Romanisation Of Thai

[topfield]

Astonishing article in today's Bangkok Post :

The confusion over the spelling is clear in promotional materials of the national carrier, Thai Airways International. A recent advertisement in local newspapers cited the name of the airport using the new spelling, but the airline's website is spelling it the old way. The ad says ''Smooth as silk via Don Mueang for THAI domestic flights,'' but a headline on the website reads: ''THAI announces domestic operations at Don Muang airport.''

Why the fuss when the 'other" airport's romanisation is completely and utterly different to the Thai pronunciation.

Did a snap survey at Changi airport asking staff there the name of the new Bangkok airport and not one of the twenty staff knew it was pronounced SUWANAPOOM .

Interestingly noticed at Morchit the marking on the buses "BANGKOK -SUWANNAPOOM AIRPORT" so it seems some Thai Co's realise that this is the only spelling falang will be able to recognise and pronounce correctly.

[meadish_sweetball]

Yes, it is unfortunate. But the new airport is just the most obvious case among many others.

I assume your 'why' is rhetorical? In any case, for those who do not know, the romanisation Suwarnabhumi is used due to the fact that this is a closer romanisation of the original word, which is Indic.

Words with Indic roots are often romanised with more regard to their origins than their pronunciation in Thai.

[topfield]

Yes, it is unfortunate. But the new airport is just the most obvious case among many others.

I assume your 'why' is rhetorical? In any case, for those who do not know, the romanisation Suwarnabhumi is used due to the fact that this is a closer romanisation of the original word, which is Indic.

Words with Indic roots are often romanised with more regard to their origins than their pronunciation in Thai.

Indic ???? Really ?

I puzzled over such, to me, absurd (and misleading as no Thai can understand these romanisations when spoken by a foreigner) spellings such as Devakula for Tevakun , Sondhi for Sontee for years until some learned boff on this very section of this very forum came up with what he indicated was the true correct answer to this conundrum.

After a visit to the UK and Queen Victoria in the 1880's our learned king Chulalongkorn returned to Thailand and wrote a book on how Thai should be romanised so that Westerners could read the Thai names phonetically.

That book is still to this day regarded as the official correct way to romanise Thai hence our new airport having a romanised name that no Westerner could pronounce the correct Thai way.

<<snip -samran. "Discussion of topics concerning the King or other current or deceased members of the Thai Royal Family is forbidden.">>

Is the above an often repeated myth or is it correct ?

[meadish_sweetball]

It sounds like a myth to me.

The romanisation system used on street signs and for names of provinces was designed by the Royal Institute in 1954 (the Royal Institute is a councelling board for scientific and language matters).

The romanisation of provinces and districts was standardized in 1967.

[jumnien]

Some people say Paris with an "s", some say Paree. Who cares? Some people spell it London, whereas others 50 kilometers away spell it Londres. Confusing?

Edited March 24, 2007 by mdeland

[meadish_sweetball]

The differences entail the risk of creating communication problems - when it is possible to avoid these from the start, why not do so?

Newbie taxi drivers may not understand the non-Thai speaking foreigners who want to go to "Suwarnabhumi" - especially not if you add a strong native language accent on top.

It would be better with a transcription system that successfully shows all relevant aspects of Thai pronunciation. That way, people would have a chance at pronouncing Thai without having to learn Thai script.

Note for example that Mandarin Chinese has a standardized romanised form, pinyin, with clear designations of all speech sounds, including tones.

[jumnien]

Are all you English speakers agreed to say and write Paree, France?

[topfield]

Are all you English speakers agreed to say and write Paree, France?

Now we are really going off topic. Americans say mos-cow as in the animal , Brits say mos-co. Even Bangkok is pronounced differently by Americans and Brits ..Baan-kak v Ban-kok !

Will try to find that posting a year or two back by a gentleman who refered to King Chulalongkorn's book on transliteration of Thai language and will revert back.

[Richard W]

It sounds like a myth to me.

The romanisation system used on street signs and for names of provinces was designed by the Royal Institute in 1954 (the Royal Institute is a councelling board for scientific and language matters).

The romanisation of provinces and districts was standardized in 1967.

That sounds like the RTGS. Rama VI seems to be the author of the final definition of the graphic system of transliteration. His system copes with native words as well as words of Indic loans. The only thing I haven't fathomed out is how to determine whether a karan is present in the Thai. For example, does barrga represent พรรค [H]phak or พรรค์ [M]phan? How is the other represented? (I assume the 'rr' I have in my source is not an error - according to my source for the definition, the airport should be 'Suvarrṇabhūmi'.)

[Crash999]

Note for example that Mandarin Chinese has a standardized romanised form, pinyin, with clear designations of all speech sounds, including tones.

...that often makes as much sense as the Thai system with places like Xian, Zhejiang, and Jinzhou being suitably mutilated by the unsuspecting white devils that use it.

Methought that the Thai system is universal, with exceptions either mistakes or grandfathered in (ie. Phuket vs. Pattaya, not Phataya).

[topfield]

Bingo Eureka ...you are right RichardW.

It seems the problems we have stem from the following publicaton as the system it advocates amazingly does not romanise words as pronounced in Thai !!

Words/names of Sanskrit or Pali origin are romanised to reflect the original words !

It is from a paper in the Journal of the Siam Society entitled :

The Romanisation of Siamese Words [ 1912 ] by King Vajiravut known also as Rama V1

So now we know why the new airport is romanised in a way that, if spoken by a falang, no Thai could or would possibly know what the speaker was refering to .

So now we know why the ex Finance Minister had his name romanised as Devakula [to rhyme with Dracula] so that when so pronounced by a falang no Thai could possibly know who was being refered to .

The phonetic romanisation is the entirely different Tevakun

Is it not time that a truly phonetic transliteration system was permitted and the old above system dumped ?

Edited March 24, 2007 by topfield

[Richard W]

So now we know why the ex Finance Minister had his name romanised as Devakula [to rhyme with Dracula] so that when so pronounced by a falang no Thai could possibly know who was being refered to .

The phonetic romanisation is the entirely different Tevakun

Is it not time that a truly phonetic transliteration system was permitted and the old above system dumped ?

There are two competing aims. One is to have a representation that a Westerner has a sporting chance of pronouncing correctly - though I could point out that systematically anglicising the spelling of Welsh place names was abandoned long ago - and the other is to have a way that someone who does not know the Thai script can convey the spelling of words to someone who does. The jargon of the subject calls the first 'transcribing' and the second 'transliteration'.

The graphic system is a transliteration, and apart from thanthakhat is the one one would use to transliterate traditionally spelt Sanskrit or Pali in the Thai script into the Roman alphabet. In the latter case you could then look the words up in your Sanskrit or Pali dictionary even though it not use the Thai script. You could even trying looking it up in a Cambodian dictionary if you suspected you had a Cambodian word, though Thai has a habit of substituting yo ying to mark a word as Cambodian.

Peter Daniels (of World's Writing Systems fame and newsgroup infamy) would claim it is not quite a transliteration, for the graphical system introduces 'a' based on the pronunciation and etymology.

There is an updated transliteration system, ISO 11940:1998, but it is pretty ugly and I've never seen it used. (Part 2, dated 2006, is probably just the RTGS - see below.) There are two very different interpretations of it - an Estonian one (published to the web in English) and the ICU International Component for Unicode. I cannot persuade myself to fork out about 2,400฿ for a copy of a standard no-one seems to use.

There is no officially sanctioned nearly accurate transcription. The Royal Thai General System (RTGS) oversimplifies far too much. It ditches vowel length and tone, and merges two vowels. However, it is the officially approved transcription form, and seems to be the one usually used on passports. Note that graphic system 'Devakula' becomes RTGS 'Thewakun'. The RTGS has been revised to eliminate one (two?) vowel mergers. That is what sparked the newspaper comment. Under the old system, the old airport was 'Don Muang'. Under the revised system, it is 'Don Mueang'.

There is, or was, the 'Royal Institute's Precise Transliteration', which supposedly combines both transliteration and transcription. I haven't got to grips with it yet. It has some elements of the Quoc-ngư system.

Richard.

Edited March 24, 2007 by Richard W

[jumnien]

I agree that the flight from Paree to Suwanaboom is less confusing linguistically. However, I think the folks on either end are reticent to accomodate. Mon dieu!

[topfield]

A brilliant and learned exposition from RichardW who quite possibly is a visiting professor of phonetics at Chulalongkorn University. Clearly one that requires considerable thought and I definitly will get back to the posting when I 've had time to fully digest.

In the meanwhile I can add a few remarks as a layman and non expert on the subject.

1. Regarding transliteration of applicants names in Thai passports I can inform readers from personal experience going back 20 years that the MFA office that issues Thai passports is extremely reasonable and flexible in this regard and are prepared to allow the applicant a romanised spelling of his/her Thai name of their own chosing. ie where a girls name ends in a clumsy 'ar' they will allow a more feminine 'a' ending .

2. Thais love to add a letter 'h' after every 't', 'p' and even 'k' sometimes

It seems that Thai transcription systems do not take account of the fact that 'h' after the 'p' normally results in the 'f 'sound in English and that the 'h' after the 't' sound results in the 'th' sound as in Mrs THatcher.

3. The main thrust of my argument is whatever system is used, the main goal must surely be the ability of Thai and non Thai readers and speakers to mutually comprehend each other.

The major source of transliterated names for foreigners comes from the Bkk Post/Nation and I feel these papers are doing a great disservice by using a transliterated name which, when spoken to a Thai, will result in total non comprehension and the shrugging of shoulders.

Even the alteration of one consonant is enough to raise a complete barrier of comprehension when talking to Thai people. ie saying Sondee instead ot Sontee will leave the Thai completely non plussed.

Surely there are enough cultural differences and barriers between falang and Thais out there without artificially creating yet more and the 'official ' transliterated spelling of the new airport is in my opinion nothing less than disastrous in this respect.

[meadish_sweetball]

1. Regarding transliteration of applicants names in Thai passports I can inform readers from personal experience going back 20 years that the MFA office that issues Thai passports is extremely reasonable and flexible in this regard and are prepared to allow the applicant a romanised spelling of his/her Thai name of their own chosing. ie where a girls name ends in a clumsy 'ar' they will allow a more feminine 'a' ending .

Soundwise, no Thai words are pronounced with a final /r/ sound. Those that end in ร are either pronounced as /n/, not pronounced at all, or rendered /ra?/ or something along those lines.

Adding 'r's to account for long vowel sounds as in Southern British English is one of the more unfortunate features of transcription systems for universal use (it's fine if it were only Southern English, Aussies and Kiwis (apart from Invercargillians) who were to pronounce it - everyone else, including the vast majority of English native speakers are tempted to mispronounce).

2. Thais love to add a letter 'h' after every 't', 'p' and even 'k' sometimes

It seems that Thai transcription systems do not take account of the fact that 'h' after the 'p' normally results in the 'f 'sound in English and that the 'h' after the 't' sound results in the 'th' sound as in Mrs THatcher.

It doesn't work with English, that's true, but makes reasonable sense if applied systematically to account for the sound difference between ป and พ ภ ผ, which is phonemic in Thai. In that system, ปลา 'fish' is written /plaa/ and พล่า 'meat salad dish' is written /phlaa/. Another way of accounting for the difference is /bplaa/ as opposed to /plaa/. Many people prefer this.

The problem here is that none of these systems are used consistently - not even by one and the same person.

3. The main thrust of my argument is whatever system is used, the main goal must surely be the ability of Thai and non Thai readers and speakers to mutually comprehend each other.

As I have said before, the most intuitive system for this purpose would be an IPA based transcription, as it harks back to the Latin root pronunciations of the letters in the Roman alphabet. This means that if you pronounce the sounds according to Spanish, Italian or Finnish, which have a strong letter-sound correspondence, more people would have reasonable success in getting it right.

The next problem is that Thais work hard to learn the inconsistencies of English, and might find it difficult to accommodate for another way of pronouncing the same letters.

[topfield]

1. Regarding transliteration of applicants names in Thai passports I can inform readers from personal experience going back 20 years that the MFA office that issues Thai passports is extremely reasonable and flexible in this regard and are prepared to allow the applicant a romanised spelling of his/her Thai name of their own chosing. ie where a girls name ends in a clumsy 'ar' they will allow a more feminine 'a' ending .

Soundwise, no Thai words are pronounced with a final /r/ sound. Those that end in ร are either pronounced as /n/, not pronounced at all, or rendered /ra?/ or something along those lines.

Adding 'r's to account for long vowel sounds as in Southern British English is one of the more unfortunate features of transcription systems for universal use (it's fine if it were only Southern English, Aussies and Kiwis (apart from Invercargillians) who were to pronounce it - everyone else, including the vast majority of English native speakers are tempted to mispronounce).

2. Thais love to add a letter 'h' after every 't', 'p' and even 'k' sometimes

It seems that Thai transcription systems do not take account of the fact that 'h' after the 'p' normally results in the 'f 'sound in English and that the 'h' after the 't' sound results in the 'th' sound as in Mrs THatcher.

It doesn't work with English, that's true, but makes reasonable sense if applied systematically to account for the sound difference between ป and พ ภ ผ, which is phonemic in Thai. In that system, ปลา 'fish' is written /plaa/ and พล่า 'meat salad dish' is written /phlaa/. Another way of accounting for the difference is /bplaa/ as opposed to /plaa/. Many people prefer this.

The problem here is that none of these systems are used consistently - not even by one and the same person.

3. The main thrust of my argument is whatever system is used, the main goal must surely be the ability of Thai and non Thai readers and speakers to mutually comprehend each other.

As I have said before, the most intuitive system for this purpose would be an IPA based transcription, as it harks back to the Latin root pronunciations of the letters in the Roman alphabet. This means that if you pronounce the sounds according to Spanish, Italian or Finnish, which have a strong letter-sound correspondence, more people would have reasonable success in getting it right.

The next problem is that Thais work hard to learn the inconsistencies of English, and might find it difficult to accommodate for another way of pronouncing the same letters.

Many thanks for that. A few points if I may please.

1. Re Thai passport names : It is not just the Thai pronounciation involved in the "English"version of the name in the passport but also aesthetic and other matters which fortunately the MFA take into account !

The example given was of a girl's name which they wrote as ending in an 'r' in a first passport but then agreed to change to an 'a' ending as more feminine in a subsequent passport !

More importantly changes are allowed where the Thai name could be a little embarrasing. ie girls name or elements in the name can be changed from porn to pon , rat to rad and piss to pit !!

RE Your final point that Thais might have difficulty in pronouncing the transcribed/transliterated name :

Well of course they might ! The whole point is that falang can pronounce these proposed spellings such as Suwanapoom and that Thais will understand and recognise them when spoken (by a falang ) with the desired result being : mutual comprehension.!!

[Richard W]

The whole point is that falang can pronounce these proposed spellings such as Suwannapoom and that Thais will understand and recognise them when spoken (by a falang ) with the desired result being : mutual comprehension.!!

If it was intended that Thais recognise them there'd be tone indications as well. 'Sukhothai' stressed and intoned as an English word is barely recognisable to a Thai. (Personal complaint against me.)

A proper transcription of สุวรรณภูมิ would be something like Sùwannáphūm. The Royal Institute's precise transliteration would be something like sŭ̃wă(rr)ṇṇă̂phʻum(i), which is probably beyond most people's fonts. I need a $5 font, Code2000, to display it properly. The difficult bits are putting the tilde and above the breve and the circumflex above the breve, and quite a few fonts lack the modifier letter turned comma, which looks like an opening inverted comma.

Edited March 25, 2007 by Richard W

[topfield]

The whole point is that falang can pronounce these proposed spellings such as Suwannapoom and that Thais will understand and recognise them when spoken (by a falang ) with the desired result being : mutual comprehension.!!

If it was intended that Thais recognise them there'd be tone indications as well. 'Sukhothai' stressed and intoned as an English word is barely recognisable to a Thai. (Personal complaint against me.)

A proper transcription of สุวรรณภูมิ would be something like Sùwannáphūm. The Royal Institute's precise transliteration would be something like sŭ̃wă(rr)ṇṇă̂phʻum(i), which is probably beyond most people's fonts. I need a $5 font, Code2000, to display it properly. The difficult bits are putting the tilde and above the breve and the circumflex above the breve, and quite a few fonts lack the modifier letter turned comma, which looks like an opening inverted comma.

"A proper transcription of สุวรรณภูมิ would be something like Sùwannáphūm" ( Richard W }

I'll go for that ....at least it would be mutually comprehensible !

[Johpa]

Another underlying issue in transliterating Thai, apart from complications arising from the borrowings from Pali/Sanskrit, requires an understanding of phonetics and an understanding of the difference between phonetics and phonemics. I am sure Richard can give a better and more detailed explanation, but I will try to give a brief explanation of why confusion reigns.

A phonetic sound is something that can be physically measured, usually with a good microphone and a blackbox oscilloscope. So anyone trained in phonetics can record a Thai speaker uttering the words for aunt (paa), crazy (baa) and cloth (phaa) and clearly see a physical difference as to how the sounds in the words are created, articulated being the preferred term, in the mouth. And a native Thai speaker will clearly hear three different words with three very different meanings. The fact that the change in how the consonant is articulated in the mouth can change the meaning of a word means that, in Thai, there is also a phonemic difference between these sounds and thus Thai has different symbols in its writing system to represent the sounds. Different languages select different subsets of such features from a limited set of features to create meaning. English also uses an unaspirated /p/ sound in words like spot or spank, but the sound is not phonemic in English, it carries no information regarding meaning, and I could speak English all day long using only an unaspirated /p/ and nobody would likely hear anything odd. There are no symbols in the English alphabet to distinguish between the aspirated and unaspirated consonants, there is no need as there is no phonemic difference.

In the English language, the language has not selected aspiration, a common manner of articulation, as making a phonemic difference, a difference in meaning. (I believe Korean uses three levels of aspiration to create meaning.) English speakers simply do not hear a difference, even though a difference can be clearly measured physically, and distinctly heard by Thai speakers. Thus native English speakers tend to vary a bit as to how they hear, or more precisley how their brains parse the sounds. Some listen to a Thai say the word for aunt (paa) and hear the word spoken the same as the word for cloth (phaa) whle others hear the word for crazy (baa). Confusion reigns.

So there is often no easy way to transliterate perfectly between most languages unless one resorts to complicated combinations of letters to represent foreign sounds (the reason there is so much "porn" in Thail when in fact the /r/ is there only to "flavor" the vowel) or to use lots of diacritical marks (umlauts and the like) not found on most keyboards. Some compromises must usually be made for public consumption. Don Muang is, IMHO, a far better compromise then is Don Mueang, a confusion based upon a vowel sound that is not phonemic in most English dialects.

[Alf Witt]

The RTGS has been revised to eliminate one (two?) vowel mergers.

Are there any English language words that have three consecutive vowels? I cannot think of any.

Are there any in other European (Latin based) languages?

If not, how does a word with three vowels assist understanding of the Thai pronunciation?

[Richard W]

Are there any English language words that have three consecutive vowels? I cannot think of any.

Yes: beau, Beaulieu, Campeau, diarrhoea (sometimes misspelt 'dire rear'), mediaeval (usually three syllables), taoiseach, lieutenant

Stretching the point: quean, queen, quail, quoit, Maoist

With 4: onomatopoeia

With 4, but stretching the point: sequoia, queue

If you will allow me to count 'w' and 'y' when they have the same function as 'u' and 'i', there are some more regular examples:

power, skewer, drawer, bouy (irregular)

Not so regular, but 4 vowels: lawyer, sawyer

In the Received Pronunciation, 'r' functions as a semivowel, so we can add:

laird, hare, beard, peer, fierce, weird, wire, hoarse, course, pure.

Are there any in other European (Latin based) languages?

French: beau, oui, brouilleur, oeil, dieu, voie, boeuf

Dutch: fraai, hooi, moeilijk, leeuw, nieuw

If not, how does a word with three vowels assist understanding of the Thai pronunciation?

The RTGS sequences for the diphthongs ia, ua and uea all have the same relationship to the symbols for the simple vowels i, u and ue - you add a flat or indistinct vowel after the simple vowel.

Edited March 25, 2007 by Richard W

[jeabsun]

In my opinion, the government or someone who is in charge of doing the translation from Thai name to English tries to translate from Thai alphabet to English alphabet. That's why you see Suwarnabhumi (สุวรรณภูมิ) instead of Suwannapoom which is the correct way to pronounce it. "mi" in Suwannabhumi comes from "มิ" in "ภูมิ". You can see this kind of writing in the first name and Last name of Thai people. We try to translate from Thai alphabet to English alphabet because, in Thai, when you change the spelling of any name even though they are still pronounced exactly the same, the meanings could be different and Thai people care about the meaning of their name. These words are typically based on Sanskrit language.

[CSS]

In my opinion, the government or someone who is in charge of doing the translation from Thai name to English tries to translate from Thai alphabet to English alphabet. That's why you see Suwarnabhumi (สุวรรณภูมิ) instead of Suwannapoom which is the correct way to pronounce it. "mi" in Suwannabhumi comes from "มิ" in "ภูมิ". You can see this kind of writing in the first name and Last name of Thai people. We try to translate from Thai alphabet to English alphabet because, in Thai, when you change the spelling of any name even though they are still pronounced exactly the same, the meanings could be different and Thai people care about the meaning of their name. These words are typically based on Sanskrit language.

I think that's exactly it. Most of my Thai friends will transliterate letter by letter. The problem arises when using the same letters to go from English to Thai and from Thai to English. For example, to go from "V" in English to Thai it makes sense to use "ว" as that Thai letter most closely approximates the English. However, when going from Thai to English, "v" is no longer the closest English approximation for the Thai sound "ว" that would be "w." The same can be said for other letter combinations. If one really wants to transliterate letter by letter two standards should be used. One for English to Thai and one for Thai to English. This obviously won't get around the problems with silent letters, changes in sound for final consonants and other pronunciation rules.

[PhilHarries]

I think that's exactly it. Most of my Thai friends will transliterate letter by letter. The problem arises when using the same letters to go from English to Thai and from Thai to English. For example, to go from "V" in English to Thai it makes sense to use "ว" as that Thai letter most closely approximates the English. However, when going from Thai to English, "v" is no longer the closest English approximation for the Thai sound "ว" that would be "w." The same can be said for other letter combinations. If one really wants to transliterate letter by letter two standards should be used. One for English to Thai and one for Thai to English. This obviously won't get around the problems with silent letters, changes in sound for final consonants and other pronunciation rules.

Some of the Thais I worked with always called the traders wendors not vendors and it took me a while to fathom out why as first I thought it was a speech impediment and was embarrassed to ask.

One of our contractors was located in Ao Udom, about 10km south of Sriracha, of which there were five different spellings on official signs in roman characters to my knowledge.

I can understand how the transliteration can be a problem with respect to original language versus pronounciation but once settled surely it aint rocket science to use the same version on all signs? As for the 'e' in Don Muang, although producing a more correct sound, I can't understand why they changed it after 90 odd years. Don't they have the concept of "if it aint broke don't mess with it".

Still, try explaining to a Thai that Barnoldswick should be pronounced Barlick.

[sabaijai]

The whole point is that falang can pronounce these proposed spellings such as Suwannapoom and that Thais will understand and recognise them when spoken (by a falang ) with the desired result being : mutual comprehension.!!

If it was intended that Thais recognise them there'd be tone indications as well. 'Sukhothai' stressed and intoned as an English word is barely recognisable to a Thai. (Personal complaint against me.)

A proper transcription of สุวรรณภูมิ would be something like Sùwannáphūm. The Royal Institute's precise transliteration would be something like sŭ̃wă(rr)ṇṇă̂phʻum(i), which is probably beyond most people's fonts. I need a $5 font, Code2000, to display it properly. The difficult bits are putting the tilde and above the breve and the circumflex above the breve, and quite a few fonts lack the modifier letter turned comma, which looks like an opening inverted comma.

The RTGS transcription would be Suwannaphum.

Just to clarify for members who may be confused here, 'Suvarnabhumi' is not the RTGS transcription so the Royal Institute is not to blame for this spelling fiasco. Obviously the AOT neglected to consult the Royal Institute. While RTGS is far from perfect, if followed in the case of the new airport, it would result in far fewer misunderstandings.