Thai Tones Chart: All 5 Tones, Rules & Audio Examples

Thai has five tones — mid (สามัญ, sǎaman), low (เอก, èek), falling (โท, thoo), high (ตรี, trii), and rising (จัตวา, jàttawaa) — and a tones chart is really a map from a written syllable to the pitch you ride across it. The cleanest demonstration is one syllable said five ways: คา (khaa), ข่า (khàa), ค่า (khâa), ค้า (kháa), ขา (khǎa) — "stuck," "galangal," "value," "to trade," "leg." Same consonant and vowel; the tone is the only thing that changes, and it changes the whole word. You already use tones you don't think of as tones: the polite particles ครับ (khráp) that men add and ค่ะ (khâ) that women add are a high tone and a falling tone respectively — so you have been producing two of the five since your first "hello."

The Thai tones chart

Here is the chart itself — every tone with its Thai and English name, the shape your pitch traces, and a word from the khaa set so you have something real to say out loud:

Tone	Thai name	Pitch shape	Example	Meaning
Mid	สามัญ (sǎaman)	flat, mid-voice	คา (khaa)	to be stuck
Low	เอก (èek)	flat, low	ข่า (khàa)	galangal
Falling	โท (thoo)	high → down	ค่า (khâa)	value / cost
High	ตรี (trii)	up, tight	ค้า (kháa)	to trade
Rising	จัตวา (jàttawaa)	dip → up	ขา (khǎa)	leg

Mid and low are both "flat," which is why beginners blur them; falling and rising are near mirror images. Getting those two pairs apart by ear is most of the battle, and it is exactly what a minimal set like khaa trains. For the sounds themselves drilled one by one, the five Thai tones walks through each pitch with audio.

The four tone marks (and why there are only four)

The first thing a tones chart has to un-teach is the assumption that a tone mark is a tone. Thai writes tone with just four marks:

Mark	Thai name	On its own, it means…
◌่	ไม้เอก (mái èek)	not simply "low"
◌้	ไม้โท (mái thoo)	not simply "falling"
◌๊	ไม้ตรี (mái trii)	high
◌๋	ไม้จัตวา (mái jàttawaa)	rising

Four marks, five tones — so the marks were never going to be a tidy label. The name of a mark is a false friend: ไม้เอก is named after the low tone, yet on the low-class consonant ค it produces a falling tone (ค่า, khâa), and ไม้โท, named after the falling tone, produces a high tone on that same consonant (ค้า, kháa). What decides the tone is never the mark alone.

How to actually read the chart: class × mark

The chart that does real work is the grid that crosses the consonant class against the tone mark. This is the piece most beginners skip, and it is the piece that makes Thai readable rather than memorised:

	Mid class	High class	Low class
No mark, live syllable	mid	rising	mid
No mark, dead syllable	low	low	high / falling*
◌่ ไม้เอก	low	low	falling
◌้ ไม้โท	falling	falling	high

*A dead syllable on a low-class consonant is high with a short vowel (นก, nók, "bird") and falling with a long one (มาก, mâak, "much"). Read the low-class column twice: ไม้เอก lands on falling and ไม้โท lands on high — each a step away from where the mark's name points. Miss that one shift and roughly a quarter of what you read comes out wrong. If the consonant classes themselves are still fuzzy, Thai consonant classes is the prerequisite, and Thai tone rules works the full grid syllable by syllable.

The mistakes we watch people make with a chart

The most common error isn't misreading a row — it's flattening. A non-tonal speaker defaults every syllable to a level mid pitch because that is the one that feels natural, so a rising tone collapses toward mid and a falling tone loses its drop. The chart looks understood on paper and evaporates in the mouth.

When we were user-testing the tone colours for these decks in July 2026, the single most repeated slip we watched was on the particle itself: learners saying the women's ค่ะ (khâ) — falling, for statements — flat, so it drifted toward คะ (khá) — high, the question form. Both are real, the chart lists both, and a Thai ear hears the difference instantly even when the learner swears the two are identical. It's the cleanest proof that a tones chart is a listening tool, not a reading one: you cannot get ค่ะ versus คะ from the shapes on the page, only from the pitch in the air.

Turning the chart into a habit

A tones chart is a reference, and references don't stick by being read — they stick by being drilled against sound. The way to internalise this one is to hear the five khaa words back to back until the contrast itself is obvious, then carry the habit into the everyday words you'll actually use, like the greetings in how to say hello in Thai. That is how the deck at the top of this page is built: every syllable is colour-coded by its tone and plays native audio, so you see the rise, fall, or flat line at the same moment you hear it — the chart, animated, instead of frozen. Study it in both directions, reading the Thai and recalling the tone, then hearing the tone and naming the word, and within a few sessions the five shapes stop being a chart you consult and become something you simply hear.