JHicks

10 hours ago, Oxx said:

Just because speakers rub shoulders doesn't mean that lexis will be transferred.

Fair point, I oversimplified when I said "just". What I was trying to say was that, given that the two countries are next to each other, the fact that there is a lot of Khmer vocab in Thai is not evidence that they are related languages.

10 hours ago, Oxx said:

There is no question of the "spelling settling down".

This was a reference to the spelling being มกร, when the transliteration of the Sanskrit would have been มาฆะห์. That is based on the Sanskrit names of the months here, but it's always possible that that info is wrong or that the Thai names actually derive from Pali and the Pali was not quite the same as the Sanskrit. When you say that the Pali word is makara, is that based on directly on the Pali, or is it based on the fact that the word was transliterated as มกร?

I'm sure it's correct that มกร would intially have been pronounced Pali style as มะกะระ, and was later reinterpreted based on Thai spelling conventions. That's really what I meant by incorporation - at some point a loanword is appropriated and comes to be treated as a Thai word, and this means that you will find words that are obviously Indic but are pronounced as if they were Thai. I'm not sure I want to call that mispronunciation - I see it as a healthy part of the incorporation of the loanword - but it does make life more complicated.

2 hours ago, rimpsstar said:

I have had it confirmed by Thai Elite Visa and the London Embassy that I can apply and get an Elite card membership, have it fixed into my passport in the UK, and have TEV instruct the Embassy to give me a COE and return. The whole process taking 8-12 weeks.

They told you you'd actually be in the country within that time?

I'm in a similar position and the big unknowns for me are how long the wait would be if I went for the elite (I have my approval letter, just need to transfer the money) vs the new visa (if the UK is included).

In reality there is a cap on arrivals because the number of quarantine places is limited and it is not clear how they are going to be allotted. You could make a similar comment about the flights. Elite have said that priority will be given to those who have been stranded outside Thailand the longest while holding an elite card, which puts new members at the back of the queue. There are question marks over a lot of other things, like which countries will be eligible for the new visa, when this will be announced, and how long the whole system will take to implement. The elite arrangements were announced almost two months ago, I think, and so far I haven't seen any reports of anyone actually getting a COE / getting in to the country (not that every entry into Thailand is reported on here...).

I don't believe that eligibility for the new visa will be driven purely by the covid stats. I'm not counting on the UK being included, but I don't think you can rule it out. Covid aside I don't need the elite, so (as in your case, I think) the 500k will be wasted if it turns out I could have got in almost as soon anyway. I think you've just got to decide how much you'd care if that happened.

5 hours ago, tgeezer said:

I answered hastily, when I realized that 'here' was a link, "here" it still is not obviously a different color. 
Being เขมร probably makes it a Thai word but I shall research it. 

That's weird - it shows up fine in Firefox. Maybe you have an option to underline links in your settings (in FF it's on by default but you can switch it off).

I thought Khmer and Thai belonged to different language families, and having looked again it seems they are basically unrelated. There will still be a lot of shared vocabulary, just because speakers have been rubbing shoulders for so long.

Obviously a borrowed word gets incorporated into the language at some point, and I think this can change the way you read it - if you treat มกราคม as a Sanskrit word you will probably pronounce it มะ-กะ, but as an adopted Thai word it can just as well be มก-กะ, with doubling of the ก. The transliteration into Thai would have been มาฆะห์, so it looks as though the word was adopted before the spelling settled down.

Edit: another example is มณฑล, which is a faithful transcription of the Sanskrit word that came into English as "mandala", but is read the Thai way and becomes มน-ทน. In this case it's obvious from the spelling that you are looking at a Sanskrit word but the pronunciation has been fully adapted to Thai.

22 hours ago, JHicks said:

I don't know whether the ตร was a final cluster in Sanskrit, or whether the ร was an initial that would have had implied a. Thai doesn't like implied a at the end of a word*, but in words like จักรยาน, compounding has put the ร in the middle of the word, so it makes sense for it to come back to life if it was originally an initial. Otherwise I suppose it would have to be filed under double duty.

It looks as though it was a cluster, so if it comes back to life that is a case of double duty (final>initial) and logically it should be the cluster ตร that takes the a, not just the ร.

I have also realised that the จักร in จักรยาน is from the same word that came into English as chakra. Again this is cluster so when it comes back to life by double duty (again final>initial) you get กระ rather than just ระ.

It's probably worth pointing out that it's not just that the vowel is unwritten in these cases - the consonant or cluster is also doubled.

15 minutes ago, Maestro said:

We have to wait and see what the Notification of the Ministry of the Interior will say once it gets published in the Government Gazette. The Cabinet Resolution has set no deadline for the issuance of this notification.

Am I right in thinking that the announcement about the Elite visa hasn't been gazetted yet? That one must have been made well over a month ago so I guess that's some indication of how long it takes.

4 hours ago, tgeezer said:

I suppose that if a word ends with a consonant other than ก ด บ ม น ง it could be inferred that it is not likely to be a pure Thai word, ยล is perhaps the exception that proves the rule.  

According to the Thai wiktionary (link) ยล is from Khmer.

According to the Khmer/English dictionary here, the final is pronounced l in Khmer.

8 hours ago, tgeezer said:

Now returning to planet Earth, บาตร I read that as บาตอน for ages and was corrected to say บาด ,, Going into orbit again; I still don't know how to read บาตรแก้ว , บาดแก้ว I suppose.

I won't claim to know but I think it would be บาดแก้ว, as you say. I think the ร tends to come back to life in compounds, but บาตรแก้ว is really just two words together, rather than a single word formed by compounding. I'd contrast it with something like จักรยาน, where the meaning of the compound is more than the sum of its parts, and maybe with other cases where, although the meaning is just the sum of the parts, those parts go together so often that they're thought of as a single word.

I think ตร as in ตอน is rare. I had a look on thailanguage.com and only found ยาตร ([royal language] to walk; trek). From what I saw on there, the odds are on your side if, when you come across ตร after a vowel like า that may/may not have a final, you bet on the ต being a final and the ร (therefore) being silent.

I don't know whether the ตร was a final cluster in Sanskrit, or whether the ร was an initial that would have had implied a. Thai doesn't like implied a at the end of a word*, but in words like จักรยาน, compounding has put the ร in the middle of the word, so it makes sense for it to come back to life if it was originally an initial. Otherwise I suppose it would have to be filed under double duty.

* Does this ever happen? I have a feeling there are a couple of examples.

3 hours ago, JHicks said:

I have a suspicion that this usually happens when you would otherwise have a final stop followed by an initial stop. In อักษร you have a final stop (ก) followed by an intial fricative (ษ), and (so?) there is no extra syllable.

On reflection that is not one of my better hunches. There are too many exceptions. I still think there will be a pattern, but this isn't it.

It can't be อะ-กะ-สอน because  ั requires a final. That said, there are a few different situations where you find extra syllables and another one ("double duty") would give you อัก-กะ-สอน. Here ก would be acting both as a final and as an initial. I have a suspicion that this usually happens when you would otherwise have a final stop followed by an initial stop. In อักษร you have a final stop (ก) followed by an intial fricative (ษ), and (so?) there is no extra syllable. I was meaning to look at this in more detail a while back but half dropped it, half got distracted. I think there's probably a rule of thumb, but at the same time there will be exceptions. To get to the bottom of it you'd need a lot of examples, and that means a lot of trawling. Also, it's questionable how useful this kind of rule would be, because it would only really come in when you didn't know the word you were looking at, but did know that it was a single word - and given that we are talking about words of more than one written syllable, you wouldn't be able to tell that from the spelling.

I don't believe consonant class is much of a clue in itself, but I do think the phonetic type of the consonant makes a difference in this and other situations where you have implied a. In other situations (not double duty, as far as I can tell) it may also be useful to know which consonants tend to appear in words of Indic origin.

Edit: if anyone out there has a list of double duty words, it might be interesting to look at this some more. It might lead nowhere but you never know.

19 minutes ago, alyx said:

There is no such a thing as a cap of 250 members 

I've heard different things on that (also on whether new members can enter). I don't think the scheme's in operation at all yet, so I guess I'll just have to wait and see. In reality there is an overall cap because there are only so many ASQ places.

I would bet against the new scheme being limited to certain countries but you never know.

I think the previous announcement about Elite holders still stands and they are going to be allowed in subject to a cap of 250 per month. I have my approval letter but was waiting for the announcement to be implemented and also to see what other arrangements might be announced. Now we have an announcement of a 9 month visa at a fraction of the price of Elite membership, subject to a cap of 1200 per month.

Does anybody have any idea how many Elite holders there are out there, or how many of them are likely to be in Thailand already? I'm just trying to gauge how long the waiting list is likely to be.

The 9 month visa sounds like a lottery but unless I can be sure of getting in within a couple of months with the Elite, it's hard to justify parting with the cash. Also, that 1200 limit will be based on ASQ places, which can be scaled up quite easily.

On 9/11/2020 at 3:58 PM, FarFlungFalang said:

Seems to be a few Thais returning and test positive on arrival but don't have to test prior to boarding the plane so also possible he caught it on the flight.It seem beyond the pale that they do this as can be seen some people might get through undetected because of this.It only takes one.  

I wondered about that, but if there had been other positive cases on the same flight, wouldn't they have said so in the press conference? I gather they didn't or it would have been commented on. Also, I think most falang are in business class at the moment whereas most Thai nationals are in economy, so the chances are high that the people sitting near him would have had recent negative tests. Still possible of course but it would take something close to the perfect storm.

I linked to the explanation on thai-language a few posts back, but it's basically "if you can can hum it or carry a tune with it (the way you can with m or l or r) then it has to be low class; if you can't and there's no escape of air then it's mid class, and otherwise it has both low and high class versions". I like this approach because it makes you focus on the pronunciation, and it helps with things like which consonant endings are live and which of the low class consonants can take ห.

47 minutes ago, tgeezer said:

I suppose this will appear in the quote box, apologies. 
I see what you mean but it is what might be described nowadays as "aftermarket". 

I learned the "alphabet" first using the correct tones so had only to separate the mid class consonants from the low class consonants, the high being in the fourth tone. 

Did you do that by rote? It's the same issue as before really, just in relation to a smaller set of letters. The phonemic method would have been a fairly simple alternative to memorising which were mid and which low. The classes stick after a while so you end up knowing them by heart. In some cases you could also have got there by working backwards from the name, and then there's alphabetical order. Still, these methods are too complicated to be worthwhile IMO - that's the rabbit hole again.

7 hours ago, ColeBOzbourne said:

First question. I thought that if (ห) was placed in front of a low class consonant, it would be silent, and would change that consonant from low class to high class. But here it is not silent, it forms a separate syllable, and is not a class changer. Is this an exception or have I overlooked a rule?

It's more to do with the rule, which only applies to low class consonants that don't have a high class equivalent. If there's a ready-made high class version (like ผ), ห is not used as a class changer.

On your second question, it might be worth pointing out that  ์ basically cancels the consonant, so if it was used here you would lose the ม as well. That means there's no way to show that it's silent, but they still keep it in there to reflect the original Indic spelling. As far as I can think this only happens with short i. I believe the original vowel gets dropped because otherwise the word is hard to fit into the Thai stress pattern. It's a while since I've looked at this but IIRC short i is usually (always?) dropped at the end of longer Indic words. In this case (again, IIRC) you can tell the word is Indic from the use of ภ and รร, so it's at least a fair bet that it's going to be silent.

I think we’ve gone down a bit of a rabbit hole here. I'd prefer to say that the phonemic approach to the consonant classes will tell you which consonants have to be low, which have to be mid, and which come in both high and low versions, but for that last set, you basically have to remember which versions are high and which are low. There are ways to work it out, but they all depend on having some kind of knowledge that you probably wouldn’t have if you hadn’t already got the consonant classes down pat. In other words, by the time you're in a position to work out which is which, you don’t need to.

I don’t want to make the approach described in the thai-language link sound more complicated than it really is – it's the bolt-ons we're discussing that are complicated.

7 hours ago, tgeezer said:

I presume that you are still talking about tones!  If so, I am intrigued.
You wrote;   " ....Also, if the exemplar of one of these high/low consonants (there's probably a better word for that, but I mean e.g. ควาย for ค) has a mid or high tone then the consonant has to be low class,".  
Does this mean that you are interesting in identifying the class of a consonant when you already know the word? 

 

I would have thought most people learn the names of the consonants before the classes, or at least find that the names stick more easily than the classes, so yes, I think there could be situations where it would help to work backwards from the name to the class – it's just that in reality, by the time you can see that ค has to be low because khwaai is mid, you already know by heart that ค is low.

Absolutely. Also, if the exemplar of one of these high/low consonants (there's probably a better word for that, but I mean e.g. ควาย for ค) has a mid or high tone then the consonant has to be low class, whereas if it has a low or rising tone it has to be high class. That only leaves a few (the ones that have a falling tone) that could be either. I think it's about learning styles and would never criticise someone for learning the consonant classes or live / dead endings as lists, but I don't regret the time I put into the phonological side one iota.

Yes, that's true - for some consonants you can only tell from the sound that it will have both high and low versions, and you basically have to remember which is which. If you also know how the alphabet is put together you can tell based on alphabetical order, but then of course you have to remember alphabetical order, so you can't take rote learning out of the equation completely.

There's nothing wrong with memorising the consonant classes as if they were arbitrary, but it's not the only way to skin this cat. See here for an alternative.

26 minutes ago, FlyingThai said:

Kidding aside it's impossible to say where he got it without retracing every single step of this guy. Has he been testing positive on follow up tests as well or just the initial one?

Will they have done another one so soon after the first? I thought they normally waited a week. I'm not sure what type of test they use but in general the rate of false positives is supposed to be 0.1% I guess the number of people leaving Thailand and getting tested is in the thousands, so you would expect one or two false positives here and there. Until they find the source of the DJ's infection it's pretty much moot anyway.

1 hour ago, om3n1rpak said:

Oops, I meant August. My bad.

 

It was submitted on Aug 4th to my knowledge

 

 

Mine went in around the same time (UK passport holder). Nothing heard as yet. I've seen all kinds of estimates ranging from one month to three.

If you play around with it you'll see that the tone markers are always the same regardless of the tone they indicate, and that leading อ and ห show up in the output rather than just affecting the tone. For example หน้า comes out as h̄n̂ā but น่า comes out as ǹā. These words are pronounced the same but the output is different, so what you're looking at can't really be a guide to pronunciation. What it's representing is the Thai spelling. For example, in the first case above the falling tone is indicated by ^ (because the original spelling is   ้ with a high class initial), while in the second case the same tone is indicated by ' (because the original spelling is  ่ with a low class initial). The system also distinguishes between e.g. ท and ธ, which are identical in terms of pronunciation. All this tells me it's a transliteration system.

Bing seems to be a half-way house between transliteration and phonetics. If you have a whole paragraph of text I think thai2english is your best option. You get more of a word-by-word translation, as you'll have seen, but at least the phonetics are given.

On 9/2/2020 at 5:30 AM, Seik said:

I applied around the 26 of july and got approved early last week.

ALSO do make sure to check the website while logged in, the official state of your application is on there. I noticed mine was approved and I still haven't received the confirmation email. I'm not asking for it because I believe the longer they take, the more time I will have to decide whether or not I decide to go through with it.

What's your passport country? I applied on 2 August (UK passport) and haven't been approved yet. I am not in Thailand but like you am not 100% sure it's the right option. Imagine I stump up 500k and the following week they introduce a snowbird visa at 50k or open the doors to everyone on this Phuket scheme...

I don't seem to be able to edit my previous post but have now found the Luangthongkam paper here. The author's own conclusions don’t really differ from the summary of previous research she gives on p. 91, except that you might think from the summary that linkers were only found in words of three or more syllables, whereas Luangthongkam expressly includes the first syllable of two-syllable words like the ones discussed higher up this thread (see p. 93) and the first and second syllables of words like มะละกอ (see p. 191). The summary is in footnote 4 of page 91 and reads:

The term "linker-syllables" was used by Bee (1975), and It has been adopted as a useful term. In the first paragraph of his article entitled, "Restricted Phonology in Certain Thai Linker-Syllables," Bee says:

Phonologists agree that vowel quantity is phonemic in Thai. The syllables which I wish to term linker-syllables have as vowel the phoneme /a/, a short vowel quantitatively speaking, usually realized as [ə].

Bee gives some examples, e.g. sattawat, ratthabaan, sappada [sic], etc.; the middle syllables of the three words which are underlined here are called linker-syllables by Bee. In his note (1), he refers to a similar comment made by Henderson (1949: 198). He then continues:

they do not conform to the accepted phonological rule that all Thai syllables which are phonemically short must close with some final consonant or other. Only in artificial 'dictation' style do they close with a glottal final. Only in dictation style, moreover, do they bear the phonemic tone we would expect from their spelling. Otherwise, (in normal speech, that is) the pitch of the syllables seems to be self-adjusting, as unobtrusive as a linker should be, accommodating itself to the clear realization of tones in what went before and what to come after.

NB this is not exactly the same as saying that the syllables change to mid tone (this is the debate I mentioned above - I think it is better to say that the original tone is stripped from the syllable than that it is replaced with a mid tone).

Since tone stripping is a post-lexical process you wouldn't expect it to be reflected in the spelling, even in a phonemic spelling system. That means it shouldn't make any difference whether the vowel is written or implied. It also means the fact that you can't write a short vowel without a final without indicating a glottal stop and a tone is not a flaw in the writing system, which tries to represent the phonemic structure of the word rather than its phonetic realisation.

The Potisuk one can be found here by scrolling down to Potisuk, S., Gandour, J.T. and Mary, P.H. 1994, "F0 correlates of stress in Thai", in Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 1-27. If you look at the appendix you'll see that the unstressed syllables he was investigating were not linkers - he finds that the tones are preserved although the realisation changes.

I think the Luangthongkam paper referred to in the introduction to Potisuk may be one of the ones that goes into some detail on linkers, but I can't find it just at the moment. The one I've got in mind is a thesis from Edinburgh uni. Anyway, the upshot is that tone neutralisation only occurs in linker syllables.