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Version 3, August 8th, 2015, Latest update March 20th, 2017 - audio
The tones in Thai can be figured out using the rules below. The English names of the classes are used. Up to now we named them by colours, which has been practical for learning purposes.
Tones in Thai
High Class Middle Class Low Class Rule # 1 "rise" - AAM Word with long ending rising neutral neutral Words ending in long vowel Words ending in sounds m, n or ng
Rule # 2 "lowlow-fall" - AAP
Words using the tone marker 1 low low falling/dropping Words with long vowel and p, t or k in the end
Rule # 3 "lowlow-high" - AP
Words ending with a short vowel low low high or with short vowel + p, t or k -sounds
Rule # 4 "fallfall-high"
Words with tone marker 2 falling/dropping falling/dropping high
Rule # 5 and # 6
Words with tone marker 3 high Words with tone marker + rising
Tone combinations
If you want to exercise speaking a language with tones, one good drill is, combining tones in couples, picking up words or word combinations that are common in the language and grasp them real good. Then you can use them as models when other similar tone combinations pop up while learning new things.
Second word
Rising
Falling Low Neutral High First word
Rising
สีเขียว
sii-kiio
greenสีเข้ม
sii-kem
darkหลังสุด
lang-sut
lastหลังคา
lang-kaa
roofสีฟ้า
sii-faa
blueFalling บ้านผม
baan pom
my homeหน้าที่
naa-tii
dutyที่เกิด
tii geudt
birth placeหน้าแดง
naa-daeng
to blushหน้าร้อน
naa-rawn
summerLow สอบถาม
sawb-taam
investigateประเทศ
pra-tett
countryไข่ไก่
kai-gai
eggไข่เจียว
kai-jiio
omeletteป่าไม้
baa-mai
forrestNeutral ทีหลัง
tii lang
laterทีแรก
tii raek
firstวันเกิด
wan geudt
birthdayโรงเรียน
rawng riian
schoolโรงรถ
rawng rawtt
garageHigh รักษา
rak-saa
to cureชั้นล่าง
chan-laang
bottom floorทุกแห่ง
tuk haeng
everywhereร้อนใจ
rawn-jai
eagerฟ้าร้อง
faa-rawng
thunder
Vowels
Thai is written without any spaces between the words. It does not use commas, periods, question marks and such tools. Spaces are used instead. To read the words all glued to together makes it hard at times, but then again the Thai language and the way they write it has several features that contribute to making it relatively easy most of the time to tell where a word starts, and where it ends. And after all, while speaking our own languages, who will make clear pauses between every word?
In Thai writing the vowels that always should be at the beginning of a word is a great help to separate words, some examples below.
ไม่ m-uy "not" written uy-m แรง r-ae-ng "strong" written ae-r-ng
Then we have still another vowel
โรง r-oo-ng "building, hall" written oo-r-ng
ไม่แรง 'my-raeng' can only be read as two words meaning 'not strong' since แ 'ae' always is at the start of a word.
We have learned to write m-uy ไม่ but there is another way of writing 'uy'. The word meaning inside is written ใน n-uy . The pronounciation is the same. Well, an Englishman cannot object to this of course, being able to spell most anything, as one pleases. Also in Swedish we have examples like c, s and z many times representing exactly the same sound.
Center, senter or zenter - all the same.
Then we have all the words with diphtongs and since they often start with the เ it is clear where a word ends and where another begins. We will get to a few of these diphtongs below.
The diphtong "ia"
One of the most common diphtongs is "ia". To write it in Thai you use e-ee-y. The Thai word for 'to write' is
k-ee-a-n och skrivs เขียน dvs e-k-ee-y-n.
The diphtong "eua"
Another common diphtong is 'eua' as in i m-eua-ng which means country เมือง e-m-eu-aw-ng.
เมืองไทย (e-m-eu-aw-ng uy-t-y) m-eua-ng t-uy-y Thailand
Words in the streets
Some of the words we have learned you will find when you move around in a city.
โรงเรียน (oo-r-ng e-r-ee-y-n) r-oo-ng r-ee-a-n school 
โรงพยาบาล r-oo-ng p-y-ah-b-ah-l hospital (remember that L in the end becomes N) roong payaabaan
The diphtong "ua"
A special way of writing a diphtong is "ua". Dt-o-a is written dt-a-w ตัว. If you did not know better you would believe the word is pronounced dt-a-o, but that is not the case. It is dt-o-a and not anything else. It is written backwards, one of these things to just accept.
Well, then there is a stack of more diphtongs, but they are all pretty normal to put together and they are not used as much as these we have just learned.
A couple of special cases in writing
When you want to write 'ahm' in Thai you have a special way which is ำ as in the words
ทำ t-ahm do คำ k-ahm 'word' น้ำ n-ahm 'water'
Then we have another way of writing the "eu" (English word 'word')
We already learned
มืด m-öö-t long vowel "dark" falling tone ขึ้น k-ö-n short vowel "rise, up, get up " falling tone
The word for money in Thai is ng-eu-n but is spelled e-ng-i-n
เงิน ng-eu-n "money"
Short vowel
Then there is a sign that means that the vowel is short ็ .
Examples
เป็น bp-e-n "is" เล็ก l-e-k "small"
Silent consonants
Some letters of the alphabet are not pronounced. Mostly they appear in words of foreign origin, in foreign names etc. The silence of the letter is marked by ์ . It makes it often makes it easier for us to recognize foreign words in Thai or words of foreign origin.
Same same
Words will sometimes be repeated in Thai. Instead of writing these words twice we just write the sign ๆ which means that the word shall be prounounced twice.
Abbreviate
As you perhaps know Bangkok has an uncomfortably long name in Thai which is abbreviated to Grung-thep or Grung-thep maha nakorn. You write Gr-u-ng t-e-p ฯ or in Thai กรุงเทพ ฯ instead of writing:
กรุงเทพมหานครอมรรัตนโกสินทร์มหินทรายุธยามหาดิ
ลกภพนพรัตน์ราชธานีบุรีรมย์อุดมราชนิเวศมหาสถาน
อมรพิมานอวตารสถิตสักะทัตติยวิษณุกรรมประสิทธิ์
You must admit that the little ฯ comes in very handy..
Etcetera
is in Thai written ฯ ล ฯ and pronounced with a short "lah".
More letters of the alphabet
We have not learned all the letters of the alphabet. ญ 'y' is one of those, we have not learnt so far. It belongs to the green class. We are going to learn aThai word 'big' where this letter is used. The rest of these letters are relatively seldom used.
ฎ ฑ ณ ญ ฐ ฤ ฆ ฏ ฌ ฒ ฬ ฦ d t n y t reu k dt ch t l leu
Manipulating tone
Earlier w e have to use ห 'h' to get words into the red class set of tone rules. Now we will combine this possibility with using the tone mark 1 to get a word with the new letter ญ 'y' to get a low tone. 'Y' belongs to the green class and would be pronounced with a neutral tone if followed by a long vowel. If we put an 'h' before it and adds the tone mark 1 we will make it have the low tone according to rule # 2. As you may have noticed the 'uy' wins over the 'h' in the battle of being the first letter of the word.
ใหญ y-uy "big" low tone
We also use tone mark 2 to make words end up with high tones like these below according to rule # 4
ฟ้าร้อง f-ah r-aw-ng "thunder" high tones for both syllables ช้าง ch-ah-ng "elephant" high tone
Numbers
๑๒๓ ๔๕๖ ๗๘๙ ๐
1 2 3 4 5 7 7 8 9 0
http://www.thai-language.com/id/589826
Ten is s-i-b ๑๐, hundred is r-aw-y and thousand is p-a-nn .
You can practice the numbers at the excellent Thai Language site www.thai-language.com from which all the sound illustrations of these pages have been linked. The tone of the figures you will find at that page marked in the upper right corner of the word with (H- High, R-Rising M-Middle L-Low F-Falling).
Telling time
Just a little memory help when you learn how to tell time in Thai. There are two ways of telling time in Thai. One simple system, just like ours, that is used in official time telling on the radio for example. The 24-hour system is used in combination with the word
naa-li-gah นาฬิกา
2 p.m in the 24-hour system is 14 hours, in Thai
s-i-b s-ii naa-li-gah สิบ สี่ นาฬิกา
For those of you who want to get down to the daily way of telling time in the street and telling time among friends, the Thais use a 6-hour based system. Not only a.m. and p.m. but two more of those so to say.
A day is diveded into 4 periods, each covering 6 hours, the first period starting at midnight. So the 3rd hour of each period, that is, 3, 9, 15 and 21 or if you prefer 3 and 9 a.m and 3 and 9 p.m. will be as below:
3 a.m. - dt-ee s-ah-m - ตีสาม
9 a.m. - s-ah-m m-oo-ng ch-ao - สามโมงเช้า
3 p.m. - b-ah-y s-ah-m m-oo-ng - บ่ายสามโมง
9 p.m. - s-ah-m t-ou-m - สามทุ่ม
Two rules
1. Time telling on the left side of the watch starts with the number of the hour followed by other words.
Telling times of the right side of the watch a small other word will preceed the number of the hour.
2. Hours daytime are followed by the word m-oo-ng.
Minutes
Adding information about minutes will not cause any problems. If lacking minutes for a certain hour you will use the word อีก ee-g. The word nah-teeนาที means minute or minutes.
10 minutes before 3 p.m. is
ee-g s-i-b (ten) n-ah-tee (minutes) b-ah-i s-ah-m m-oo-ng อีกสิบนาทีบ่ายสามโมง
10 minutes after 3 p.m. is
b-ah-i s-ah-m (three) m-oo-ng s-i-b (ten) n-ah-tee (minutes) บ่ายสามโมงสิบนาที
6 and 12 o'clock
6 a.m. is h-o-g m-oo-ng ch-ao หกโมงเช้า
Noon is t-ee-a-ng เที่ยง
Midnight is t-ee-a-ng k-eu-n เที่ยง คืน
6 p.m. is h-o-g m-oo-ng y-e-n หกโมงเย็น
The word y-e-n in 6 p.m. means 'cold' and is used instead of b-ah-i for the last hours of the afternoon, 5 and 6 o'clock. 4 o'clock can also take this form. Y-e-n puts rule number 1 out of order, you will have to look at it as a small inspiring exception.
If we are observant we will notice that 6 a.m. is hog moong chao and 7 a.m is neung moong chao. Well, 'hog' means 6 while 'neung' means one. Thinking about that can make you a bit dizzy. Well again, nothing to figure out here, just to accept, a bit of oriental mindfulness is what we need, as we continue.
If you want to use the concept of half hours as you keep telling time, you will have to learn the word ครึ่ง k-r-eu-ng meaning half. You can continue rapporting time with further assistance by http://www.thai-language.com/ref/time
The Alphabet and the classes
If you want to practice the alphabet as you are preparing to use dictionaries you can use
http://www.thai-language.com/id/589831 .
Below is a table with two of the classes complete - the High, and the Middle class. If you learn them you will not have to learn all the letters that belong to the Low class. They will simply be those that cannot be seen here.
The following are red and belong to the High Class:
ข, ฃ, ฉ, ฐ, ถ, ผ, ฝ, ศ, ษ, ส, ห k (k), ch, t t, p, f s, s, s, h
The following are black and belong to the Middle Class
ก, จ, ฎ, ฏ, ด, ต, บ, ป, อ g, j, d, dt d, dt b, bp, aw The rest are green and belong to the Low Class.
I have used the invented words Kachtosh och Gadjadbaw to memorize these two classes. K-ch-t-sh for the red and
G-j-d-b-aw for the black.
Thai-Language.com
Here you will find everything, the little square up in the left corner will be your best dictionary
1) basic language practice http://www.thai-language.com/lessons,
2) about the language http://www.thai-language.com/ref and
3) special features at http://www.thai-language.com/id/589873 .
4) and the ultimate tool at http://www.thai-language.com/dict/search#5
Google Translate
Google Translate has a Thai translater that keeps the words apart.
http://translate.google.com/#en|th|
Dict.Longdo.com
When you in the future will need more you will find it in http://dict.longdo.com/
Thai at Voice of America
http://www.voanews.com/thai/ The idea is that you load it down to your Ipod and fill your ears with it as you take your evening walk:)
And please feed-back and proposals! I will also have to ask anyone who feels she or he has the time, to correct my English.
Bertil
