Richard W

A versatile Thai passive used to sound a bit stilted - as though the text were a translation of English.  The ถูก/โดน construction is meant for passives where the patient suffers.  It has been argued that the somewhat unusual word order reflects the original semantics.

I'm not sure whether หมา is the correct word for 'dog' in your sentences; does the vileness of its behaviour permit one to refer to it as หมา rather than สุนัข?

In general, I don't believe one can transliterate a text oneself and then quote the transliteration as an example of the spelling in that writing system.

In general, transliteration is not copyrightable - nowadays it is often delegated to computers.  There may be some creative leeway when the 'transliteration' is not dictated by the text, as with the RTGS, e.g. Phetburi v, Phetchaburi.

I haven't heard of any Mahayana texts around in the Thai script.  I'd expect them to be in the Khom script.

Sanskrit is alleged to be written in the Thai script, and I'd like to document some of this usage.  However, in practical terms it's easier to find examples of English written in the Thai script or Thai written in the Roman script, neither of which would be accepted on Wiktionary.  I'm pretty sure the Sanskrit etyma  in the RID would no more be accepted on their own than would the Khmer etyma, which are also given in the Thai script.

The reason for choosing the Bhagavad Gita is that out of copyright translations are available.  If I felt automatically generated transcriptions would be acceptable, I could use a transliteration of the

Bengali or Devanagari script (I forget which it is) translation into Sanskrit of the New Testament.  There are public domain translations into English of the New Testament.

On 4/24/2022 at 10:19 AM, Stubby said:

But writing and typing isn't quite the same as spelling out loud, or is it? I mean, if I were to spell the word "meet" aloud in English, I wouldn't say em, ee, ee, t, but rather em, double-e, t, though double-e is not on the keyboard.

Actually, for me 'double 'e'' is a single bouncy key stroke!  Also, I wouldn't be surprised to find ro han (รร) being spelt out as 'ro han'.

The old system is not quite as simple.  It's onset consonants first, then the tone mark if the vowel is all to the right of the onset consonants, then the vowel, then the tone mark if not already said, than karan.  This ใหม่ 'new' is ho hip, mo ma, sara ai maimuan, mai ek.

I don't think the compound vowel symbols are treated as units in the modern system, but spelt out individually, so the เชียง bit would be sara e, cho chang, sara ii, yo yak, ngo ngu - as you type it, which is simpler, and handles anomalous spellings like เทอม 'term', which by the rules should be *เทิม.

It does seem as though Thais have forgotten the system that Stubby learnt.  That system is taught at the end of Section 10B (in the 5th edition) of  'the fundamentals of the Thai Language' by Campbell and Shaweewongs.  Their most useful example is เดี๋ยวนี้ spelt out as 'do sara ia mai chattawa wo no sara ii mai tho', or in their transcription, 'DOR SARA EE-A MȲ JUTDTAWAH WOR, NOR SARA EE MȲTŌ'.  Coda consonants are treated as though in separate syllables.  However, that system seems to have become moribund by the time I realised that I didn't know how to distinguish modern and old เฉผาะ from reformed ฉเผาะ.  Nowadays Thais spell out as they type, as stated by ColeBOzbourne.

Is it possible to buy a copy of the Bhagavad Gita written in Thai letters in the normal way for Sanskrit?  I nearly bought a copy of ภควัต-กีตา ฉบับเดิม (the Thai edition of [i]the Bhagavad Gita As It Is[/i]), but I found that the Thai script was actually a phonetic transliteration of the Devanagari version, with such oddities as do dek for Devanagari da (द), instead of the tho thahan one sees in the etymology section of Thai dictionaries.  I next tried the translation  'the Bhagavadgita : A Thai Version', only to find that it did not contain the Sanskrit at all.  (Preview pages were restricted to the introduction.)  I'm looking for something that a library might keep a copy of, so that it is 'durably archived' in the Wiktionary sense.

On 2/29/2020 at 11:36 AM, BigStar said:

Note that Suvarnabhumi Airport (ท่าอากาศยานสุวรรณภูมิ) has now been incorporated into Brit English as Swampy. HUH? Apparently your strict rules aren’t widely shared.????

You do realise, don't you, that the name Swampy really comes from Cobra Swamp, the translation of the original name of the airport's location?

On 2/4/2020 at 10:36 PM, FlowSize said:

Sure can. This was done in chiang mai by ajarn Deang

That's some reassurance, because my reading of the rest makes little sense.  For what it's worth, what I see after the Northern Thai is:

mabhichatataṃmabhaṃcalaṃmalaṃcati (indecipherable) hanumānanasaṃtaṃ
ahohaṃgānhāneha ahosi uddhaṃ addho

That contains a few words that I recognise - hanumāna 'Hanuman', ahosi 'it was', uddhaṃ 'above/ahead/hence' and addho 'a half (nom.s.)'.

(I've broken the text where the next syllable begins with a vowel.)

The inner text seems to read:

vāyulabha ahaṃnukānahithokaṃsaṃviṭhāpukayapasahavamadasana

There are a few words in there that I recognise, but I have no confidence that they are words in the utterance as opposed to coincidental sequences of letters.

I have transliterated the text as Pali where I have not identified it as Northern Thai.  I think you need a second opinion on the letters, as I may easily have misread some of them.  Additionally, I couldn't see a contrast between na and nā, so there are already potential ambiguities.

(Context removed in accordance with Thaivisa policy against intelligent discussion.)

On 3/6/2020 at 12:31 PM, ThomasThBKK said:

70% is what leading german virologist expects.

The estimate given to the British Government is that at the peak, 20% of the British population will be infected.  One can then use that figure to assess the shortfall in medical treatment and the consequent effect on death rate.  What's not clear to me is how many people will be disabled rather than killed by the infection.

The Northern Thai bit is at least two words longer than I thought - we can add ชาตีสวาหะ.  Most sources give ชาตรี for the first word, which means 'brave'.  สวาหะ is a hard word to translate.  The way it is written shows that it starts with the cluster /sw/, rather than having a vowel between the letters as in Siamese.

On 1/20/2020 at 5:51 PM, FlowSize said:

bump?

The Northern Thai reads, "อมผงเผ่าเถ้าธุลีฅงกระภัน" and is followed by a word consisting of unidentified consonant (TBC) plus sara aa.  It's word-for-word meaning is "strength dust tribe ash dust kongkraphan", which I can't render into idiomatic English.  The writing correctly uses kho khon, not kho khwaa.   I'm not confident in the reading เถ้า; it looks more like เถ่า to me.

The Pali looks like gibberish to me, but I can make out a few words, like Hanumana.  More effort is needed, but I think I may have to be content with transliterating it.

The Northern Thai on the right has got an interesting spelling.  A few years back, I was assured that that type of spelling was definitely wrong!  Can you give more details on the place of origin of the tattoo?  May I please use the photo as evidence of the spelling.

I'm going to have to transcribe and reread to work out the Pali and Northern Thai.

1 hour ago, nausea said:

What I want to know is where is the reset button. God awful mess from start to finish, whenever that might be.

It's a square box near the word s 'Liberal Democrat' on your ballot paper.  Many have to 'press' it for it to work.

On 2/12/2019 at 2:55 AM, Oxx said:

Take the case of วชิรา.  This is Sanskrit word वज्र (vájra), referring to a weapon used for symbolic and ritual purposes.  It is particularly associated with the god Indra.  It is also the symbol of Vajrayana, a major branch of Buddhism.

Note though that the Thai word is based on the Pali form, vajira.

On 2/12/2019 at 8:02 AM, jackdd said:

but originally this comes from Arabic و (w) according to https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/व

 

It says no such thing.   Pay attention to the headers.  You've jumped from the 'translingual' word to a Hindi word that is indeed borrowed from Arabic.

15 minutes ago, simple1 said:

IMO that's a play by the Home office. Have to wait and see if she ever gets a Court hearing.

The Home Office has been losing a string of cases where they've tried to strip ex-Bangladeshis of UK citizenship - G3, E3 and N3.

9 hours ago, simple1 said:

Difference being Shamima Begum was born in the UK. Bangladesh claims she has never applied for citizenship and now will not be granted - fair enough!

The Home Office argues that she was born a Bangladeshi citizen - there is no need to apply for it.  Now, it seems that certain actions can automatically lose one Bangladeshi citizenship - but not while one is under 21!

1 hour ago, Just Weird said:

Isn't she is just eligible to apply for Bangladeshi citizenship?  Bangladesh does not have to capitulate.

That is a matter the British courts will have to decide.  If Bangladesh declines to apply its own laws, then she'll be left de facto but not de jure stateless.  There's precedent, in the case of 'M' (I hope I have the pseudonym right.)  M came to Britain as a baby as a Vietnamese boat person and acquired British nationality.  He went off the rails and was recruited by Islamic terrorists.  Having discovered his activities, the Vietnamese government refused to treat him as a citizen.  The British courts found that as a matter of Vietnamese law, M was a Vietnamese citizen, and as a matter of practical fact, that the Vietnamese government decline to act in accordance with Vietnamese law.  The Supreme Court upheld the revocation of his UK citizenship.  This was before mere entitlement to another nationality could allow (in some cases) deprivation of UK citizenship.  The US charged him with terrorist offences, and he now languishes in a US prison.

1 hour ago, farcanell said:

But no... one cannot be deprived of citizenship because of beliefs, in modern cultures. In the case of the US, it’s enshrined in the constitution... in ages past, a person might be exiled.

 

the grey currently area under debate seems to be centered around dual nationality. One can be revoked, specifically the one most closely aligned to naturalization. Revocation of nationality by birth, will most likely fail in a court setting.

Only those who are naturalised British or are, in law, dual nationals are at risk of involuntarily losing British nationality.  Entitlement to another nationality does not put those who are British citizens other than by naturalisation at risk of losing citizenship.

The wording of the law is that deprivation of citizenship has to be 'conducive to the public good'.  However, a barrister has been rebuked by the bench for claiming that that was the threshold to be met.  Judges still remember the statement in parliament that this power would only be used for those who had engaged in certain 'unacceptable behaviours', such as serious organised crime.  Thus, membership of a raping grooming gang can lose oneself UK citizenship, but merely being a rapist does not.

Moreover, a decision to deport some as so doing would be conducive to the public good - he had disrupted the boat race - has been overridden by the courts.  Thus, it is currently hyperbole to claim that dual nationals hold UK citizenship at the Home Secretary's pleasure.

Being born British in the UK does not protect one's citizenship.  A British-born family of Kashmiri origin, father and sons, were stripped of British citizenship for alleged involvement in the struggle for Kashmiri independence.

On 8/20/2018 at 7:06 AM, BobBKK said:

Does anyone know what 'mei leang' means?  I think it's something like 'Boss'?  also is there a central resource that included English transliterations?  I've got the usual clutch of words  (binjalin, bangadang, bin bok bin bek, pokadok etc.) but there must be a resource somewhere that bring the common Lanna words together in Eng?

I don't recognise your spelling, but it could be แม่เลี้ยง, which can mean 'stepmother' or 'female millionaire'.

On 12/11/2014 at 6:10 AM, Zooheekock said:

That looks very interesting. Thanks for that but which font are you using?

As this thread isn't totally moribund, let me say there are now some fairly free Lanna fonts that mostly work, though not necessarily to everyone's taste, referenced from a test page.  They work on Firefox, on MS Edge on Windows 10, on iPhone and in LibreOffice.  Lamphun is prettiest, Da Lekh is easiest to read, and Da Lekh Si is best for editing on Firefox - it colours subscript coda consonants.  They'll probably work on an up-to-date Mac, but I have no test reports.

On 12/22/2018 at 11:16 AM, My Thai Life said:

The idea that the 92% of British companies who don't do business with the EU should waste time and money complying with EU regulations is clearly farcical. Only someone driven by ideology could fail to see that.

 

You are assuming that we wouldn't have those regulations if we weren't in the EU.  Note that by default existing EU Regulations and responses to EU directives become British law upon exit.

Quote

The Sanskrit h was apparently voiced, which means that ห ought to have been a low consonant, and the Thai creation (ฮ, derived from อ by making it more complex, so inserted just afterwards) should have been the high class h.

The answer is that the Thais seem to have got the letters from other SE Asians who only had plain /h/.  Moreover, ฮ seems to be a late addition to the alphabet, added after the number of Thai tones had doubled (in a simple model).  Khmer shows a similar pattern, where the letter matching ห also patterns with the Indic voiceless characters rather than the Indic voiced characters.

Thai words beginning with ฮ seem to fall into three groups - modifications of words beginning with ร (e.g. ฮัก from รัก), onomatopoeic words, and loanwords.  The neighbours of Southern and Central Thai replaced initial /r/ with /h/, and some of this change seeped into Central Thai.  Posh words in the neighbouring dialects resisted the change by turning /r/ to /l/.

ฬ does not correspond to a double letter in Sanskrit.  It serves as a letter for Pali, which between vowels has ฬ where Sanskrit has ฑ, e.g. the Thai words for sport, namely กีฬา from Pali and กรีฑา from Sanskrit.