mynextgig

Can anyone help me understand the spelling and tone rules for the word ปรารถนา.

Syllable 1 - ปราร = ป Mid Class with ร as the final should make this live and so Mid, however as this syllable is spoken in a Low tone then it must consider the 1st syllable to be ปรารถ completely ignoring the 2nd ร.

Syallable 2 - I consider to be the ถ with the inferred -ะ so a High Class consonant with a Open short vowel making it a Low tone, which seems to be correct.

Syllable 3 - ถนา i correctly deduce as a Rising tone based on ถ being a Class with a live ending.

The bit that is confusing me here is the silent ร. Not only is this silent but also has no effect on the 1st syllables tone as it is spoken with a low tone. My 1st attempt at this word was Bpraan (M) Ta (L) Naa ®

So how do you spot the silent and redundant ร in other words ?

I wonder if anyone has any handy tips on how i can improve my reading ability, specifically applying the tone rules.

I know all the sonorant initial and final sounds and their classes without thinking too much about it now. I also know all the vowel and dipthong sounds, not quite as fluently as the consonants but i am getting better. But when it comes applying the tone rules, even though i can recite them, it takes me ages to work out each syllable.

So for those of you that have mastered this, would you share some of the tips that you used to master this without turning every syllable into a puzzle.

Thx

Brilliant explaination Jay Jay - Thank you !

There are quite a few posts that have covered this before.... i'll try and pull a few out in a minute.

You know the rule of the 'ห' masking to turn a low class into a high class. Think of the classes originally as throat positions. So in the slang way of saying you say หวัดดี from สวัสดี - to keep the low tone / (high class throat position) in there.

It might be easier to think of หว as one high class letter rather than two separate letters - the ห is clustered with the ว

So ส now in สวัสดี - If you have a look at the original, you have a स = ส and a व = ว clustered with each other making the word स्वस्ति 'svasti' The สว are one letter (cluster), and in Thai take on the characteristic of the first letter in the cluster.

In Thai though, you'll noticed that the cluster has been lost and an 'อะ' sound is thrown in (throwing an 'a' in between Sanskrit words in Thai is called 'pra wisanjani'. ... however, the original tone is still kept. Another word where you'll notice this kind of thing happening is in ตำรวจ - police (from the word ตรวจ - to check or investigate).

Btw... just a little note on the meaning of สวัสดี - it comes from the words

สุ - सु - 'su' - good / happy and อสติ अस्ति - asti 'to be' ... so it means 'it is good', or 'may it be good for you' ...

Swastika - a little thing that is good.

Wow ! Probably the 1st phrase most people learn in Thai and is one of the complex anomalies in Thai script.

So to confirm, its actually the 2nd ส that is silent ? I seem to remember this now and is why you sometimes see the transliteration as Sawasdee. Is this correct ?

The phrase สวัสดี is pronounced with the tones Low, Low, Mid. However using the tone rules this would need to be spelt สหวัสดี

Does this mean สวัส is written in one tone and spoken in another ?

101 stuff i am sure, but i am a bot confused.

I brought my copy at Phuket Airport, it was a while ago however.

I used - Colloquial Thai (book and audio set, published by Routledge) - when i 1st started learning Thai and i have to say that i found it invaluable.

My approach was to read a chapter and then listen to the audio clips of the conversations over and over again until i could memorise each one and then when i talked Thai i could pull different parts of each conversation into whatever conversation i was having.

The downside was that i only learned a single specific meaning for the most of the words i knew and so i would often hear a word and think that i understood what was being said, but then found that the word had a completely different meaning in the context it was being used.

That said, i learnt around 1200 words from this book, all whilst i was living outside of Thailand and was able to have fairly meaningful conversations on my 1st trip back to Thailand. Several years later i can still remember many of those conversations and i think it provided me a good intro into learning Thai.

Do not however try to learn to read Thai from this book. It doesnt cover any of the basics and will completely confuse you.

Obviously the OP has a very strong command of the Thai language and the can pronounce all of those difficult sounds correctly in the Thai Alphabet which is why he/she is so frustrated that Thais cant speak the OP's language perfectly....

The ability to manage the new sounds associated with foreign languages diminishes as you get older. I have heard that if you have not learned to make certain sounds by your early teens it becomes extremely difficult to master them at a later date.

For anyone that has ever tried to learn any of the chinese dialects and is from a western background will know that some of the sounds are vitually impossible to repeat correctly.

Even amongst the latin based languages it is often very difficult to mimic some of the sounds, spanish is a prime example !

Not strong at all! But I do try

I know Thai does not have aspirated word endings. But they certainly have aspirated word beginnings.

เสือ seua tiger

ส้ม som orange

ทหาร tahaan soldier

So they are perfectly capable of vocalising (or aspirating ) the sounds!

I have also learned some Dutch and Arabic in my time (both featuring consonants and vowels not heard in English), and in both cases I would at least try to repeat the unfamiliar sounds to try and make myself understood.

JJ.

I dont think it is necessily the aspirated sounds that Thai people have the problem with, its more related to moving from one consonant to another.

Your example of 'Excuse me' causes difficulty because there is no sound for 'X' in thai. Thai's will struggle to move from the 'Ex' to the 'cuse' part of the word.

Literally the word sounds like 'XSkews' and its the link bewteen the syllables that causes the difficulty with many english words.

Look at how many english words that when written in Thai, change the way the word sounds. Here is an example - im not sure where you are from, but i personally say the word Macau (island off Hong Kong) in a single breath without pause. Translated to Thai this word almost sounds like 2 different words due to the pause that is created between the 'Mac' and the 'cow' sound.

I live in Pluak Daeng and have ridden both the 20k and 30k routes over the last couple of days as all the signs are already out.

If you think you are a bit tasty on a mountain bike i seriously recommend doing this, the red route (2 x 15km laps) is pretty extreme in places and not for the faint hearted. I managed 1 lap of this one yesterday and was completely destroyed.

The blue route (2 x 10km) is pretty challenging, but with a reasonable level of fitness and some good experience on a mountain bike i would say that most MB enthusiasts should be able to get around this in a reasonable time.

Shame i wont be in Thailand when the race is on, i could have put some practice in and had a bit of a head start

BTW - Pluak Daeng is about 45 mins drive from Pattaya.

Obviously the OP has a very strong command of the Thai language and the can pronounce all of those difficult sounds correctly in the Thai Alphabet which is why he/she is so frustrated that Thais cant speak the OP's language perfectly....

The ability to manage the new sounds associated with foreign languages diminishes as you get older. I have heard that if you have not learned to make certain sounds by your early teens it becomes extremely difficult to master them at a later date.

For anyone that has ever tried to learn any of the chinese dialects and is from a western background will know that some of the sounds are vitually impossible to repeat correctly.

Even amongst the latin based languages it is often very difficult to mimic some of the sounds, spanish is a prime example !

Question for the advanced non-native thai readers on this forum.

How often do you need to return to the tone rules when reading thai in newspapers, subtitles etc ?

Most Thai's i know dont have a clue how to explain the tone rules, they just have a vast memory bank of most of the words they see everyday and can read, write and speak them without thinking about it. Just as i can and do in English.

So i am keen to know how long it takes for a non-native to get to this level of fluency.

Thanks all for the responses, very interesting.

I suspect that a word like career or at least the meaning as i intepret it is relatively new in the english language. Unless you were a scholor or merchant etc people only had jobs/occupations until 100 or so years ago in the west.

Hope you dont mind me starting a new thread along the lines of the Living in Phuket thread.

So i have been to Phuket many times on 7-10 day holidays and i love every minute of it. But whats it really like if you can afford to support yourself and decide to retire and live there all year round ?

What does an average day for you lucky retirees consist of and do you get bored or frustrated after a while ?

I've also heard มากไป (mak pai) and just ไป (pai) on its own. Though this is one of the words I find is most often misunderstood/not understood when I use it, so I'm going to try เกินไป next time.

Very true in my experience. Many Thais shorten เกินไป to just ไป

Radius - you might want to note that เกินไป comes after the thing you're describing e.g. fast too, slow too, high too, low too etc.

mk

เกินไป means 'too much' so can be used with all of the OP's original suggestions.

Too Fast = Fast too much (literal)

Too Slow = Slow too much (literal)

etc etc

It can be shortened to just ไป, and often is in informal conversation. Or you can add มาก at the beginning which adds emphasis and makes it 'Much too much'

Hi All,

I'm new to the site so hello.

My Husband and I have visited Phuket twice and love the place. We love it so much that we want to eventually buy a small condo and retire there. I have consequently been learning the Thai language for an hour each day for the last three months and I've hit a snag.

The site that I've been using is called its4thai and thought I was doing really well until my Husband decided to buy a Thai phrase book and dictionary. Some of the Thai words that I'm learning on its4thai clash with some of the exact same words in the Berlitz Thai Phrase book and dictionary.

I'm starting to wonder if there might be different dialects in different parts of Thailand where some of the words for the same things may differ.

If anyone has any light to shed on this subject, I would be most grateful as we are heading back to Thailand next year in March and I want to practice what I've learned but don't want to discover that I've wasted all of these hours so far, learning a dialect that may be used in a different part of Thailand.

Having said that, I'd like to discover that now, rather than continue learning a dialect that I can't use.

Any help out there would be well received.

Thanks

I think what you'll find is happening here is that its4thai and the Berlitz book are using different transliteraton systems for the Thai script.

The problem with learning Thai when you are not hearing Thai everyday is getting the pronounciation right and you will be extremely frustrated on your next visit to Thailand when the locals dont understand the words and sentences you have spent hours memorising.

My advise is to learn the 44 Thai Consonants first, as each one is pronounced with a corresponding word, making sure you are using the correct tone for both that word and the actual consonant sound. Children are taught the Thai alphabet using this system and it is as ingrained in their minds as the A-Z is in ours.

It is very important that you remember the tone of both the consonant sound and the corresponding word, flash cards might help with this. To read and write Thai you also need to learn the class and final consonant sound for each consonant, but for my suggestion you could come back to this at a later date.

Next learn the 33 vowel sounds, again flash cards might help, but it is more important to appreciate the significant differences between the way thai vowels and english vowels sound at this stage.

www.thai-language.com is a great resource for this as you can hear audio clips of all the sounds and mimic them. If your husband is also keen on learning thai you should help each other to get the sounds right as you often dont hear yourself as others do !

Once you have learned this, you must make sure that any thai language resource you use to learn new words and sentences has Thai script along side the transliteration and the transliteration MUST show the tone of each word.

You will find that although you cant yet read Thai script you will be able to use it to check your pronounciation of the transliterated word.

Different people learn things at different speeds but i would say that if you spent your hour per day learning the alphabet and vowel sounds you will have this in your head fairly quickly and this preparation will serve you well as you progress to learning useful conversational Thai in the future.

I often see the word อาชีพ used to translate 'career', but the literal meaning of อาชีพ is profession.

The word profession describes a particular line of work or skillset, whereas a career is particular to an individual and can be made up from experience in a single profession or across multiple professions during the time an individual has been working.

So is there a better word to describe career in thai ?

From my text book

เพียงแค่ค่าเช่าบ้านก็แทบจะไม่มีเงินเหลือแล้ว

เพียงแค่เงินเดือนก็เกือบจะไม่พอกินแล้ว

I had thought เพียงแค่ means only but here it seems to mean something along the lines of as soon as something is done, consequently another thing will happen?

It does mean only.

This sentance translates roughly to :- "I only have enough to pay my rent but not enough to eat, my salary is not enough to eat as well"

Could a "foreign exchange trader" be called "นักซื้อขายเงินตราต่างประเทศ"?

Quite a mouthful, but specific.

Thanks all for the responses.

Does anyone know the Thai term for a Trader in the Financial Markets, specifically a Foreign Exchange Trader ?

นักฟูเร็กส์

So is this a direct translation of the english ?

Does anyone know the Thai term for a Trader in the Financial Markets, specifically a Foreign Exchange Trader ?

I would just add openDNS servers to your DNS servers on your netgear as 1st and second forget thai DNS servers

208.67.222.222

Thanks folks, works now !!!!

This is a NETGEAR DG834G Wireless ADSL2+ Router. The automatic config option does not work with TT&T and you have to manually configure the settings through the interface.

Maybe worth pinning this, i suspect i am not alone.

ok, try to connect to www.bbc.co.uk

if that fails, try 212.58.253.67

post your results back

Yep your right this works.

So the websites that worked are those that i had accessed on the old router before i switched across to the NETGEAR router and hence were still cached locally.

Trying the websites that previously worked again, they no longer work.

This also explains why an application i use to receive financial information has always worked, as it must use a different protocol which does not need DNS.

Thanks for your help, i will try the helpdesk at TT&T again.

Once i have an answer i will post it here as the Router i am using is very common !

Give an example of "any other website"...or better, two or three examples.

I am curious if you could connect to same sites using the IP address rather than URL....maybe a DNS problem.

Any webiste really, but examples of the ones i have tried - www.bbc.co.uk, www.dailyfx.com, www.me.com. You may be correct that its a dns problem because the ones that have been successful are ones that i have accessed when the PC was connected to the original TT&T router and may still be in the cache. But this would be a problem with TT&T because they handle all the DNS configuration..

I have an internet connection with TT&T and have recently purchased a NETGEAR DG834G wireless router to replace the standard single port ADSL2+ router that TT&T provided.

I have configured the NETGEAR router and can access maybe 2 - 3 websites, all other sites that i try to access automatically re-route me to the Routers configuration page.

The following list details the troubleshooting i have already performed, any help would be appreciated.

1. NETGEAR configured with TT&T username, password, PPPoE, LLC, VPI/VCI settings

2. NETGEAR configured for wireless with no security and my wireless laptop successfully connects to the router

3. I can connect to www.citibank.com and do my internet banking

4. I can connect to www.google.com

5. Any other website i try to connect to defaults to the NETGEAR automatic setup page

6. Running NETGEAR automatic setup, it runs for about 10 minutes and then says i have no ADSL connection

7. Switching back to my TT&T router is successful 100% of the time so no issue with the carrier

8. When the NETGEAR router is working on the 2 successful websites, my laptop connecting through wireless will also default to the NETGEAR configuration programme when trying to connect to any website.

Any idea ?

Ok, so where is the information on your entry and exit lodged ? Does anyone know of any issues where the authorities have disputed an individuals entry and exit dates ?