What Percent Of Farang Speak Thai?

[kriswillems]

kriswillems - I like the look of your 10 lines to get the tones right, but can someone give me some idea of how to tell a live from a dead syllable - the rules for no tone mark seem to depend on this somewhat.

Here is a bit bigger version of my tone rules (only 13 lines):

a life syllable ends on a n, ng, m, w sound or long vowel

dead syllables are all the rest (p, t, k sound or short vowel)

with tone mark:

follow the mark

exception: intial low class consonant -> take the next tone mark.

no tone mark:

-Live syllables

mid tone

exception: intial high class consonant -> rising tone

-Dead syllables

low tone

exception: intial low class consonant -> short vowel = high tone, long vowel = falling tone

A silent intial "hoh hiep" or "oh aang" are not pronounced but also count as intial consonants.

What I left out:

- list of consonants per class (low, mid, high).

- intial and final consonant sound of each consonant

- definition of long and short vowels

- the sound of all vowels

- vowels that change shape in closed syllables

- vowels that are not written

- group inheritance of tones

- special letters and letter sequences (from indic and pali)

The 3 last are rather complicated because there are exceptions.

If you know all this, you can read. Well, you too practise a lot and check you your pronounciation will a Thai speaker, but it's really not that complicated as you might think. Learning to speak takes much more effort than learning basic reading. It's really useful to learn to read if you're serious about studying Thai.

Edited April 17, 2007 by kriswillems

[mangkorn]

True words, Meatish. The same holds true for native speakers of any language. Almost everyone who grew up speaking nglish or a Romance language would surely lose face if a foreign student asked him or her to explain the differences between the multiple verb tenses. You need a real teacher to teach the finer points of grammar.

As to the kris-list: I would add that the K, P and T endings would also include the corresponding G, B and D, for the beginner's recognition.

[Richard W]

As to the kris-list: I would add that the K, P and T endings would also include the corresponding G, B and D, for the beginner's recognition.

B-ending == P-ending

D-ending == T-ending

'G-ending' == K-ending

Mary Haas got a lot of stick for saying that Thai words could end in final /g/.

You can also end the S-ending (e.g. [H]kaas 'gas'), and, though the RID doesn't recognise it,

the F-ending (e.g. [HS]kawf 'golf').

[ColPyat]

Further, people's lexicons contain both active and passive vocabulary, which means that while you understand some words, you would never recall them and use them yourself. The passive vocabulary you possess in your native language is often huge. The more you expose yourself to a language, the more your passive vocabulary will increase.

I found that every time i expose myself to a new social environment my proficiency in Thai increases tremendously. At first i have huge difficulties understanding and expressing the particular terms and contexts in use, but very soon i will have caught up with the particular niche vocabulary, and am able to hold almost fluent conversations.