Monday 18 March 2013

Striking the right tone

Half way through our language training now, and learning vocabulary at quite a dizzying rate. Each word has to be learned along with its correct tone. We are now starting to come across quite a few words where saying the same word with a different tone gives a completely different meaning. For example:
  • khaaw (falling tone) - rice
  • khaaw (rising tone) - white
  • gao (falling tone) - 9
  • gao (low tone) - old
  • sii (low tone) - 4
  • sii (rising tone) - colour
  • khao (high tone) -he/she/they
  • khao (rising tone) hill/mountain
  • haa (falling tone) - 5
  • haa (rising tone) to look for
  • yaak (low tone) - to want to
  • yaak (falling tone) - difficult
Plenty of scope for merry confusion! One of the trickiest things is remembering NOT to raise your voice at the end of a sentence to make it a question, as this is likely to affect the understanding of the meaning of the sentence. There is a special word for this purpose: mai (high tone). Not to be confused with mai (low tone), which means "new", or mai (falling tone), which means "no/not".

Today we also started to learn some of the characters of the Thai script, which has its own complications! Each vowel is positioned in a specific place in relation to the consonant that it follows. For example, it might be written above, below, before or after. We learned one of each today, plus three consonants, which was enough to be able to write a few simple words.



It's just like being back at school and doing spelling and handwriting practice!
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5 comments:

  1. Anonymous18 March 2013 at 14:19

    I am so enjoying reading your interesting accounts of new experiences. I'm sure that I could never cope with learning a language that requires such careful control of the tones. It must be hard to do as well as hard to memorise. Sending much love.
    Aunty Joy

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  2. heatherinthailand18 March 2013 at 14:36

    Being musical certainly helps!

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  3. Unknown20 March 2013 at 20:29

    Heather, really good to see how you are getting on. It must feel like starting life all over again with so much to learn about reading writing eating shopping exercising. I do admire you for going on such an adventure. There has to be more to life than following our fortunes in the budget (yes it is that day for us in UK).
    We celebrated Pete and David's birthdays (big ones)last week and thought of you.
    Good to be able to stay in touch.

    V best, Pen

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  4. heatherinthailand21 March 2013 at 12:53

    Hi Pen, lovely to hear from you. You are right - it does feel almost like starting a whole new life, and the language training really is like going back to school. After years of teaching letters and sounds to five year olds, the boot is now well and truly on the other foot!
    All the best,
    Heather

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  5. Gregory Kane27 March 2013 at 18:03

    The tones sound horrible. When we were first learning Shona, we were told that one of the standard greetings could mean "You witch!" if the stress was placed in the wrong place. I think that I tended to avoid that particular greeting just in case.

    Keep going.
    Gregory

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