Photo by tourismhuahin.com
“Excuse, please. Where see go Liberty Bell?”
Working in Olde City Philadelphia, three blocks from the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and Ben Franklin’s grave, you hear this kind of question a lot. Needless to say, not a day goes by (especially in the summer) that I don’t see at least a handful of people walking around with maps in hand, trying to figure out which historical landmark to see next. This area gets a lot of foreign tourists, and quite often I am asked things like “Excuse, please. Where see go Liberty Bell?”
I know exactly what they are trying to ask me, and I am always more than happy to show them where they need to go. But one thing I do not do is correct their English. It would almost seem rude, wouldn’t it? I don’t know these people, and all they want is some help with directions. So why then is it so important for us Thai language learners to learn the tones? I mean, in all likelihood we’re not going to be corrected by a complete stranger, are we? And even if we are, who cares if they understood what we were asking and helped us?
In the Sunday Thai language at my local Thai temple we’ve been having a lot of discussions about the value of learning a syllable’s tone. A few members of the student body — admittedly much better at conversational Thai than I am — feel it’s more important to get the vocabulary down, and the tones will come later as a result of having friends/family correct them later down the line. They are of the first group; if they can be understood enough to get what they need and survive, why worry about it? (And trust me when I tell you they aren’t speaking from a point of arrogance or Ugly Americanism at all.)
I, on the other hand, feel the exact opposite: that learning the tones right away is the way to go. It’s not just a case of my wife correcting me when I say the wrong tone, it’s really about what your goals are in learning the language. To the casual Thai vacationer it may not seem important, but to someone (like myself) who wants to be a true student of the language and become fluent, dare I say it’s probably the most important thing you can learn! I should also mention that literally every Thai person I have asked about this subject say learning the tones is absolutely essential.
And so I was pleasantly surprised to read the following comment made by Peter Montalbano (who has commented here on this blog – thanks, Peter!) in an interview on womenlearnthai.com:
What is the biggest misconception for students learning Thai?
I think different people have different misconceptions. Some think the tones aren’t important, and that’s about as wrong as could be. Some don’t notice the difference between long and short vowels. Some don’t get the difference between aspirated and unaspirated unvoiced stops (p, t, k, ph, th, kh).
(The bold highlight was put in by me to emphasize the point.)
Not learning the tones for a tonal language such as Thai (and Thai certainly is not the only one) is akin to working out for an hour a day and then immediately going home and eating a gallon of Chunky Monkey ice cream — what’s the point? You’re defeating the purpose. Sure, you can say you’re working out, but are you really reaping the benefits? Sure, you can say you went to Thailand on vacation, but are you really getting the full experience?
When I started learning to play guitar I learned the notes and their names. I almost laugh out loud nowadays when someone I’m jamming with who has been playing for 20 years asks me what chord I’m playing and yet they can’t reproduce it because they don’t know where the note is on the fingerboard.
Why would you not want to immerse yourself in the culture, even if just for a few days? Speak with the native population, meet new people and make friends, not get charged the farang rate for tourist attractions, order a beer with pride and talk up the local ladies… whatever your proclivity may be.
Improving Your Thai Pronunciation
I’m going to go out on a limb here and mandate that all Thai language learners should be forced to learn the tones. (Man, I really wish I had superpowers!) Seriously, it’s not that hard. There are some rules to learn and memorize, surely, but you can learn them in a month of concentrated study and then you’ll never have to worry about them again. There will be no going back over everything you’ve already learned and struggling to relearn it all. Take the time and it will be well worth it. You can start by reading my articles on consonants, vowels, tone markers, live and dead syllables, and how to determine a syllable’s tone. (While you’re at it, why not just read all of my blog posts and make me feel special?)
I also highly recommend you purchase the book/CD “Improving Your Thai Pronunciation” by Paiboon Publishing. Of course, there is nothing better than being able to speak with a Thai person and having them correct you. I will venture to say that they will be more than happy to help you if you make the effort; such is the nature of Thai people!
Josh … could not pretend me to comment this … and I suppose you’ll know why.
“A few members of the student body feel it’s more important to get the vocabulary down, and the tones will come later as a result of …” vs. “…dare I say it’s probably the most important thing you can learn! ”
Contrasting these statements I’m clearly on the side of the first. Saying this, I do not dismiss the importance of the tone as such, but I think that the student of Thai language has to struggle first with a lot of other problems else than the tone. In addition, and that’s important for me, most teaching material is emphasizing (too?) much the tone.
I personally think that this statement comes nearer to the truth:
“Some think the tones aren’t important, and that’s about as wrong as could be. Some don’t notice the difference between long and short vowels. Some don’t get the difference between aspirated and unaspirated unvoiced stops (p, t, k, ph, th, kh).”
This statement comprises at least 3 aspects of pronouncing, and understanding, Thai – only one of them is the tone. My experience is that e.g. length of vowel is even more frequently a problem of mutual comprehensibleness than tone itself.
I personally would argue that you should learn to read Thai first. There are overall 16 theoretic possibilities to write the term Thai in Thai letters (leaving out tone mark and karan-ed term amending the armentarium of the possible further). Of them actually at least 4 have even a meaning (ไถ, ทาย, ไท, ไทย). The 16 possible “Thais” differ only by 2 tones (mid vs. rising). They further differ also by two length of sara a…. Insofar, just for very pragmatic learning reason, I consider the facility to read Thai letters more important than the tone as such …
Actually … and in real … while not understanding a Thai term pronounced by a Thai … I would not try to hear better the tone of the speaker (just this differing inter-individually), rather, I will kindly ask to spell out loudly the Thai term under discussion … once I know how to write it I can ask then … in addition … thus, เสียงสามัญ, เอก, โท, ตรี, or จัตวา?!
Again, I do not dismiss the tone as such, but in essence it is not the problem of “Excuse, please. Where see go Liberty Bell?” but “In British English, thank you is pronounced with /th/!
Hi Thomas, welcome back. I missed you around these parts.
I do understand what you are saying. Yes, the Thai student has a lot to struggle through when first starting out, but I’ve always been a believer in “foundation first.” Get the basics out of the way. There is no reason why a learner can’t start picking up vocabulary and trying to speak Thai when they are first starting out, but I think they’re doing themselves a disservice by completely ignoring the tonal aspects of the language in the initial stages. I just don’t see why you would do that.
I liken it to the martial arts classes I teach. We have all rank levels training together. When a new students comes to class for the first day, we throw them into the mix with everyone else to work on whatever principle I’m teaching. They will inevitably go through the motions just to try and keep up, but from the very beginning we show them where their hands and feet go, how to move, which angle to be, etc. We don’t leave that stuff out for the first year while they get their feet wet and then go back and teach them how to stand properly. Granted, they are having the conversation right from the get-go in terms of learning the technique, but we are also giving them the spelling and grammar right from the get-go in terms of teaching them positioning, body placement, and correct movement. I think learning Thai is the same exact way.
For me, learning the alphabet and tones has been much easier than the vocabulary. I struggle with learning words all the time, yet when all is said and done learning to read and write Thai was relatively simple.
Don’t be a stranger!
Hi Josh,
nice to meet you again!
No, of course I do not want to be a stranger.
Saying something similar like you, but with other words:
I find Thai grammar more difficult than how to determine one of the five tones, the length of the sara, or the sound of an aspirated vs. a non aspirated stop consonant (+/- its realization as a initial vs. a final consonant).
A pragmatic question: If you would teach Akson Thai … speaking about consonants … about what you would speak first: a) the class of the consonant b) the approximative phonetics of the consonant or c) the question whether it can be transliterated (or not) into Sanskrit (e.g. using Harvard-Kyoto)?
While reading Thai I found the latter the most relevant information in order to understand the pattern (and ultimately meaning) of the term under discussion.
I know it may sound, at the first glance, strange but I would like to have your opinion on my experience with this (speaking about learning to read Thai).
I do not forget that Thai is a tonal language (and tone should be trained while studying Thai). But I do not consider it as the most challenging feature of Thai language.
Let’s speak about this: “It’s not just a case of my wife correcting me when I say the wrong tone, it’s really about what your goals are in learning the language.”
When I made the aquiantance of my wife we were speaking English (amended by some Thai and German terms). We agreed that learning German was not so important for her for staying in Germany. For this means (my wife did visit some different lessons German as foreign language) I NEVER corrected any German sentence she spoke. After several years my wife changed her mind (and actually, her German is already better than her English). We are now making regular lessons (once a week), and she likes to be corrected by me.
A few days ago she formed a sentence (in German) like: “This evening I will cook in kitchen.” Then she asked: Perfect? I replied: nearby, better it would have been if you used the determined article, thus, “This evening I will cook in THE kitchen.” Then she replied: “But the determined article is so difficult!”. Actually, in German it is not only the case when to use none, the undetermined, or the determined article (this quesion is roughly comparable to English, and also you will be aware of a sort of reluctance to use ‘the’, or ‘a’ by Asian people). German has grammar gender, and case (and number). Grammar case, gender, and number is expressed also in the determined article. In summary, let me count, this adds up to … der, des, dem, den, die, das 6 determined articles meaning all the in English. So, only 5 tones in Thai language but 6 determined articles in German.
What to tell my wife as regards a nearly perfect German sentence missing only one of the 6 determined articles? How perfect she should learn German?
The understanding of German does not depend to much from the determined article used. Rather, and that’s difficult to learn for Thais, from the clusters at the end. E.g. trinkst is second person singular of trinken = to drink. A Thai reader will tend to pronounce trinkst like /trin/, but the German neads to get the information in the ending (is it drin = inside, or Drink, an English derived foreign noun, trink, the imperative of trinken/to drink, trinkt 3rd person but not 2nd person singular of trinken/to drink etc. etc., please note the final cluster of 4 consonants which must be pronounced as final cluster!).
Actually, pronounciation of 4 final consonants, or the difference of German u-umlaut (ü/ue) vs. Thai sara ue etc. we are training, as well as word order in sentences, fundamental grammar etc.
But, I explained the correct usage of (one of the 6) THE (= der, des, dem, den, die, das) in the sentence “This evening I will cook in kitchen.” But … In doubt I think this problem is comparable with …
ภรรยา /พัน-ยา; พัน-ระ-ยา/ {Sanskrit: ภารฺยา; Pali: ภริยา}
“Oh, the ระ/ra in phanraya is not pronounced with เสียงสามัญ but with เสียงตรี”. Correct, but …
Is it necessary for my wife to bother her brain — currently — with the German determined article?
“… it’s really about what your goals are in learning the language.”
Ok! The goals of my wife are to stay for some additional decades in Germany speaking German with relatives, friends, customers, so der/die/das/dem/den/des = the must be — currently — the most important to learn for her?
I know the Thai tone rules, would even claim to know how to apply them, and think that I hear more or less also tones … but forgive me if I pronounced the ra in phanraya with the even tone.
Would like to add the following:
While searching for the source of your nice Phayanchana (showing, in these times, also 4 vowels) I visited your source, tourismhuahin.com. So, what this site/blog is telling about Thai language:
“Although English is widely spoken in Hua Hin and other major tourist areas around Thailand, it can be indispensible to learn a few simple, everyday words and phrases to get you around.
Not only will it make life easier, but your hosts will appreciate you all the more for your efforts.
Thai is a tonal language and there are 5 distinct ones – low, high, falling, rising and mid. This effectively means that the same word can be pronounced 5 different ways to produce 5 different meanings. Sounds complicated?”
So, first statement on Thai language is … tones, tonal language, … and the statement as such is wrong:
“… the same word can be pronounced 5 different ways to produce 5 different meanings …”
16 ways to write the … output of a romanizstion tool .. “Thai” will produce, at a minimum, 16 words with 16 different meanings, but all these 16 different words are pronunced at 2 different tones only.
That’s the reason why I made so much words about the question of “tone”.
When I have to explain Akson Thai the first time to someone, I start off by saying Thai is a tonal language with five tones. There are 44 consonants, and each one is categorized as either low, mid, or high class, which is one of the factors in determining tone. I then briefly explain vowels and length, tone marks, and live or dead syllables. I don’t go much further than that. I never talk about sanskrit because it doesn’t interest me, and phonetics depends on the interest level of the person I’m talking with.
I think the answer for you and your wife – and for me and mine, too – is again really just a question of how well you want to speak the language in question. I don’t think you need to know anything about Sanskrit to be able to speak Thai well, but I do think your wife needs to learn the usages of “the” in order to speak German well.
The issue of certain words having tone determined one way but spoken another is something I still have trouble with, and in those cases I think you just have to be willing to make exceptions to the rules.
I hope that answers your question.