What each tone does with your voice, how the script tells you which one a word takes, and a free test that draws your pitch next to a native one.
The short answer: Thai has five tones — mid, low, falling, high and rising. A tone is the shape your pitch makes across a syllable, and it is part of the word. Say maa level and it means come (มา). Push it up and it means horse (ม้า). Dip and rise and it means dog (หมา). Same sounds, three different words.
"Normal pitch" below means your normal speaking voice. Tones are relative. A deep voice and a high voice both say the same tones, each from their own starting point.
| Tone | Example | What your pitch does | How to say it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mid no mark | มา maa · come | Level, at your normal pitch | Keep it level. Don't let it drift up or down. It should sound almost boring. |
| Low à | ป่า bpàa · forest | Below normal, sagging slightly | Drop below your normal speaking pitch and stay there, sinking a little. Think of a tired sigh. |
| Falling â | ป้า bpâa · auntie | Starts high, then falls away | Start above your normal pitch and let it drop, like you've just understood something: "ohhh". |
| High á | ม้า máa · horse | Up high and still climbing | Start a little above normal and keep pushing up. It should feel tight, almost strained. |
| Rising ǎ | หมา mǎa · dog | Dips low, then rises | Dip below your normal pitch first, then climb above it, exactly like asking "really?". |
These are everyday words, not trick examples. Get the tone wrong and you've said the other word.
Asking a taxi driver whether somewhere is near or far comes down to one tone. Context rescues you a lot of the time, but not every time, and the more you rely on it the harder you are to understand.
Pick a tone, hear the reference, then say it. Your pitch is drawn over the native line so you can see where it drifts. Nothing is uploaded; it all runs on your device.
You don't need this to start speaking. Romanised Thai marks the tone on every syllable. But once you read Thai, the tone of almost any word can be worked out from three things:
You can see it at work in the examples above. ป่า and ป้า share the same mid-class consonant, and only the mark changes: one gives a low tone, the other a falling one. The same mark on a low-class consonant, as in ม้า, gives a high tone. The mark doesn't name a tone on its own. It works together with the consonant class.
That's why tone rules feel hard on paper. It's also why most learners do better learning to say the tones first and the rules second.
English uses pitch all the time, but for feeling, not meaning. Your voice rises on a question, drops at the end of a statement, jumps when you're surprised. In Thai those same movements change the word. Three habits cause most of the trouble:
Five: mid, low, falling, high and rising.
Not if you want to be understood. Tone is part of the word in the same way a vowel is. ใกล้ klâi (near) and ไกล klai (far) differ only in tone.
For English speakers it's usually the high tone, which feels unnaturally tight, and keeping the mid tone level. The rising tone tends to be easier than expected.
No. Romanised Thai marks the tone on every syllable, so you can learn to hear and say the tones first and pick up the script later, or never. Ravela lets you choose.
Next: tones are one part of sounding Thai. The consonants English doesn't have, and the long and short vowels that change meaning, are in the Thai pronunciation guide.
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