Peppy

As others have indicated, it's like the "long a" sound in English. As in rain, day, say, hate, etc.

Except all four examples provided are diphthongs /eɪ/.

Depending on the dialect of English you speak...

The Thai vowel is not a diphthong, it's /eː/

Correct.

As others have indicated, it's like the "long a" sound in English. As in rain, day, say, hate, etc.

I agree. That's probably the first really "cool" response so far--it'd go over especially well with younger people. (Anyone over 30 will just look at you funny.) Bravo argentum!

I, in no way, mean that simply “matching up the sounds” is going to equal proper pronunciation for the whole alphabet. I, of course, spend twice as much time explaining how to make the sounds Thai doesn’t have, instead of having the kids repeat after me. I want to “match up the sounds”, so they have reference when studying at home, since I only get 1 or 2 hours with them per week. V, Z, and R and hard for them, but TH is much harder. I have to change their understanding of the sound, then practice the physical skills.

It seems you're already doing the right thing, and you may have to come to terms with the fact that, whatever results you get, you did your best, and that was the best you could do. Most Thai students get around 100 hours a year of English instruction (3 hours a week times 36 school weeks, though it's more in some schools), which works out to at least 600 hours by the end the primary years, and 1200 hours by the end of secondary. Including the three years of kindergarten, most students have upwards of 1500 hours of English classes under their belt by the time they graduate. In theory, 1500 hours of language study should leave a student fluently conversant, able to read books and newspapers, and follow TV shows and movies exclusively in that language with little difficulty. The reality, of course, (and I'm not exaggerating here) is that most senior high school students can't count past 20 in English, let alone hold a conversation or understand a TV show. The Thai education system is in an absolute shambles, and it isn't just English. In the standardized tests given by the education ministry each year, the average test score for the core subjects--math, science, English, Thai, and social studies--is around 30-40%. If your students are doing better than this, that's wonderful, but if they aren't--well, actually teaching them much of anything is tantamount to fighting the whole system, and if you're ready to do that, you might as well just commit yourself to an insane asylum right now and save the hassle down the road.

My main point in all of this is that people often cannot shift between doing things one way, because “that’s just the way it is”, and doing it the right way; even those who are trained for years in "the right way".

It is, of course, the job of the teacher to somehow get their students to understand "the right way". And, of course, it's the job of the students to learn and apply "the right way". You do your job, they do theirs. And if they don't, well, they pass anyway. Teach them what they need to know, and don't think too much about whether they're all actually learning it or not.

My first example was the English teacher. Even though she wanted me to speak certain sounds, she just applied RTGS to the names, and forgot what the Roman characters meant to me. She spent quite some time translating a document for me to read as a voice over (for TV no less) and her mind just shifted to RTGS, instead of her training in English.

Maybe you should have thought about what the Roman characters meant to her, since she's the Thai speaker. Trying to read Thai with English phonology is just as ridiculous as it is the other way round. The writing system is irrelevant. As for mispronouncing names, that's really no biggie. People mispronounce foreign names all the time--if you want to say them properly, you have to learn the sound system of the language the name is from. Of course, with RTGS, when you don't know the context (as in the case of names), it really is sometimes impossible to read it accurately, since there's no way of knowing the tone or vowel length of a given syllable. Again, that's the real problem with it--if you had been familiar with RTGS, and the system also showed tone and vowel length, you'd have had no problem getting those names right. (Assuming you know the Thai sound system well.)

Next, are a few things that I hear my students do.

Steak is written and pronounced เสตก and star becomes สตา

Another example is Pepsi becomes แป็บซี่

Those pesky ต’s and ป’s again.

If Thais use the rules of their language to pronounce foreign words when speaking to each other, I have no problem with it. The problem is, Thais are bombarded with the message that certain Thai characters sound like certain Roman ones. Then, here I come, and tell them something different from what they see every day. They get confused or just ignore the new information. They’re in English class, looking at only Roman characters, talking to an English speaking person and I still get เสตก.

I don’t think RTGS is the root cause of my student’s problems, but it certainly doesn’t help. I have adjusted to the fact that PH in romanized Thai sounds like P. I’m in the right environment to do so, Thai students are not in the “PH sounds like F” environment.

Thai students, and teachers think that those characters in question are interchangeable when spoken in either language. I see too much evidence just to ignore RTGS when looking for a cause.

"Steak" and "star" aren't very good examples here, because the "t" after "s" actually does sound like "ต". But I see what you're saying here, and I agree with you when you say RTGS isn't the root cause of the problem, nor is it helpful for someone learning English. Again, when you're teaching phonics, you have to point out to the students the differences between RTGS and English, and tell them what's what. You know, "This is English. This is RTGS." (While pointing to the whiteboard or holding up flashcards.) Make a point of the fact while both systems use Roman characters, English is used to write English, while RTGS is used to write Thai.

But if we accept that "RTGS isn't the root cause of the problem", well, what is? Surely problems are best solved at their root, and the root of the problem here is Thai students trying to speak English with Thai phonology. It really wouldn't matter if they'd never heard of romanization before, or even if they were totally illiterate, their accents would still be as terrible. A lot of people (not just Thais) seem to have the idea that all languages have the same sounds, and you just have to rearrange them in different ways to get different languages. The problem is that this isn't the case at all. All languages have different sound sets, and to speak a given language, you have to learn the sound set for that language. If you want your students to have better accents, the solution, as I mentioned earlier, is to teach them phonics.

Which brings me back to the beginning of this post: whatever you teach, don't let your expectations get too high. You aren't going to change the RTGS (though it wouldn't make any difference to the students' English ability even if you did), and you certainly aren't going to endear yourself to your fellow faculty members by running around and telling them how to do this and that. Do what you can do, and what's best for your students: teach them phonics.*

* In addition to grammar, vocabulary, and as much conversation practice as class size allows, of course.

There are quite a few variations:

จริงหรือเปล่า

จริงหรือ

จริงเหรอ

จริงรึ

จริงป่าว

จริงปะ

จริงอ่ะ

etc.

^^^^ the above is incorrect, the proper spelling should be,

จริงเปล่า

True, but they say it the way he wrote it.

Edit: Er, I mean the way you wrote it first.

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough in my previous posts, but there are clearly two separate issues here.

The first is the romanization of the Thai language in a way that is easily accessible to foreigners, whatever language they speak. As has been pointed out, people have been working on this for well over a century without a satisfactory solution in sight, in part because of the idiosyncrasies of the Thai language itself, and in part because of the generally laissez-faire culture of its speakers as regards implementation.

The second issue is, basically, how to teach English to Thai students. The OP has indicated his belief that his students' "terrible pronunciation" is somehow a result of the system of romanizing the Thai language, and it can be cured by "matching up" the sounds of the two languages. In fact, it's quite the opposite: Thai students will best learn how to sound like English speakers by learning the ways in which the languages differ, and a teacher familiar with both languages should make a point of educating them to this end. This means pointing out that "ai" is pronounced as long A, not long I, "ph" is F, not P, "th" is pronounced not like T but like F with the tongue against the front teeth, and so on and so forth.

In addition to the phonics website linked to in my earlier post, the following attached document may be of assistance.

A Contrastive Study of English and Thai.PDF

...I think there's a link between the usage of this system and Thai student's ability to learn English. So, a little fine tuning would be in order. A lot of effort is used to teach and use English here, so make it (RTGS) complete by starting with a phonetic transcription system that is more accurate.

I think you're confusing "language" and "writing system" here. In order to make use of a language's writing system, you need to know the sounds of the language and how they correspond to the writing system for that language. Whatever characters are used to write Thai, whether they're Thai, Roman, Devanagari, or Cyrillic, they're representing the sounds of Thai, and you need to learn those in order to speak Thai in a way that other speakers of that language can understand. Likewise, if you're teaching English, you need to teach your students how to pronounce the sounds of English, and how those sounds correspond to the language's writing system. (Blendphonics.org has some excellent, free material for doing this, though it's intended for native speakers, so you'll need to adapt it a little to suit your students.)

Roughly: "You treat me like a slave, but never give me a raise."

The main problem with the Royal Institute's system is the lack of indicators for tone and vowel length. The system of romanization itself really isn't an issue, since whatever characters are used to represent whatever sounds are ultimately representing Thai sounds, not the sounds of any other language, and someone who wishes to read romanized Thai will still need to learn how to pronounce the sounds of the Thai language, just as they would with any other language written in the Roman alphabet.

The inconsistencies often seen in proper names are, of course, simply a result of incorrect application of the official system.

เตะผ่าหมาก v. to kick someone in the (betel) nuts.

How about ผลที่คาดไม่ถึง ?

I think that would be more like "unexpected consequences". Same thing, though, really.

Just to clarify... with "pretentious", I was talking about rolling the R. Simply pronouncing it normally, as distinct from L, isn't really much of an issue either way.

Your translation is correct, though "อัน" is sometimes used instead of "ที่".

The Thai name is "baw-ri-sut gum-jut pee". Most people over 35 know it.

http://www.doonungdee.com/%E0%B9%82%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%AA%E0%B8%9A%E0%B8%B1%E0%B8%AA%E0%B9%80%E0%B8%95%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%A3%E0%B9%8C-%E0%B8%94%E0%B8%B9%E0%B8%AB%E0%B8%99%E0%B8%B1%E0%B8%87%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%99%E0%B9%84%E0%B8%A5%E0%B8%99%E0%B9%8C-1630.html

It's about nutrition, mainly... in the past, the average height and weight of Western soldiers wasn't so different from Asians today.

Is it color fast?

What are you trying to say here? If you want to ask "is the color faded fast", you say

สีซีดเร็วมั้ย

I think what the OP means is "Will the dye run or come out in the wash?" -- "สีตกไหม".

Wouldn't transliterating Thai into Swedish make more sense on a Swedish-language forum?

In all seriousness, though, the IPA is great, but it really isn't that much more accessible to the average Joe than Thai script is. So if we're going to transliterate Thai into Roman script on an English-language forum, I'd say we should approximate Thai sounds by using their closest sounds in English, and stand by "y" for ย ยักษ์.

Where the hell did Korea enter the mix? Why can't I be from Vietnam? Or Japan?

Whoops, I guess I didn't read your post carefully enough. The first reply said you were Korean, and I just assumed there was something in the OP to back that up. Sorry!

It's whether the Thais think there's a difference or not.

Most don't. The idea that all the people who were born in Thailand and look "Thai" are of the "Thai race" is more or less pounded into everybody from the day they're born, and relatively few have ever stopped to think about the truth of this or how the distinction applies in other countries. So you can either try to tell them the truth and watch their faces go all funny, or you can just tell them you're such-and-such Asian nationality but have Canadian citizenship/were born in Canada, and get on with the conversation.

Patri is correct. Googling for the terms "ไข่แตก" and "ขาย" gives plenty of examples.

Ethnicity matters in this case, not what country outside your birth country you happen to have citizenship to.

But what is ethnicity, really? What if the OP was in fact born in Canada? Does that change anything here?

I myself was born in Canada, as were my parents, and my grandparents on both sides. But my great-grandparents (again on both sides) were from England. Should I tell people I'm English?

I think you need to back to school. Perhaps around the 4th grade level.

Can't be bothered. Care to enlighten me yourself?

And to answer the question of whether คน refers to nationality or ethnicity: It depends on whether you think they're the same thing or not. If you do, then I'm English, you're Korean, all people of demonstrably mixed heritage are stateless, and the only Canadians are the people who were there before everybody else.

To me, คน means nationality only. If I'm talking about race, I say เชื้อชาติ.

But, since most Thais, never having given much thought to the matter, would say that race and nationality are the same thing, you could perhaps lessen the confusion by saying, "เป็นคนเกาหลี แต่ถือสัญชาติแคนาดา" - "I'm Korean, but I have Canadian citizenship." It may not be true, but it will make conversation smoother--and we all know that smooth conversation is far more important than truth. And besides, Koreans are way cooler than Canadians in Thai eyes.

Ethnicity matters in this case, not what country outside your birth country you happen to have citizenship to.

But what is ethnicity, really? What if the OP was in fact born in Canada? Does that change anything here?

I myself was born in Canada, as were my parents, and my grandparents on both sides. But my great-grandparents (again on both sides) were from England. Should I tell people I'm English?