How do I learn Thai tones?

I am part Thai, but like most of my friends, I don´t speak the language. We do know basic words and expressions, but they are left pretty useless if the listener doesn´t understand in what tone we are trying to say the words. With that being said, what are some of your tips on learning the Thai tones? I´ve tried several programs that I have purchased, and even put my Thai cousins through hell when I visited them in Thailand; I constantly bombarded them with questions, and made them repeat the word "maa" in the different tones for me to try to replicate. The high and rising tones seem to be the most difficult since they sound so similar. I know rising is like how we rise a word at the end to make a question.

Public Comments

1. try www.youtube.com
2. open http://www.omniglot.com/writing/thai.htm under that page, there are some more detailed links. Good luck!
3. Learning to hear the five tones and to recognize them are a great challenge with the Thai language. You are indeed right that the tones in Thai are extremely important, for example:- "kee maa" has a number of meanings depending on the tones used, some of the meanings possible are:- "Ride a Horse"; "Ride a Dog"; "Horse Sh!t" or "Dog Sh!t." And the linguistic landscape is littered with bomb shells like these. I started to learn Thai at age 57 and had no previous experience. I spent many hours (800 plus) just listening to spoken Thai and was not allowed to attempt speaking all that time. This is the system used at the A. U. A. school in Bangkok. "Ear training" or "learning to listen" is the key. Folk like yourself that are part Thai learn very much faster than those of us with no previous exposure to Thai. Try these web sites: http://www.auathai.com/ http://www.learningthai.com/ http://www.thai-language.com/ Good Luck
4. I would suggest you that if you can speak Thai now, you have to begin at reading. You should learn it with Thai people and use Thai language in your class. The Thai reading book will edit your sound of pronuciation through rehearsing exercises. Those exercises provide your chance to correct your tone sound because of listening. You cannot think that if you can pronounce maa mha ma ma...aaa maha, you will acheive the combination of complex vowels and consonants. Most of foreigners at first cannot speak Thai precisely. But after they are able to read and have a chance to communicate in it for a while, their tones come close to Thai people. The important problem of learning is because learners are too aware of their tone accuracy so their fluency is very slow. They think that Thai people may not understand in what they say but if they are not hurry when speaking and try to speak long enough, Thai people must understand. Then, they can edit the sound through their litsening.