The Thai tone rules
Three things decide a tone, and nothing else: the class of the initial
consonant, the tone mark if there is one, and whether the syllable is live or dead. Learn
these fifteen lines and you can read the tone of a word you have never seen.
Step 1 - the consonant's class
Every Thai consonant is mid, high or low class. There are 9 mid, 11 high and 24 low.
The class is a property of the letter, nothing to do with pitch by itself.
All 44, grouped by class.
Step 2 - live or dead
A syllable is dead if it ends in a stop sound (k, p, t) or if it is open with a
short vowel. Everything else is live: open with a long vowel, or ending in a nasal
or glide (m, n, ng, y, w).
Step 3 - read it off the table
mid class + no mark + live syllable
e.g. กา (kaa)
mid
mid class + no mark + dead syllable
e.g. กด (gòt)
low
high class + no mark + live syllable
e.g. ขา (khǎa)
rising
high class + no mark + dead syllable
low
low class + no mark + live syllable
e.g. นา (naa)
mid
low class + no mark + dead syllable + short vowel
high
low class + no mark + dead syllable + long vowel
falling
mid class + ่ mai ek
e.g. จ่าย (jàai)
low
high class + ่ mai ek
e.g. ไข่ (khài)
low
low class + ่ mai ek
e.g. ค่า (khâa)
falling
mid class + ้ mai tho
e.g. ก้าว (gâao)
falling
high class + ้ mai tho
e.g. ข้าว (khâao)
falling
low class + ้ mai tho
e.g. น้อย (nóoi)
high
mid class + ๋ mai chattawa
rising
Where these come from. Ten of these rules ship inside the Sabai Thai
app's own data, each with the worked example shown above. The five dead-syllable and
mai tri / mai chattawa lines are standard Thai orthography that the app's table does not
list yet - they are included because leaving them out would mean refusing most real words.
Try it
The tone checker runs exactly this table over a syllable you
type and shows you which line it landed on.
Train your ear in the app
A tone quiz that plays the real audio until you can hear the difference. Free, forever.
Get told when it launches
Sabai 