# Thai: How do tones affect singing?



## davidl243

Hey all,

As far as I understand it (and I could be wrong) Thai has 5 tones, rising, falling, high, mid and low. I also believe that there are many words which can mean completely different things depending on which tone is used.

Therefore my question is - how do people sing in Thai? Surely the melody dictates the last three tones (high, mid and low), and the first two (rising and falling) would sound terrible when sung, sliding up notes. Does this lead to confusion over lyrics? I would be interested to know.

I also assume the same problem would arise in other tonal languages too. Any ideas?


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## konungursvia

As in Chinese, we have to ignore the tones when singing, to stick to the melody. Thus songwriters must choose their words carefully, sticking to the most obvious, expected, rhetoric.


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## panjabigator

But does that mean that every word can be sung?


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## davidl243

So Konun, you are saying the nature of the language imposes a natural limit on creativity? In order to avoid confusion, song lyrics must necessarily be predictable and mundane?

How strange, any other thoughts on the matter?


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## palomnik

davidl243 said:


> So Konun, you are saying the nature of the language imposes a natural limit on creativity? In order to avoid confusion, song lyrics must necessarily be predictable and mundane?


 
In a sense, you're right, David; it does impose a limit on creativity.  But then, so does requiring song lyrics to follow a meter and rhyme in western languages.

In fact, tones in most Oriental languages impose less restriction on meaning than most westerners think they do.  Sure, it's possible to confuse words, but context almost always makes it clear what you mean.


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## IxOhOxI

> Does this lead to confusion over lyrics?


 
No, it doesn't. Although the thai song when it's sung may sound with a slight difference but we thais actually wouldn't get confused by such the case unless one does sing the song extremely incorrect but if one does not even if it sounds a bit out of tune than it has to be when spoke, then the song is quite understandable. I personally understand the song by the context while it's sung, sometimes I get confused but when I hear the whole sentence, I would understand it. If you were a native Thai speaker or one that learned for a long time, you could differentiate the words and wouldn't get confused regarding the tones and the rhyme.


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## Seba W.

It's not really such a big deal really, you just live with it... 

A bit of the same happens in English with the stress: often a miss-stressed word might create confusion in a song (I know there are good examples where this _doesn't _happen -but that's the whole point!). 

My Thai is not that great at all, but I heard other foreigners (non-Thais I mean) here in Bangkok talking about this, and saying that, "Thais don't use the tones in songs", which is probably stretching it quite a bit. Thais can probably understand the lyrics if there are no major departures from the correct tones –but even if so, given the right contexts and etc... it is surely not a big deal for them at all.


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