Why Thai sounds different every time you read it
The same Thai phrase appears as chok dee, jok di, and choak deein three different phrasebooks — and none of them tell you the tones. Thai has five tones, and changing the tone changes the word's meaning entirely. Every page in this guide marks the tone on each syllable using combining diacritics (à = low, â = falling, á = high, ǎ = rising; unmarked = mid), so the romanization always shows exactly how the phrase sounds.
Going further
If you want to romanize text not in this list, the Thai transliteration tool handles any Thai input — paste a word, sentence, or paragraph and get word-by-word romanization with tone marks and meanings. For a deeper look at why Thai tones follow the patterns they do, see our Thai tones guide.