Lesson 1
Characteristics of Thai Language
Read this first: it explains the tone system and script conventions every later lesson relies on without re-explaining them.
Tone marks
Thai is a tonal language — the same syllable can mean different things depending on which of five tones it's spoken with. This course marks tone two ways: the Thai tone mark itself, and a Latin diacritic in its own romanization system.
| Mid | Low | Falling | High | Rising | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thai tone mark | (none) | ่ | ้ | ๊ | ๋ |
| This course's phonetic mark | (none) | ` | ˆ | ´ | ˇ |