Transliteration For Thais Learning English

[briley]

I have been reading a few signs that are in Thai but obviously written to just sound out the English word, for example House written as เฮาส์. The first 3 letters obviously give you 'hou' but in Thai it is impossible to end the word in 's'. Using ส at the end of a syllable it sounds 'p', if not at the end then you have to add a vowel. I thought it rather clever to use the mai thanthakhat (don't sound) over the last letter to imply "sound it as if it is just an 's'". That gives you 'hou' and 's' or hous(e) - the correct sound.

But talking to a few Thais I am told that they don't sound the final ส and so read the sign as 'Hou'. Listening to Thais speaking English I now hear them say 'Hou'

Have I got this wrong or are all Thais being taught to wrongly pronounce all English words that have a sound at the end that can't be reproduced in Thai script?

[meadish_sweetball]

First we have to differentiate between the spelling of English loan words in Thai, and the phonetic system that is used in Thai textbooks teaching English.

The textbook 'phonetic' way of spelling 'house' in Thai would be เฮาซ or เฮาซฺ . The dot under the ซ actually encourages sounding out the 's'. Now, whether the student will actually manage to do this or not is another thing. The 'garan' ์ symbol, on the other hand, says 'do not pronounce this letter' (or at least that was its basic function, there are many words in which it silences more than one letter, and probably other exceptions as well).

When a word is borrowed into a new language, its pronunciation and spelling will often change to reflect the phonetic and orthographic rules of that language. It is also common for the meaning to change. So Thais are not really being taught an incorrect pronunciation, they are just pronouncing the word as it is pronounced in a Thai context - including phonemic tones on each syllable. This word actually takes the high tone, although there is no tone mark showing this.

However, if they carry this pronunciation over into when they are speaking English, they are obviously making a mistake... since English pronunciation rules dictate other things.

Along the same lines, cf. 'lar-tay' for cafè latte from Italian, when pronounced with an English accent... if you insist on pronouncing it as in Standard Italian, many people would think you were being overly pretentious. Along the same lines, Thais who pronounce English loan words as they are pronounced in English, are seen as 'conceited' or are simply not understood by other Thais.

[Rikker]

Great explanation, Meadish.

I'll throw in a couple words: This process of adapting a foreign loanword to another language's sound system is called "nativization" in linguistics. And as Meadish said, every language does this. Another example in English would be croissant, which many or most folks say "crew-saunt," a total butchering of the French, but it works for English.

And spelling house as เฮาส์ serves a couple of purposes. It marks it as a foreign loanword, for one. The letter ฮ is only used for onomatopoeic words and foreign loans. And while we might look at it and think it could be from Chinese or some other language if it was spelled เฮา, giving it the ส์ hints at the original spelling and thus a gives us a better guess of the original source language. And even though doing this doesn't affect the Thai pronunciation, it's considered useful information for comprehension.

[briley]

Probably did not make it clear that I was not talking about a loan word, it was a food stall called Red House that then put in Thai รีก เฮาส์.

[Rikker]

Even though it's a transcription of a proper noun, I think it's still fair to call it a loan word into Thai from English. You'll also see it in some other Thai words, like ทาวน์เฮาส์ for townhouse, for example.

If we didn't answer your original question, I'll try again.

Anything borrowed from English into Thai is nativized, so it's pronounced within the Thai system of pronunciation. If a certain sound or combination of sounds is not possible in Thai, then it might be "wrong" to a native ear, but it works fine within Thai.

So in this case, เฮาส์ is pronounced "how" as if there were no s. And "townhouse" would be "tao-how."

Edited January 29, 2007 by Rikker

[briley]

Rikker - I see your point, and have dug out a picture book I use for Thai children to learn English, and there I see the dot you refer to under the Sor Saalaa.

As Meadish said the problem is that many Thais appear to think the way the loan word is pronounced in Thai is the same as the way it is prounounced in English, hence use Hou when speaking English.

I think this will help me understand Thais speaking English! Thanks to you both.

[Richard W]

The textbook 'phonetic' way of spelling 'house' in Thai would be เฮาซ or เฮาซฺ . The dot under the ซ actually encourages sounding out the 's'.

That dot, called phinthu (พินทุ), actually means that no vowel follows the consonant. By the rules of standard Thai phonology and spelling, เฮาซ could only be pronounced [M]hao[H]sa, except that I don't think that can happen with ซ

And spelling house as เฮาส์ serves a couple of purposes. It marks it as a foreign loanword, for one. The letter ฮ is only used for onomatopoeic words and foreign loans.

It's also used for dialect words, typically corresponding to Siamese words starting in ร. The most obvious example is ฮัก, a dialect form of รัก.