Pronounciation of เชาวน์

[nagiewont]

Why is the second syllable of the word เชาวน์  (วน์) not audible, and the pronounciation is /chao/, as if it was just ช plus vowel เ-า?

 

Also - what is the mark over this letter น์?

Edited July 29, 2020 by nagiewont

[johnray]

The mark means it's a silent letter.

 

Chow / Chao

[nagiewont]

2 minutes ago, johnray said:

The mark means it's a silent letter.

 

Chow / Chao

Well, that makes sense. Thank you.

[2 is 1]

Dont take out of context normaly mean brain or you have knowledge depens how you use!

 

22 minutes ago, johnray said:

The mark means it's a silent letter.

 

Chow / Chao

 

[Oxx]

10 hours ago, johnray said:

The mark means it's a silent letter.

 

The mark, known as การันต์ /kaaˑran/ or ไม้ทัณฑฆาต /máyˑthanˑthaˑkhâat/, normally silences one consonant, in this case it's silencing the final two consonants.  There is at least one word in which it silences the final three consonants.

[tgeezer]

I have seen this word before, does anybody know what it means and why it has this incredible spelling? 

[ColeBOzbourne]

According to thai-language.com dictionary it refers to wit, mental agility, quickness of mind. Also can be nickname for a boy. Spoken with mid-tone.

[tgeezer]

Thanks I didn't think to look there because I assumed, (you know what they say about "Ass U and me ) that it was a new word.  I see that it comes from Sandskrit. 

Edited July 30, 2020 by tgeezer

[JHicks]

6 hours ago, Oxx said:

 

The mark, known as การันต์ /kaaˑran/ or ไม้ทัณฑฆาต /máyˑthanˑthaˑkhâat/, normally silences one consonant, in this case it's silencing the final two consonants.  There is at least one word in which it silences the final three consonants.

If placed over the final consonant of a syllable with an unwritten vowel, I think it always silences the whole syllable.

 

I'm not sure what word you are thinking of but suspect the first of your three consonants would belong to a linker syllable, so would be silenced either because its main syllable has gone or just because it'd leave you with a weak syllable at the end of a word. I'd be interested to know of any exceptions to that pattern.

 

 

1 hour ago, tgeezer said:

I have seen this word before, does anybody know what it means and why it has this incredible spelling? 

I won't claim to know, but based on the entry in the RID you can reconstruct it like this:

 

The original pronunciation was ชะวะนะ (there's a name for this way of reading Thai words of Pali / Sanskrit origin but I can't remember it). If you say ชะวะ fast enough it begins to sound like เชา, just because that's the sound you get when you round your lips while saying a. That gives you an Indic word with a final syllable ending in อะ, and that type of syllable tends to be dropped, as in สิงห์ etc. This may be because it is more natural to stress the longer / more complex syllable, and Thai can't really accommodate a weak syllable at the end of a word - that would explain why the final consonant in words like จักร comes back to life when you attach another syllable that can take stress, so that what was originally the final syllable becomes the penultimate syllable and can be weak. Whatever the reason, at that point the original word has been reduced to เชา. It looks as though the spelling was changed to reflect both the new pronunciation and the Indic spelling.

[Oxx]

50 minutes ago, JHicks said:

I'm not sure what word you are thinking of but suspect the first of your three consonants would belong to a linker syllable

 

I can't recall at the moment, but it is three consonants - not a linker syllable - and it's a word associated with royalty.

 

One case of two consonants and a vowel being killed is กษัตริย์ /kaˑsàt/ meaning "pure".

[tgeezer]

4 hours ago, JHicks said:

If placed over the final consonant of a syllable with an unwritten vowel, I think it always silences the whole syllable.

 

I'm not sure what word you are thinking of but suspect the first of your three consonants would belong to a linker syllable, so would be silenced either because its main syllable has gone or just because it'd leave you with a weak syllable at the end of a word. I'd be interested to know of any exceptions to that pattern.

 

 

I won't claim to know, but based on the entry in the RID you can reconstruct it like this:

 

The original pronunciation was ชะวะนะ (there's a name for this way of reading Thai words of Pali / Sanskrit origin but I can't remember it). If you say ชะวะ fast enough it begins to sound like เชา, just because that's the sound you get when you round your lips while saying a. That gives you an Indic word with a final syllable ending in อะ, and that type of syllable tends to be dropped, as in สิงห์ etc. This may be because it is more natural to stress the longer / more complex syllable, and Thai can't really accommodate a weak syllable at the end of a word - that would explain why the final consonant in words like จักร comes back to life when you attach another syllable that can take stress, so that what was originally the final syllable becomes the penultimate syllable and can be weak. Whatever the reason, at that point the original word has been reduced to เชา. It looks as though the spelling was changed to reflect both the new pronunciation and the Indic spelling.

That makes perfect sense, เอา represents อัว.      
It is strange that when mixing the vowels อี. อื  and อู with า,  อัว was chosen and not อูว . 

I have just discovered that จักรยาน is said จักกระยาน. 

[Oxx]

13 minutes ago, tgeezer said:

That makes perfect sense, เอา represents อัว.   

อัว would (if it were a word) be pronounced /ʔua/ as in วัว /wua/ meaning "cow".  Nothing like the /aw/ of เอา.

 

 

Edited July 30, 2020 by Oxx
Wrong previous poster

[JHicks]

3 hours ago, tgeezer said:

That makes perfect sense, เอา represents อัว...     

 

2 hours ago, Oxx said:

อัว would (if it were a word) be pronounced /ʔua/ as in วัว /wua/ meaning "cow".  Nothing like the /aw/ of เอา.

I think his point was that it's strange that อัว is pronounced that way when, by the logic that gives you /aw/ and อาว, it ought to have the sound written เอา.

 

....It is strange that when mixing the vowels อี. อื  and อู with า,  อัว was chosen and not อูว .

Did you mean อูา? I guess you'd then have to change เอือ and เอีย. I think I'd settle for เอูอ, which would free อัว up to be used instead of เอา. Course, it's a lot more consistent than English spelling even as it is...

[tgeezer]

I don’t see a need to alter ี +า  ื+า  They are represented oddly เอีย เอือ and อู+า even more so. We are taught to read อั+ว as อูวะ . snd ไ as  อั+ย  so how could อั+ว be anything but what we have learnt is represented as เอา ?   
So it is quite logical that when presented with the Sandskrit word ชะวะนะ and desiring to make it one syllable อัว เชา was chosen and วน์ retained to show etymology.  

I take your point Oxx but you see it differently. The nine pure vowels are followed by three mixed vowels where the second, third and fourth vowels are mixed with the first vowel. So อัว is the fourth vowel อู mixed with อา , It is represented by เอ+อ+อา  which is impossible to read!    

 

[tgeezer]

13 hours ago, JHicks said:

 

I think his point was that it's strange that อัว is pronounced that way when, by the logic that gives you /aw/ and อาว, it ought to have the sound written เอา.

 

Did you mean อูา? I guess you'd then have to change เอือ and เอีย. I think I'd settle for เอูอ, which would free อัว up to be used instead of เอา. Course, it's a lot more consistent than English spelling even as it is...

JHicks: I see that you see my approach but in เอูอ you are reading a symbol used to write vowels with a sound. เ Is not สระ อา. 
 
I apologize if I appear to be teaching granny to suck eggs, I am shamelessly using you and Oxx because I hope that there are interested learners here and don't want them to experience the problems I had in making sense of the writing system.  

[JHicks]

12 hours ago, tgeezer said:

I don’t see a need to alter ี +า  ื+า  They are represented oddly เอีย เอือ and อู+า even more so.

 

1 hour ago, tgeezer said:

JHicks: I see that you see my approach but in เอูอ you are reading a symbol used to write vowels with a sound. เ Is not สระ อา.

I was trying to capture the family resemblance between เอีย เอือ and อัว, which are all opening diphthongs. The second element of each one is close to า in sound quality, but it isn't a separate long vowel, so I could live with a pattern that could be interpreted "opening diphthong based on อี" etc. If you say these vowels it's recognisably the same gesture in each case, just as the offglide in เร็ว, แล้ว etc is more of a gesture than a specific sound.

 

I believe there's a long history of using เ to write vowel sounds other than เอ, and if the system was rejigged to avoid this, a new symbol would be needed for เออ (and the other opening diphthongs, if they weren't changed to use า). I'm happy to have some combinations that aren't the sum of their parts - not that the spelling system is up for negotiation, obviously.

 

Personally I find this stuff interesting, but I would think most people are happy just to learn the system and soon come to perceive a combination like อัว as a unit.

Edited July 31, 2020 by JHicks
Said "closing" when I meant "opening"...

[EricTh]

On 7/29/2020 at 8:55 PM, nagiewont said:

Well, that makes sense. Thank you.

Those are Indic loanwords. Thai can't pronounce them, that's why it is silent.

 

For more on origin of Thai words, click below.

http://eastasiaorigin.blogspot.com/2017/08/origin-of-thai-language.html

[tgeezer]

5 hours ago, JHicks said:

 

I was trying to capture the family resemblance between เอีย เอือ and อัว, which are all opening diphthongs. The second element of each one is close to า in sound quality, but it isn't a separate long vowel, so I could live with a pattern that could be interpreted "opening diphthong based on อี" etc. If you say these vowels it's recognisably the same gesture in each case, just as the offglide in เร็ว, แล้ว etc is more of a gesture than a specific sound.

 

I believe there's a long history of using เ to write vowel sounds other than เอ, and if the system was rejigged to avoid this, a new symbol would be needed for เออ (and the other opening diphthongs, if they weren't changed to use า). I'm happy to have some combinations that aren't the sum of their parts - not that the spelling system is up for negotiation, obviously.

 

Personally I find this stuff interesting, but I would think most people are happy just to learn the system and soon come to perceive a combination like อัว as a unit.

To ramble on a little more, I find it interesting but initially needed to formulate these ideas in order to remember the vowels.  I first realized that I needed some logic when encountering the vowel เอาะ and thinking wrongly that it was the short form of เอา , I was confused for a while.  In fact on reflection I think that the second element In the mixed vowels is more likely to be สระ ะ than สระ า .  But if so then I wonder why the short forms couldn't be shown with the characters showing short vowels thus, เอิย เอึอ . 
I am not sure what offglide in แล้ว or เร็ว means. ว (ow) and ย (oy) ending denote live words so I feel are the most similar to their English counterparts.  If they are going to be said as dead endings then perhaps we could call อัว a diphthong which would make an argument for calling both ย and ว vowels. 
I know from hearing people mention "vowel shift" that the language has undergone some changes which could explain much of what puzzles me. 

[JHicks]

3 hours ago, tgeezer said:

To ramble on a little more, I find it interesting but initially needed to formulate these ideas in order to remember the vowels.  I first realized that I needed some logic when encountering the vowel เอาะ and thinking wrongly that it was the short form of เอา , I was confused for a while.  In fact on reflection I think that the second element In the mixed vowels is more likely to be สระ ะ than สระ า .

I don't think the combination is ever going to be exactly the same as two individual sounds, although I can still see the sense in choosing symbols that give you some indication of how the combined sound is made up. I believe that ะ comes from a symbol representing some sort of h sound coming after the vowel in Indic languages. The one in อะ may have been reanalysed as 'a' by now, but I think it originally represented a glottal stop that followed the vowel, with the 'a' sound being implied. That would explain why ะ acts as a shortener with other vowels - it's an instruction to cut them off with a glottal stop. If that's right, there isn't really a symbol for the short 'a' itself that you could use for the diphthongs.

 

3 hours ago, tgeezer said:

I am not sure what offglide in แล้ว or เร็ว means. ว (ow) and ย (oy) ending denote live words so I feel are the most similar to their English counterparts.  If they are going to be said as dead endings then perhaps we could call อัว a diphthong which would make an argument for calling both ย and ว vowels. 
I know from hearing people mention "vowel shift" that the language has undergone some changes which could explain much of what puzzles me. 

Phonetically I think they're semivowels (to me an 'offglide' is a semivowel that follows a nuclear vowel). Still, the fact that Thai people find it so hard to pronounce a consonant after ai / ao probably shows that they're acting as consonants in the Thai sound system. It still makes sense that they're live endings, because they're sonorants rather than stops - same principle as for ร, น etc.

 

I don't really know the history but I wouldn't be surprised if there'd been a lot of clunky moves in the process of getting a script designed for one family of languages to work for another one (especially one with a much richer vowel inventory).

 

I'd be interested to learn about sound changes in Thai, especially any that have occurred since the script was introduced. My hunch is that it was not a completely logical / consistent system to start with, but I'm not sure it needed to be.

Edited July 31, 2020 by JHicks

[tgeezer]

The evolution of the language might be interesting to study but I am sure that there would be a great deal of controversy in it. I certainly wouldn't want to study it in English.  I have a ม. 5 book here in England which describes ประสบการณ์ as an English import which shows how much Thai has changed. Learning that has put me off the word in favour of variations around เคย ชิน or เชี่ยวชาญ, more vague but I am sure a Thai would understand.  Dialects are probably where authentic Thai is to be found but I haven't tried to find it. บ or บ่ is in the dictionary eg. บแรง as ไม่มีกำลัง ไม่ไหว and I can imagine it to be quite common in spite of being labelled โบราณ in the dictionary. 
 

[Oxx]

28 minutes ago, tgeezer said:

I have a ม. 5 book here in England which describes ประสบการณ์ as an English import

 

I can't imagine what English word that might have come from.  Any thoughts?
 

30 minutes ago, tgeezer said:

The evolution of the language might be interesting to study ... I certainly wouldn't want to study it in English.

 

There is virtually nothing written in Thai about how the language has changed.  I'm not aware of a single etymological dictionary in Thai.  Pretty much all the serious research has been published in English.  Also, Thai authors are hamstrung by not being able to questions the authenticity of key sources such as the Ramkhamhaeng Inscription.

[JHicks]

3 hours ago, tgeezer said:

I have a ม. 5 book here in England which describes ประสบการณ์ as an English import which shows how much Thai has changed.

 

3 hours ago, Oxx said:

I can't imagine what English word that might have come from.  Any thoughts?

Maybe they mean that although it is a Thai word, it has come to be used in an English way. Compare the last bullet point below:

 

3. ภาษามีการเปลี่ยนแปลง
- คำบางคำอาจเกิดขึ้นใหม่ เช่น ละมุนภัณฑ์ กระด้างภัณฑ์
- บางคำอาจเลิกใช้ เช่น ฦกซึ้ง (ลึกซึ้ง )
- บางคำอาจมีการเปลี่ยนแปลงเสียงไปบ้าง (อย่างนี้ เป็น อย่างงี้/ ฉันใด-ไฉน)
- บางคำอาจมีความหมายต่างไปจากเดิม ใช้ต่างไปจากเดิม (หนู-ดิฉัน)
- รูปประโยคก็อาจเปลี่ยนแปลง และอาจเกิดรูปประโยคใหม่ ๆ เช่น การนำรูป
ประโยคภาษาอังกฤษมาใช้ (เขามาสาย- เขามาช้า / เขาพลาดรถไฟ-เขามาไม่ทัน
รถไฟ / ในอนาคตอันใกล้-ในไม่ช้า/ เขาอยู่ในเครื่องแบบ-เขาแต่งเครื่องแบบ)

[tgeezer]

Sorry if I confused you, I used the word import to show that the meaning was incorporated into Thai. I have the book now and see that I should have said that it was, as with other words, Revolution, television, architect, democracy etc. coined for the reason, here I copy; กมารบัญญัติศัพท์ขึ้นใช้ในวงการต่าง ๆ . 

 

[tgeezer]

On 7/31/2020 at 9:18 AM, JHicks said:

 

 

2 hours ago, JHicks said:

 

Maybe they mean that although it is a Thai word, it has come to be used in an English way. Compare the last bullet point below:

 

ประโยคภาษาอังกฤษมาใช้ (เขามาสาย- เขามาช้า / เขาพลาดรถไฟ-เขามาไม่ทัน
รถไฟ / ในอนาคตอันใกล้-ในไม่ช้า/ เขาอยู่ในเครื่องแบบ-เขาแต่งเครื่องแบบ)

Now we have to try to see how those sentences would be dealt with in Thai ! 
For example  พลาด cannot be the transitive verb "miss"  ไม่ตรงที่หมาย ในลักษณะเช่น เพลียนไป เลี่ยงไป หรือไกลไป because it would appear to be intransitive. 

[JHicks]

10 hours ago, JHicks said:

...

ประโยคภาษาอังกฤษมาใช้ (เขามาสาย- เขามาช้า / เขาพลาดรถไฟ-เขามาไม่ทัน

รถไฟ / ในอนาคตอันใกล้-ในไม่ช้า/ เขาอยู่ในเครื่องแบบ-เขาแต่งเครื่องแบบ)

 

2 hours ago, tgeezer said:

 

Now we have to try to see how those sentences would be dealt with in Thai ! 
For example  พลาด cannot be the transitive verb "miss"  ไม่ตรงที่หมาย ในลักษณะเช่น เพลียนไป เลี่ยงไป หรือไกลไป because it would appear to be intransitive. 

I thought it was only the first sentence of each pair that was anglicised, and the second was the more authentic / traditional version for comparison.

 

I think the issue with พลาด is just that has not traditionally been used in that sense. I may have misunderstood what you're saying but I believe it's a transitive verb.

[tgeezer]

I thought so too, especially the last one: "He is in uniform." Or is it He lives in his uniform? Why not เขาเป็นในเครื่องแบบ ?  แต่งเรื่องแบบ is to make a uniform, เขาแต่งตัวเครื่องแบบ or เขาสวมเครื่องแบบ better.  I think that one thing that I have learned is that the preposition between, He dresses and uniform is not necessary.  
  
 
 

Edited August 2, 2020 by tgeezer

[JHicks]

We might not think of it this way, because "he is in uniform" is a sort of figure of speech, but it expresses location just as much as "it is in the cupboard", so I think อยู่ makes sense. If the process that gives you เขาพลาดรถไฟ continued, you might eventually get เป็น used instead of อยู่, but I don't think it's gone that far. I'm not sure how the Thaiglish versions sound to native speakers. The examples are from a native speaker though, so I would think เขาแต่งเรื่องแบบ is OK.

[JHicks]

Or would be but for the missing ค. That's what you get for using copy/paste...

[tgeezer]

My mistake was to suggest that one of each pair of sentences was not Thai, when your book has stated that they are both Thai but of different generations. My constant reference to the dictionary creates a prescriptive attitude unfortunately but it is my way of learning the meaning of words. Some translation dictionaries don't bother to ascribe grammatical terms and there is something to be said for that. 

Have you come across ไวยากรณ์ไทย by นวรรณ พันธุเมธา? I have a couple of copies 4th and 5th editions, one in each country. She retains นาม กริยา naturally they are คำหลัก but other nomenclature is divorced from English, คำขยาย คำเรียกร้อง etc.  
Don't worry about the typos, I don't! 
 

I was "FaceTiming" with Thailand after my last post and พลาดรถไฟ was compared with พลาดโอกาส. However my friend is very familiar with English so 'miss' works for him. In fact I was stupid enough to point out loss is probably the word I would use!  The thing is, words in proximity With one another have to be made to mean something.  Nothing should matter very much and very little matters at all. 

[JHicks]

12 hours ago, tgeezer said:

Have you come across ไวยากรณ์ไทย by นวรรณ พันธุเมธา? I have a couple of copies 4th and 5th editions, one in each country. She retains นาม กริยา naturally they are คำหลัก but other nomenclature is divorced from English, คำขยาย คำเรียกร้อง etc.  
Don't worry about the typos, I don't!

No, haven't heard of it. I do want a Thai Thai grammar book though so if I ever get back in I will look out for it.

 

kO.

 

12 hours ago, tgeezer said:

I was "FaceTiming" with Thailand after my last post and พลาดรถไฟ was compared with พลาดโอกาส. However my friend is very familiar with English so 'miss' works for him.

That's an excellent comparison. I don't think พลาดโอกาส is an anglicism so perhaps พลาดรถไฟ isn't such a massive shift.