Thai has five tones, mid, high, low, rising, and falling, and the reader is supposed to figure out what tone a syllable has based on the consonant class, whether it is a live syllable (meaning that it ends with a voiced consonant or long vowel) or a dead syllable (meaning that it ends with a voiceless consonant or a short vowel), and whether the vowel is long or short. When a syllable has a tone marker, different rules must apply alongside the ones already written above. 