How come this word โรงพยาบาล (hospital) doesn't end with บ้าน (house), even though it's pronounced with a "baan" ending. Especially the "n" ending confuses me because ล is pronounced like an L.

Lo ล reads like No น at the end of the syllable and there is no Baan บ้าน inside of the word  โรงพยาบาล

And the word พยาบาล means a nurse.
โรง roughly means a building. 

ล at the end of a word is pronounced /n/

พยาบาล means nurse,  and has nothing to do with บ้าน

the "house" part in the hospital is the โรง, like in "school" โรงเรียน (house of studying) and many others

hospital = house of nurses (BTW Lao says "house of doctors", Chinese too, whereas German or Swedish say "house of sick")

 

บาล is probably derived from the Old Khmer °pāla meaning "protector" or "guard" - it doesn't mean "house".  Note that Thai script tries to preserve the original spellings of loan words (even if Thai people can't pronounce them).

BTW just because tone-deaf farang hear the same /ba:n/ and in wrotten transcriptions (omitting tones) it can be written the same way "ban", that doesn't mean anything. 

 

In tonal languages, the tone of a word is as important as a letter.

 

บาล (mid tone) and บ้าน (falling tone) have different tone. Not at all the same pronunciation. 

Or would you think that "duck" and "dick" have the same pronunciation (and should be spelt the same way) because it's just one letter difference?

 

@Nordude

 

You need to understand that in tonal languages, different tones means different meanings.

 

That is not 'baan' as in house.

On 5/15/2020 at 12:03 AM, uhuh said:

...Or would you think that "duck" and "dick" have the same pronunciation (and should be spelt the same way) because it's just one letter difference?

The only  "C" in Duk Dik is the candy inside.

 

On 5/14/2020 at 8:02 PM, Oxx said:

บาล is probably derived from the Old Khmer °pāla meaning "protector" or "guard" - it doesn't mean "house".  Note that Thai script tries to preserve the original spellings of loan words (even if Thai people can't pronounce them).

Thank you, OXX. The Royal Institute Dictionary shows:
 

บาล

 (แบบ) ก. เลี้ยง, รักษา, คุ้มครอง, ปกครอง, เช่น บาลเมือง, โดยมากใช้เป็นคำหลังสมาส เช่น โลกบาล รัฐบาล นครบาล โคบาล นิรยบาล. (ป., ส. ปาล)."

"to care for, take care of, watch over..."

it is possible that the original poster lived in an area with less educated Thais who don't pronounce r and ls correctly and the l ending get turned to n

20 minutes ago, digbeth said:

it is possible that the original poster lived in an area with less educated Thais who don't pronounce r and ls correctly and the l ending get turned to n

 

No.  In Thai having an /l/ sound at the end of a syllable is simply not possible.  A final /l/ is always pronounced /n/.

 

 

Language is infectious, I found myself signing off on Facetime with leub in response to เลิฟ recently. In English I am almost at the point of forgetting my age and saying "I could of"! 

Edited May 19, 20206 yr by tgeezer