(For more information about the Thai language,
see Romanization System of the Thai Language section.)

As you know, Thailand is a land of smiles. The Thai people are easy to approach and will be all smiling when you try to speak to them in Thai and that will add to your pleasure during your stay in Thailand.

There is one important thing you should remember in learning to speak Thai, that is the Thai language has five tones with four tonal marks. They are the mid tone, low tone, falling tone, high tone and rising tone. There are many groups of words which have the same sound but with different tones and meanings. For example, the word suai can mean bad luck (suai), bribe (suai1) or beautiful (suai4), depending on the tone.

To prevent you from pronouncing with the wrong tone and unintentionally cause misunderstanding to the listeners, here we will use four numbers to represent four tones: 1 = low tone, 2 = falling tone, 3 = high tone and 4 = rising tone. The mid-level tone syllable will be unmarked.

General
		suai4 mak2	very beautiful
		mai2 suai4	not beautiful
		chop2 mak2	like a lot
		mai2 chop2	not like
		na2 rak3	lovely, nice
		sa1 nuk1	It's fun.
		sa1 nuk1 mak2	It's great fun.
		mai2 sa1 nuk1	no fun
		di	Good
		di (mak2)	(very) good
		mai2 di	not good, bad
		a kat1 ron3	The weather is hot.
		a kat1 nao4	The weather is cold.
		a kat1 yen	The weather is cool.
		fon4 tok1	It rains.
		phoum4 rak3 khun	I love you.(used by men)
		chan4 rak3 khun	I love you.(used by women)
		phoum4 chop3 khun	I like you.(used by men)
		chan4 chop3 khun	I like you.(used by women)