Thai is a tonal language with five tones — mid, low, falling, high, and rising — but it has no dedicated tone letters. Instead, the tone of a syllable is calculated from four features: the class of the initial consonant, whether the syllable is live or dead, the vowel length, and any tone mark written above. This tool takes a Thai syllable, identifies each of those factors, and reports the resulting tone with the rule it applied.
How it works
The tone is derived in steps:
- Consonant class of the initial — mid (e.g. ก จ ด ต บ ป อ), high (e.g. ข ฉ ถ ผ ฝ ส ห), or low (the majority).
- Live vs dead syllable — live ends in a long vowel or a sonorant final (ม น ง ย ว ญ ร ล); dead ends in a short vowel with no final or in a stop final (ก/ด/บ sounds).
- Vowel length — matters for dead syllables on low-class initials.
- Tone mark — mai ek
่, mai tho้, mai tri๊, mai chattawa๋— overrides the default, with the result depending on the consonant class.
For an unmarked syllable, the default tone follows a class-and-live/dead table: e.g. a mid-class live syllable is mid tone, a high-class dead syllable is low tone, a low-class live syllable is mid tone.
Example and notes
The word ข้าว (khâao, “rice”) starts with ข (high class), is live (long vowel า plus final ว), and carries mai tho ้. Mai tho on a high-class initial yields the falling tone — hence khâao. Without the mark, high-class live default would be rising (khǎao). The tool walks through exactly these factors so you can see why a syllable carries the tone it does, not just what the tone is.