Mid-class consonants
Nine consonants and the rules that give all five tones.
The mid class (อักษรกลาง) has nine letters. With these initials, all four tone marks are used, so you can practise all five tones on the same syllable: กา, ก่า, ก้า, ก๊า, ก๋า. The consonant and vowel stay the same.
A deliberately strange Thai school mnemonic is ไก่จิกเด็กตายบนปากโอ่ง: a chicken pecks a child to death on the rim of a jar. The words begin with ก จ ด ต บ ป อ. The other two mid-class letters, ฎ and ฏ, have the same sounds as ด and ต.
Which tone you get
- live syllableends in a long vowel or a sonorant sound: m, n, ng, y or wmida
- dead syllableends in k, p, t or a short vowel with a glottal stop; vowel length doesn't change the tone herelowà
- ◌่first tone markไม้เอกmai ek: first marklowà
- ◌้second tone markไม้โทmai tho: second markfallingâ
- ◌๊third tone markไม้ตรีmai tri: third markhighá
- ◌๋fourth tone markไม้จัตวาmai chattawa: fourth markrisingǎ
The names ไม้เอก, ไม้โท, ไม้ตรี and ไม้จัตวา mean first, second, third and fourth mark. With a mid-class initial they give low, falling, high and rising tones respectively. These names identify written marks, not fixed tones: a low-class initial changes the result.
อ can act as a vowel carrier when a syllable starts with a vowel sound, as in อาหาร and อีก. It still supplies the mid-class tone rule. A silent leading อ also gives ย that rule in four words: อย่า, อยาก, อย่าง and อยู่.
The rules in words
Aunt eats fish.
All three syllables have mid-class initials. ป้า is falling; กิน and ปลา are mid.
This table is old.
ไม้ตรี gives โต๊ะ a high tone; ไม้เอก gives เก่า a low tone. ตัว is the classifier used with a table: it comes between the noun and นี้, this.
Common mistake
Keep บ, ป and ผ or พ distinct. บ is voiced, like b. ป has no strong puff of air, closer to the p in spin; ผ and พ have a puff, closer to the p in pin. These comparisons are starting points: listen to the Thai recording. ป is mid class, ผ is high class and พ is low class, so confusing them can change the tone too.
Practise
Kai says
กินข้าว literally means eat rice, but it's also an everyday way to talk about having a meal. A word-for-word translation doesn't always tell the whole story.