Read receipts are common in most mail clients, though you may have to hunt for it in the settings (go spelunking as we call it at work).

There's usually a path but you may need to discover it!

/edit
OOPS!
From a search:

If you’re a current user of Gmail, you might be glad to know that there’s an option to include read notification or a Gmail read receipt on each of your emails. You can also find help on requesting or returning a read receipt.

But unfortunately, that’s about where the good news ends. You see, Gmail is plagued with a variety of problems with the read notification (or Gmail read receipt) service.

First and foremost, it’s not available in most versions of Gmail. If you have a personal account (that is, one that ends with @gmail.com as opposed to @yourcompany.com or @yourschool.edu), you don’t have the feature to receive a Gmail read receipt.

It’s simply not included unless you’re using Gmail in combination with another email service.

I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Make your sound your own!