Thai language lesson 1

Today we had our first day of Thai language learning, and it really was like going back to school! Thai is a tonal language, with five different tones: middle, low, high, rising and falling. Each word is spoken with one of these tones, so the tone has to be learned together with the word.

Today we learned the tones by learning the number names: 1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10 are all spoken with a low tone; 5 and 9 have a falling tone; 0, 2, 3 have a rising tone; 100 has a high tone; 1000 has a mid-tone. In theory, I now know all the necessary words to be able to count up to 9,999. In theory…!

 

We were sent out at lunch time armed with the phrase tao rai kha? (falling-low-high), which means how much? to pay for our meal, and we got some more practice in this afternoon at the shops. I bought a skirt and even managed to get the price down a bit, using my new number skills!

Interesting fact for Facebook and Twitter folk: the word for 5 is haa, which sounds a bit like a laugh, so the Thai version of LOL is 555!