Being able to say the correct tone is great and all, but ultimately if you want to speak ชัด-ly, it all comes down to rhythm. Reading stuff out loud helps. Having a native speaker correct you is good also. If this isn’t convienent, then just having the original audio for a body of text is fine as well. Start easy. Look for interesting content. Listen to it a lot. If you need help finding interesting content, just ask.
Here are some easy common examples:
ไป ไหน มา common-rising-common
ว่า จะ ใด falling-low-common
ไม่ ว่าง f – f
ไ ม่ ได้ ไป f – f- c
วัน นี้ เหรอ c-high-r
The FSI tape for Vietnamese has a rather awesome section on tones. It gives example sentences in almost every mathematically possible tone combination, up to four or five syllables long.
I was *very* disappointed that the Thai tapes didn’t have this.
Thanks again for all your help. Now I know I am a total muppet but I can do a literal translation of this text but I have no one to ask what these lines mean. Please can you give the meaning…, if you said each line 3 times in Thai and attached it that would be even better, my fingers are crossed.
BTW Did you catch that series Botan (I think it was on ch.7 about Nov2008), I just loved it cos I like the old guy loosing it big time all the time with son #3 for no apparent reason.
Where’d you get thai tapes from Abbie ?