Always wonder any languages speaker other than English that pronounce this word " dinosaur" same as Thai . Thai directly change "au" sound to "เ-า" from A (อา)+ U( อู) to be AU (เอา). Since this word originally not english so I don't think thais pronounce it the wrong way.  And why not thais adopt the same way as english speaker ไดโนซอร์  "di-no-sor" !?  I guess may be coming from German language  the way "au" pronounce ?

 

The word is originally English, created in 1841.

 

The second component is taken from the classical Greek σαῦρος (sauros) meaning "lizard".  I strongly suspect (but can't prove) that when the word was first coined, the elite then being well educated in Greek, would have pronounced the second syllable in the Greek fashion.  It's this pronunciation that is reflected in the Thai.    As the word became popularised in English and became used by those not familiar with classical Greek, the pronunciation changed.

I know it's derived from Greek, that why I said.

 

Reflection from Greek pronunciation in to Thai, how and when ? I can't think of any link that possible.

I think if we know when did this word become popular among thais we may guess which foreign language speaker brought it in ( American by the Vietnam war or British by the WWII or earlier or other european language speaker in any period ) or how it linked to Greek in your hypothesis. 

 

Talking about the elite. The Thai elites of the royal court who could use european languages well since time of King Rama IV ( overlapping time with Victorian Era) might have known it before ordinary people and might adopt that way and since then it slowly spread all over.

 

Any other idea?

The word is English.  The word entered Thai from English.

 

The world would almost certainly have entered Thai during the reign of King Mongkut (Rama IV) (reigned 1851-1868), or possibly Rama V.

 

King Mongkut spoke fluent English and was keenly interest in Western science.  In fact, he is known here as "The Father of Science and Technology".  Many Western scientists visited his court.  He also had an English governess for his children and conversed with her.

 

In 1851 the UK was swept by a dinosaur mania when dinosaur skeletons where exhibited at the enormously popular Great Exhibition in the Crystal Palace.  It's pretty inconceivable that King Mongkut and other educated Thais with an interest in natural history would have been unaware of dinosaurs.

 

So, I believe it's during this era that the word entered the Thai language, with what was then the correct English pronunciation.

I'm still not convinced by that British influence to King Mongkut era hypothesis. From what I have read many books/articles before or early Vietnam war period  ( around WWII ) still call by translation words กิ้งก่ายักษ์/กิ้งก่าโบราณ . Only  the text book in late 70s to early 80s that I have read starting to use word ไดโนเสาร์ .

 

Seems nobody have different idea here or this topic is quite out of foreigner ( who want to know thai) interest.  Actually it doesn't matter much, just my curiosity.

it does make for some nice pun though....

 

what creatrure precedes the ไดโนเสาร์?

 

ไดโนอาทิตย์

On 5/6/2018 at 1:55 PM, digbeth said:

it does make for some nice pun though....

 

what creatrure precedes the ไดโนเสาร์?

 

ไดโนอาทิตย์

"precede" !? So why not ไดโนศุกร์, and for this word, Thai has played with it for quite long time.

Still lot of thai words which many are for something not familiar by thais or not originated in Siam at the time and we use not the direct transcription word but totally something else which puzzling me.

How Kangaroo becomes จิงโจ้ Ching-Cho but Giraffe is simply ยีราฟ ?!