Unwritten vowels and consonant clusters

[Artful Dodger]

I thought I saw a thread on here a while back about unwritten vowels and especially the implied เ-าะ in words like บริษัท, can't find it now though. I am wondering whether the best way to see this is that on the level of the writing system there is only one unwritten vowel, i.e. โ-ะ, and the others are really to do with the pronunciation of consonant clusters. In other words, when Thai speakers need to insert a vowel sound in order to pronounce a cluster, it is typically -ะ (as in สบาย) but for certain (all?) clusters where the second consonant is ร, it is เ-าะ (as in บริษัท). This suggests that unwritten vowels other than โ-ะ are not full-fledged vowels at all and should be even shorter than the normal short vowel.

I am just musing really - is there any merit in this theory / are there any counterexamples?

[digbeth]

บริษัท is sometime pronounced as บอริสัด might even be archaic spelling too

maybe due to the way some sanskrit/pali words were written, there's no distinction between ออ and อะ vowel

[tgeezer]

I found no half vowel in any บริ words in the dictionary, บรีษัท is pronounced บอริสัด. Being so distinctive I doubt that anyone would mention if you made light of the vowel though.


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