I am curious how people approach learning the Thai tones.

[เอริก บรัดลี่]

then we have "enough" + "through" + "bough" + "bought" + "dough"... oh yeah, English is *really* easy!!!

[เอริก บรัดลี่]

Or how about "eight" + "ate" + "gate" + "gait" + "height" + "neither" + "neighbor"?

[Loving J]

Oh, the silent "gh" is easy, so long as you know the old pronunciations of the words (gh was at one time a gutteral). Cf, English and German :

eight= acht
neighbor - nachbar

Also, I believe the "ei" in "neither" and "neighbor" used to be pronounced the same.

Can you imagine the hassle it would have been to change the spelling to reflect the sound shifts?

[Sean H]

I was only giving a Thai word with a ช as the final consonant. It is only used in literary language.

[Loving J]

Does it have a "ch" sound at the end?

[Sean H]

Nope. It is a "t" sound, like mutt and tayn-nitt.

[เอริก บรัดลี่]

I find it helps to explain that words in English often come from other languages and making a guess which language they might have come from can help us to work out how to say it when reading for the first time. Also have transliterations works too, but you already know how the word machine is going to be transliterated "มัซีนฺ" so that is not going to help much, but at least they will know it is not "มัคีนฺ"

[Jan B]

"I tink na, you wait me hia more better becaut today hap rain too mucccccct" would actually be rendered as:
I ting na, you waid, me hia moo bettoe, becaud today hab rain too matt 555+

[เอริก บรัดลี่]

well at least it is easier to understand when spoken, but that's the problem of transliterating, and especially if transliterating what you hear a person say (similar to the experience of lip-reading actually!). I don't think any English speaking person would have too much difficulty understanding the spoken version, but a Thai person try to work out how to say it by reading a transliteration provided by another Thai person.....

[Loving J]

Of the languages I've seen transliterated into Thai, I'd have to say French seems closest when I say the sounds according to the Thai transliteration.