Tones
Since you know all the consonants now, it’s a good time to consolidate tones. Here is the Thai tone chart (no need to memorize):
(A note about tone marks: The green cells show high-frequency usage. As you can see, tone marks are mostly used on live syllables, the major exceptions being dead-short-mid and dead-short-low syllables in light green. Outside of those, I’ve seen a few tone marks on other syllables in dictionaries, shown in yellow. I don’t recall seeing examples of the cells shown in blue, but they may exist informally.)
Most people find it pretty hard to memorize tables. Tables are great for summarizing data, but something about having two dimensions makes the recall process more challenging. However, if you’ve done all the memorizing and exercises up to this point, you’re well on the way to internalizing the tone rules. We’ve been learning this way because it’s the traditional and recommended way.
However, and the following is totally optional, because some people might like to memorize them together, I’ll just list the rules here again for convenience:
1 – live mid class consonant syllables with no tone marks have mid tones.
2 – mid class consonant syllable tones match the tone mark.
3 – dead mid class consonant syllables with no tone marks have low tones.
4 – live high class consonant syllables with no tone marks have rising tones.
5 – high class consonant syllables tones match the tone marks.
6 – dead high class consonant syllables have low tones.
7 – live low class consonant syllables with no tone marks have mid tones.
8 – low class consonant syllables with ่ (ไม้เอก) have falling tones.
9 – low class consonant syllables with ้ (ไม้โท) have high tones.
10 – dead low class consonant syllables with no tone marks and long vowels have falling tones.
11 – dead low class consonant syllables with no tone marks and short vowels have high tones.
When written together like this, they could be restated or simplified a bit. But instead of doing that, let me show you an alternative way to remember the tone rules. Just memorize these 7 syllables really well:
จาน
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plate; mid, live, mid
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เจ็ด
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seven; mid, dead, low
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สอง
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two; high, live, rising
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แม่
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mother; low, ไม้เอก, falling
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ช้าง
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elephant; low, ไม้โท, high
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โลก
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world; low, dead long, falling
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นก
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bird; low, dead short, high
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Each syllable matches a tone rule. You may be wondering why there aren’t 11, one for each tone rule. The 11 rules were reduced to 7 by using the premise that 1) all tones match tone marks and 2) all rules match mid-class rules unless otherwise stated. For example, just by memorizing how จาน is spelled and pronounced, you will know that it’s a live, mid consonant syllable with a mid tone. Therefore, live mid consonant syllables have mid tones. Can’t remember which are the representative syllables? If you want, you can just memorize this seven syllable sentence:
ช้างจะกินลาบเพราะว่าหิว
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The elephant will eat laap because it's hungry.
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Again, this is optional, and I’m not recommending it as a replacement for learning the tones gradually as we’ve been doing. It’s just an alternative if you get stuck.