I'm looking (without much success) for an English- Thai dictionary that has the Thai translation in Roman alphabet as well as Thai. I know that Thai is tonal and some words cannot be translated into Roman literally but it would be nice to have some idea what I was saying.

Example of what I am looking for:

Red = (Thai script) = Si Daeng.

Rice= (Thai script) = Kao

Thanks for any help

Yeah, I have one. I'll dig it out and get the details for you.

It's in three sections:

English-Translit-Thai Script

Translit-English-Thai Script

Thai Script-Translit-English

Each in dictionary order.

I know that Thai is tonal and some words cannot be translated into Roman literally but it would be nice to have some idea what I was saying.

There is an old IPA-based convention for the use of accents on the vowel to show tone:

macron (e.g. ā) for mid tone - though often this is just the default.

grave (e.g. à) for low tone

cicumflex (e.g. â) for falling tone

acute (e.g. á) for high tone

caron (similar to breve, e.g. ă) for rising tone.

(A caron should have a sharp angle at the bottom, as in č, but vowels plus caron are missing from many fonts.)

The ISO 11940:1998 transliteration (letter-based, not sound-based) uses these conventions for the tone marks, ignoring the fact that the tonemarks have different meanings for low consonants. (It uses the macron for length, though doubling would be much easier.)

I'm not sure how this relates to the Quoc-Ngu system of tone marking by accents - it's part of what makes Vietnamese instantly recognisable on labels on food.

There is also the option of a superscript tone number at the end of each syllable, or a capital letter code (M L F H R). The 'Roman' script of Zhuang (Tai languages in China distantly related to Thai) uses newly invented letters to show tones.

The Thai-English-Thai dictionary by Benjawan Becker is very popular. It has three sections so you can either look up words in English, Thai or Roman transliteration. It costs about 425 baht and is available at all good book stores in Thailand. It can also be bought online. Just google the phrase "Thai-English-Thai dictionary by Benjawan Becker".

Thanks everybody

Yeah, that's the book I was on about:

Paiboon Phonetic Dictionary by Benjawan Poomsan Becker

425 Baht

Paperback

Pocket Size

Bangkok 2001

Paiboon Publishing

658 pages

ISBN 1887521143