Learning Thai the Easy Way!

The following are all the High Class consonants.
ข ฃ ฉ ฐ ถ ผ ฝ ศ ษ ส ห

Of these the consonant ห should be specially noted. When the letter ห as an initial consonant is followed by one of the Low Class consonants;

ง, ญ, น, ม, ย, ร, ล and ว

...it is usually silent but this makes no difference to the tone rule. As the initial consonant ห is a high class one the tone of the syllable follows the high class tone rules.

Tone Rules for High Class Consonants

1. Syllables beginning with a high class consonant and have no tone mark take the Rising Tone unless they end with K, P or T sounds or a short open vowel.

2. Syllables beginning with a high class consonant and having no tone mark take the Low Tone if they end in K, P or T sound or with a short open vowel.

3. Syllables beginning with a high class consonant and having the tone mark 'mai ayk' ( -่ ) over the consonant take the Low Tone irrespective of ending.

4. Syllables beginning with a high class consonant and having the tone mark 'mai toh' ( -้ ) over the consonant take the Falling Tone irrespective of ending.

EXAMPLES

Read through the following words and note the tone of each. Do not bother about the meaning of the words at this stage, you will meet all the important words in later vocabularies.

Rising Tone

Low Tone

Falling Tone