The Hmong language is considered a tonal language, toneme in linguistics. Therefore, the words you hear might sound very similar, but due to its slight different pitch, their meanings are different. For example, the words zoo and zoov may sound very close, but the first word means "good", and the second one means "forest."

The Hmong tone markers is similar to the English ending character. For example, in English, the word dad is different than the word dap and each has its own meaning. For example, the Hmong word tob with the highest tone marker b means deep and tom with the lowest tone marker m means to bite. Don't worry, there is no such thing like the English word "READ" that has two different pronunciations - REED and RED that is :)

For ease of remembering, I have put these eight tones into a friendly sentence as you can see below. I suggest you remember this sentence so whenever you see the same ending tone marker, you can pronounce it by referencing these words.

The meaning of the sentence is as follows:
-k is soft k like sky (-ky), -t soft t like stay (-tay)

Koj (-kaw!)	Mus (moo)	Kuv (-koo)	Niam (nia)	Neeg (neng)	Siab (shia)	Zoo (zhong)	Tod (-taw)
You	Go	My	Mother	Human/Person	Heart	Good	There

If you want to see a Tone Chart, click here.