Does anyone know what ร.ย.ล. stands for on palace vehicles? Been wondering for a long time, just curious.

ร.ย.ล. = รถยนต์หลวง (a royal car)

ร.ร.ล. = เรือรบหลวง HMS (a royal ship)

Makes perfect sense. Thank you!

Another quick question.

The word "หลวง" actually begins with "ห" rather than "ล". Is it common practice, when abbreviating words in Thai, to use the first letter that actually makes a sound -- i.e., ignoring silent letters like "ห"?

ห is the only letter in Thai that can be silent at the start of a word (ok, there's also the อ but this only occurs in 4 words). Yes, it is common practice to ignore the silent ห. This would therefore be different to the English acronyms system.

บลจ = บริษัทหลักทรัพย์จัดการกองทุนรวม

Ed,

why do you think there are only four word beginning with Or Ang (อ)?

There are hundreds - see in these dictionary listings:

http://www.seasite.niu.edu/thai/thaidict/thailex16.htm

http://www.seasite.niu.edu/thai/thaidict/thailex17.htm

I guess he is referring to words in which the Or Ang is silent. Like in "อย่าง". For other words where the Or Ang reflects a vowel sound, the acronym is usually given as "อ." The word "ongkarn", for organization, for instance.

Yep,

the others are:

อย่า

อยาก

อยู่

For those people that can read Thai, I suggest they buy the Abbreviation Dictionary (ปทานุกรมอักษรย่อ) from any branch of Asia Books there's 400 odd pages of mainly interesting information for about B60.