JHicks

ต is unvoiced though. ด is voiced but they're obviously the same class, so you get the same range of tones. The only relationship I can see in that area is that a voiced consonant will never be high class. It will be low if it is a sonorant and mid if it is a stop - but that still gives you all the tones.

I think you're right that it would be better to number the tones.

I think the problem that English speakers have with ต and ด is that English d is half way between them. d and ด are both classified as voiced stops, but that's not the end of the story because voicing works very differently in the two languages. English "voiced" stops are actually devoiced a lot of the time, and even when they're not, the voicing only kicks in right at the end and is fairly weak. Late onset voicing is very easy to miss because the vowel will be voiced anyway, so a lot depends on a tiny difference in timing. That's not a problem in English because there are no consonant pairs that only differ by voicing, so devoicing or weak voicing will never turn one consonant sound into another - but that's not true of many other languages, and those languages tend to have fuller voicing so that there is a clear contrast. French is an example - or Thai, more to the point. What that means is that in practice, ต has no voicing, d has partial late-onset voicing and ด has full early-onset voicing. That's not to say that voicing is the only difference between d and the Thai consonants, but I do think it's the most important one.

If you're interested in this sort of thing, you can download Praat which allows you to visualise the voicing (amongst other things). Hours of fun...

1 hour ago, tgeezer said:

 I don't think that there is any difference in pronunciation between ณ and. น  in Thai but there may be for Thai Sanskrit scholars.

I was talking about ญ - why would it become /n/ in final position when /y/ is already a valid final? I think the table is helpful in answering questions like that.

โฆษะ and อโฆษะ are the Sanskrit equivalents of ก้อง and ไม่ก้อง

หนัก and เบา are aspirated and unaspirated

ธนิต is a new one on me but turns out to be the Pali equivalent of หนัก

I don't get what you mean about tone 2.

3 hours ago, JHicks said:

I don't think the language is Pali. If it was written in Thai script it would be งสอ็นสจกา, which doesn't look like Pali to me.

According to Wikipedia, the tradition with these tattoos is to spells out "abbreviated syllables from Pali incantations" - so it probably is Pali after all, and the reason it doesn't seem to make sense is that it is abbreviated (plus the characters aren't a perfect match so I'm sure I didn't nail them all). I guess that means you'd need someone who knew the incantation to figure out what it means.

On the script, all the candidates are related and look fairly similar. Wiki says "in Cambodia and central Thailand, the Old Khmer script of the Khmer Empire is used [this was the Pallava script, or a half-way house between the Pallava script and the modern Khmer script, depending on the time period. Pallava does fit some of the characters very well, but doesn't seem to fit others at all. The modern khmer script is quite angular, with lots of chevron type things like little pennants, so not a good match]. While in northern Thailand yantra tattoos may use Shan [lots of circles - not a good match], northern Thai [this is Tai Tham - the script in my last post], or Tai Lu [basically the same as Tai Tham, unless they're referring to something called "Fak Kham". I can't find any pictures of Fak Kham though. I haven't heard of it before and it seems to have died out early on], and in Laos the Lao Tham script is employed [this is basically the same thing as Tai Tham]". So it could be any of them but I think Tai Tham is most likely, especially as OP got the tattoo in northern Thailand.

It looks a bit like , which is the Tai Tham script used for the Lanna language previously spoken around Chiang Mai as well as a few other languages, including Pali. It does crop up a lot in old Buddhist texts. If it is Tai Tham (and if those are the right characters) I don't think the language is Pali. If it was written in Thai script it would be งสอ็นสจกา, which doesn't look like Pali to me. The other possible languages aren't spoken by many people and I don't think there are any online dictionaries.

5 hours ago, Neeranam said:

How would you transcribe นิรนาม?

I think Neeranam is OK but maybe Niranam. 

FWIW I think the way you've done it is better. Maybe it depends on your accent. I have heard quite a lot of the Australian accent recently and it's really struck me how they pronounce the vowel in words like bit very much like อิ. They have IPA [i] where I have IPA [ɪ] (I'm from the UK). I think that vowel is even more lax in most American accents, so even further from อิ. I'd say the sound is more important than the length so would go with ee. Of course if you ask someone who doesn't know any Thai to pronounce it it will still come out a fair way from นีรนาม, but that's transliteration for you.

I thought the issue with ภิกษุ was to do with the ending. I see that although the RID doesn't support Pali vs Sanskrit explanation, the Thai Wikipedia does.

I've come across that grid before and found it helpful when I was wondering why yoga is spelt with ค or why ญ is pronounced [y] when it is in final position.

What I don't know is how the sounds of Sanskrit relate to the sounds of English cognates. For example, the word candle comes from the root kand, which belonged to the last common ancestor of Sanskrit and English and meant to shine. Is that also the origin of จันทร์ in วันจันทร์? After all, ท represents Sanskrit [d], and the moon is your classic shiny thing.

17 hours ago, Neeranam said:

On a side note, do you have any idea why  ภิกษุ is transliterated as Bhikku? Maybe an alternative spelling.  I'm not really a Buddhist but did do a retreat in the 90's for 10 days at Wat Suan Mohk, the temple of the revered monk Buddhadassa Bhikku พุทธทาสภิกขุ

Some sources say Bhikku is Pali while Bhiksu is Sanksrit, but the RID says that both words belong to both languages. The Pali texts from Sri Lanka appear to use Bhikkhu (based on the transliterations into English and Thai), so I don't know why Bhiksu is preferred in the Thai translation. It may be a legacy from an earlier period when Mahayana Buddhism was dominant.

4 hours ago, tgeezer said:

I chose ภิกษุ suspecting that I should have *written พระ because as I understand it บวช is what a ภิกษุ is doing, which would mean that he is not a full monk. 
...

*edit: Replaced  wrote with written,  both sound alright to me but may as well try to learn some English while I am here!  Does anyone know which is correct and why? 

2 hours ago, tgeezer said:

Thanks for doing that but  I was interested in the past tense of write, wrote or written!  I discover that they are both acceptable being derived from the archaic form writ.
 

Yes, but I think the point was that this doesn't apply after a modal like will or should. These words have to be followed by an infinitive, and an infinitive can't mark tense by definition, so for the past you use have (in the infinitive) plus the past participle. That gives you "should have written". It's not the same construction as "I have written", where the "have" is not an infinitive (you can tell because it doesn't change in the third person - we say "he should have written a book", not "he should has written a book").

Suddenly I'm eligible for an STV. I'm not sure whether it's possible to convert my SETV, or whether I'm stuck with 60 + 30 days. Anyone know?

Here's the same thing in image form (the screenshot shows "อาหารอร่อย"). I got slightly different numbers but it's the same pattern - unstressed "long" a is the same duration as unstressed "short" a, but stressed long a is much longer.

There's no stressed short a to complete the picture. There are a few elsewhere in the dialogue, but they're in particles and particles can behave strangely (as you say) so I didn't do the measurement.

The blue line is the pitch BTW. The pitch tracking can be a bit off, especially when the voice is at a low level. You can see the rising tone of อาหาร turning the corner at the transition to the n sound, but in reality it doesn't shoot up the way the tracking shows.

I haven't got a great deal to do just now, so I measured the duration of the first vowels in อาหาร and อร่อย. You can always argue about exactly where one sound ends and the next beings, but basically they're all within a whisker of each other - say 80ms +/- 10%.

I've read (and found) that for unstressed vowels in natural speech, there is often no measurable difference between the supposedly short and the supposedly long version. Perceived difference is another matter because the perceiver knows that the vowel is long or short (as the case may be) and registers the pronunciation as correct, so may well insist that there really is a difference... but it's just an illusion. Of course if you have a word pronounced in isolation, as in "It's Friday and our word of the day is อาหาร", you may well get a genuine long vowel in a normally unstressed syllable - but that's an artificial case.

Thanks guys. Between that and some googling it does look possible. Current requirement is for a negative test within 72 hours of boarding, btw. It's the time limit that seems to cause most problems but I found one place saying the result would be available within 24 hours and other saying 1-2 days.

I'd be in trouble if it came out positive but what can you do?

On 11/22/2020 at 10:38 AM, tgeezer said:

... so corrections will help me too.  
Here is the first dialogue. 
สนุขไหมคะ

สนุขครับ

อาหารอร่อยไหมคะ

อาร่อยมากครับ 

เผ็ดไหมคะ

ไม่เผ็ดครับ

เอาผลไม้คะ

เอาครับ ขอบคุณมากครับ

คุณชอบอาหารไทยไหมคะ 
ชอบมากครับ

 

You wrote อร่อย the first time but อาร่อย the second.

It seems to have got started with a mistransliteration. Based on the RID, the usual ศรี looks to be from Sanskrit ศฺรี, while the word ศีรษะ is from Sanskrit สีส (which would have been pronounced สีสะ). In other words there was no ร in the original and the consonant was ส not ศ (they're not the same in Sanskrit).

It's hard to see where the ศร came if not from ศฺรี, even though that would have been a mistake. But if so, why is the vowel where it is? It's a bit of a mystery. If it did come from ศฺรี, I reckon you may as well go the whole hog and spell it ศรีษะ.

The spelling ศรีษะ is used in some of the definitions in some dictionaries (Lexitron for example) but does not appear as a headword. Maybe the spelling is gradually changing.

I'm making some travel plans and it looks like I'll need a PCR covid test on departure from Thailand to get into my next port of call. The test needs to be done no more than 72 hours before take-off.

For obvious reasons there's been a lot of discussion about getting tests at home before coming into Thailand, but does anyone know if it's practical to get one in Thailand before leaving?

Definitely an interesting topic. I just think it's incredibly hard to judge the naturalness or mood of a sentence in a language that's not your own. Also, I suspect the sentence from open subtitles is a google translate job.

7 hours ago, tgeezer said:

Changes have occurred in English and I wonder if they have influenced Thai or whether Thai has changed naturally in a similar way.  
A How are you? 
B. Good thanks.

To my generation the respondent is making a judgement upon his character.  My answer is  "I am well thanks." 
Compare that with what I think has happened in Thai. 
ก. สบายดีไหม  It could be สบายไหม 

ข. สบายดีครับ.    ~~~~.    สบายครับ 

I see the parallel but I don't think these things are related. For what it's worth my analysis of the English situation would be that:

"I am X" is a predicative construction, so X should be an adjective rather than an adverb - "I am happy", "I am angry"...

By some historical quirk the word "well" came to be used in this construction even though it is normally an adverb. I for one feel that this "well" is the opposite of "ill" - but when I respond to "How are you?", I'm not just talking about my health.

"Good" would obviously be the usual form of the adjective, and normally it has about as broad a meaning as you can get. I understand what you're saying about the meaning having been narrowed down in this particular context, but as far as I can see that can only have happened because "well" had come to be used instead, and there wasn't really a good reason for that in the first place. So as I see it, we've ironed out a historical quirk and restored "good" and "well" to their proper places.

All of that strikes me as being very specific to English - even to UK English. I don't know the history of สบายดี but I don't think I've seen it suggested that it's a new construction, and I know it's the same in Lao, which is supposed to be more conservative. I suspect that expressions like สบายดี and อร่อยดี have been around for a good while. If English has anything similar, I'd say it's "good and ready", where the "good" just brings out the "ready". If you wanted to negate this you'd normally get rid of the "good", so that fits with the point you make about the Thai.

It strikes me that Thai goes in for this trick of piling up similar words to adjust or emphasise the meaning more than English does. We do have a few examples - "a great big house", or maybe "a washer-dryer", but they're few and far between. With Thai, I have quite a bit of trouble working out whether extra words really are redundant, whether they are there for emphasis or to adjust the meaning, or whether they just seem redundant to me because of differences between Thai and English grammar (as in สามารถ... ได้, which made my head explode at first).

10 hours ago, EricTh said:

I am looking for the informal common word. I believe 'Talok' is another formal Indic word.

I think it actually came into Thai from Khmer. A lot of words did, including everyday vocab like เดิน, เรียน, ถนน, or สะอาด. Many of them originally started with consonant clusters that Thai speakers find / found hard to pronounce, and these clusters got expanded out to become a short syllable with "a" followed by a longer syllable (as in ถนน - or ทะเลาะ).  This is one source of all the unwritten "a"s you find in Thai.

Just trying to pick a flight / ASQ hotel so that I can book as soon as I get the green light.

I know you have to upload confirmation of your airline booking at stage 2 of the COE application process.

If entering on an SETV but intending to extend / convert, does this confirmation need to show a return flight with the return leg within the initial 60 days?

As it's a certificate of "entry" I'm hoping a one way ticket is OK. Saying that, I haven't got the SETV yet, so maybe they'll want to see a proper return booking at that point. I just uploaded a screenshot of an available flight, which seems to have worked for others on here.

10 hours ago, marlene72 said:

send my passport where?.. there's no need to send your passport anywhere.. only time passport needed is when u upload a copy of it, too the ministry website, whilst filling in form.

Thanks - I realise now you were talking about the COE at that point. I was talking about the SETV process. I thought you'd applied and assumed you'd done it online. It's not totally clear what docs they require so I was wondering if you're supposed to wait for some kind of notification that your application is OK before sending your passport in. There's a status tab on the website but I don't know if it changes to "approved" at any point.

3 hours ago, Atlan said:

Ohh wow, Thank you very much for the effort.

 

I have to say, I did not concider an OCR Tool, as I did not think that Thai would be readable at all. But Thanks for the hin, I might try that.

 

No worries. It was actually quite good typing practice. I've been using an online typing trainer but it's pretty boring so I don't end up doing enough. A lot of the free OCR sites won't do Thai but some do - i2OCR is one. You might have to split the pdf into image files first. I don't think it'd be perfect but it might be good enough. If it doesn't work out (and you don't find what you need on the links Kokesaat has just posted) I could type out a couple more.

I need to get my typing speed up so I copied out the first little story.

เช้าวันเสาร์ แม่ชวนมานีไปซื้อกับข้าวที่ตลาด มานีช่วยหิ้วตะกร้าให้แม่ ในตลาดมีคนมากและมีของขายหลายอย่าง ของกินก็มี ของใช้ก็มี แม่ถามราคา และเลือกซื้อแต่ของดีที่ราคาไม่แพงเกินไป แม่ซื้อผ้า หวี สบู่ และของกินหลายอย่าง มีเกลือ มะนาว ปลาทู ไข่และไก่แม่จะซื้อหมูกับเนื้อด้วยแต่ไม่มีขาย เพราะวันนั้นเป็นวันพระ มานีเห็นผลไม้น่ากินหลายอย่าง มีเงาะ ลำไย นอ้ยหน่า จึงขอให้แม่ซื้อเงาะ สายแล้วแม่ยังซื้อของไม่เสร็จ มานีเดินตามแม่อยู่นานจนหิว มองเห็นร้านหนึ่งมีของกินน่าอร่อยและราคาไม่แพงเพราะมีป้ายบอกไว้ มานีจึงชวนแม่เข้าไป แม่เห็นว่าบ้านอยู่ไกลตลาดจึงพามานีเข้าไปซื้อกิน ในร้านมีคนมาก

แม่พูดว่า “ร้านนี้ทำของอร่อย จึงมีคนมากินกันมาก”

มานีพูดกับแม่ว่า “เขาคงได้เงินมากนะคะแม่”

“ถ้าขายดีก็ได้เงินมากซีลูก” แม่ตอบ

“คนขายของต้องได้เงินมากทุกคนหรือคะแม่” มานีถาม

“บางคนก็ได้มาก บางคนก็ได้น้อย ถ้าใครได้น้อย ก็ต้องพยายามทำของให้ดีๆ จึงจะมีคนซื้อ” แม่ตอบ

“มานีอยากขายของบ้าง เราจะได้มีเงินมากๆ” มานีบอกแม่

แม่ยิ้มด้วยความพอใจ แล้วบอกกับมานีว่า “ดีแล้วลูก”

It looks to me as though the pdf might be OCRable.

You could look at Lingopolo or Mondly. I don't know how good they are but quite a lot of people seem to use them.

Not what you asked but it doesn't take that long to learn to identify the tone from the Thai spelling. At point you'd be able to go back to Memrise.

Sometimes the tones are irregular, i.e. the written tone does not match the normal spoken tone. For those words, if you show the written tone then some will say you're wrong because that's not how the word is normally pronounced, whereas if you show the spoken tone then some will say you're wrong because it doesn't match the Thai spelling. That could be what's going on with one/both of these apps. Can you give some examples?

22 hours ago, marlene72 said:

Tony,  I have applied online thru the Ministry website. ... keep u posted. 

oh and i dated my potential arrival for dec 28/29th fyi, giving myself ample time if they take a while getting back to me. 

Good luck. Did you send your passport off straight away or are you waiting to hear something back first?

Does anyone have a link to the detail of the ban on travelling out of the UK? I can only find the gist. I'd been waiting for a better visa option than the Elite, not wanting to spend the money when entry wasn't guaranteed. It's fair to say I was a little frustrated when heard they were issuing SETVs again, only for the UK government to ban outbound travel. It looks like it's back to square one but I'd like to check the detail if anyone knows where it can be found.

15 hours ago, KhaoNiaw said:

...

Central Thai is one accent but there are many many others. But for Thai the spelling rules are based on (official Thai) Central Thai and not vice versa.

The people talking about Lao or Isaan probably don't realize that Isaan has 30+ variations and Laos is different again. My girlfriend is from Laos and she knows immediately if someone is an Isaan Thai, and also recognizes if they're northern Lao or southern Lao etc.. If you watch Lao Star TV, official Lao is not that different from official Thai and you'll understand a lot. 

...

Just as with English, accents basically tell people where you're from, and you'll always have 'foreign' traces. Nothing wrong with that. 

I'm quite interested in different Thai accents but haven't really been able to get to grips with them. Any time the subject comes up, Thais seem to talk about using different words rather than pronouncing the same words differently. Apparently the southern accent is supposed to be clipped (I haven't been down there but have heard they swallow the ends of their words) whereas the northern accent is supposed to be slow and drawn out. That's a start I guess but pretty vague. What I've noticed myself is that there's a lot of variation in the tone shapes. Sometimes a word will just have a different tone, but then the same tone will come out differently depending on the region. I haven't found anything that would tell me e.g. an Isaan mid tone goes like this, a southern falling tone goes like this... so I haven't really been able to dig into this much.

5 hours ago, tgeezer said:

who knows the background of the Google translator?

You know it's statistical, right? It looks for similar sentences previously translated by human beings and tries to stitch something together out of what it finds. This works quite well for language pairs where there is a lot of previously translated material and it is reasonable quality (like French / English). For other pairs, not so much. Amazon used it / a similar approach to translate English product descriptions to Swedish when it recently launched in Sweden, with some fairly comical results.