Thai Language And Phonetics

[john321]

hi,

i am looking to a good dictionary that translates thai and english vice versa also phonetic translation included. At least i can ezplain some things over the phone. On pc would be great. Willing to pay for it

regards

john

[billzant]

Dear John,

I am not very fluent in Thai.

However so far I have found the best series to be the Paiboon by Benjawan Poomsan Becker. To begin with I found speaking from the books I had I couldn't be understood. Her vowel translation and special phonetics has helped me and I can now read and be understood from the dictionary. She has 3 books with CDs and a dictionary.

I have read there is something for the computer other than the CDs but I haven't seen it.

They can be obtained from Kinokuniya, and I had the dictionary delivered to me.

Hope you are keeping well,

All the Best

Bill Z

[SpokenThai]

Dear John,

ThaiVisa store has two of our programs which may help you (see banners above).

1). "Click2Thai" - a talking dictionary with phonetics and Thai script (5000 words).

2). "SpokenThai" - with 14,000 audio words and sentences + phonetics.

Both don't have a reverse Thai to English.

Good luck

SpokenThai

[DurianChips]

My favorite dictionary for Thai (Thai alphabet) to English is:

http://www.thai-language.com/dict/

It also has a function for transliterated (phonetic) Thai words. Don't expect it to work very well though. I think this is mostly because many Thai words simply can't be written accurately in English. And of course, the English writing system has no way of writing tones. The syllable 'Ma', for instance, means 'dog' when pronounced with a rising tone, 'horse' with a high tone, and 'to come' with a mid-tone. The other problem is that as an English speaker, you often just won't be able to hear a word accurately (even if they say it fifteen times)

Most systems of transliteration that attempt to be accurate have to modify the English writing system in some way. They add symbols to specify tones and modify exactly what sounds the English consonants and vowels make. If you learn to read them properly, they work, but if you're going to learn a new writing system, you might as well just learn the Thai alphabet. It's really not that unapproachable, and it is really much more phonetically consistent than English. It's not like Chinese, where there are thousands of symbols to memorize; there are 44 consonants, and really only about 30-35 are common. Then there are the vowels. There are websites that teach it. It took me a weekend (copy over and over again), and after that, I could pronounce Thai words! Don't be scared of it...

[Richard W]

My favorite dictionary for Thai (Thai alphabet) to English is:

http://www.thai-language.com/dict/

It also has a function for transliterated (phonetic) Thai words. Don't expect it to work very well though. I think this is mostly because many Thai words simply can't be written accurately in English. And of course, the English writing system has no way of writing tones.

Did you notice the superscript capital letters used to indicate the tones?

Most systems of transliteration that attempt to be accurate have to modify the English writing system in some way. They add symbols to specify tones and modify exactly what sounds the English consonants and vowels make. If you learn to read them properly, they work, but if you're going to learn a new writing system, you might as well just learn the Thai alphabet.

It depends how many other languages you intend to become acquainted with. IPA-based systems are truly more useful for some people.

It's really not that unapproachable, and it is really much more phonetically consistent than English. It's not like Chinese, where there are thousands of symbols to memorize; there are 44 consonants, and really only about 30-35 are common. Then there are the vowels. There are websites that teach it. It took me a weekend (copy over and over again), and after that, I could pronounce Thai words! Don't be scared of it...

Of course, that works well for native words, with only a relative few misindicating the tones and misindicating or not showing the vowel length. Most of the erroneous pronuciations at Thai-language.com arise because by default the pronunications are deduced from the spellings, and this deduction is an art which even the Thais have difficulty with. The other problem is that it does not cater for allomorphy. (Transcriptions there are supposed to be stop-gaps until sound clips become available.) I started loooking for dictionaries that give pronunciations when I realised how inadequate Thai spelling was.

Exercise for the elementary student: Pronounce เพลา.

Exercise for the advanced student: Pronounce ตนุ.

[DavidHouston]

My favorite dictionary for Thai (Thai alphabet) to English is:

http://www.thai-language.com/dict/

It also has a function for transliterated (phonetic) Thai words. Don't expect it to work very well though. I think this is mostly because many Thai words simply can't be written accurately in English. And of course, the English writing system has no way of writing tones.

Did you notice the superscript capital letters used to indicate the tones?

Most systems of transliteration that attempt to be accurate have to modify the English writing system in some way. They add symbols to specify tones and modify exactly what sounds the English consonants and vowels make. If you learn to read them properly, they work, but if you're going to learn a new writing system, you might as well just learn the Thai alphabet.

It depends how many other languages you intend to become acquainted with. IPA-based systems are truly more useful for some people.

It's really not that unapproachable, and it is really much more phonetically consistent than English. It's not like Chinese, where there are thousands of symbols to memorize; there are 44 consonants, and really only about 30-35 are common. Then there are the vowels. There are websites that teach it. It took me a weekend (copy over and over again), and after that, I could pronounce Thai words! Don't be scared of it...

Of course, that works well for native words, with only a relative few misindicating the tones and misindicating or not showing the vowel length. Most of the erroneous pronuciations at Thai-language.com arise because by default the pronunications are deduced from the spellings, and this deduction is an art which even the Thais have difficulty with. The other problem is that it does not cater for allomorphy. (Transcriptions there are supposed to be stop-gaps until sound clips become available.) I started looking for dictionaries that give pronunciations when I realised how inadequate Thai spelling was.

Exercise for the elementary student: Pronounce เพลา.

Exercise for the advanced student: Pronounce ตนุ.

My favorite personal mispronunciation is "ชนวน" ([N] fuse; primer) which I kept pronouncing "ชน-วน", rather than the correct "ชะ-นวน"

Others include the set of words in which a low class consonant, for example "ม" are preceeded by a "ห" tending to produce a high class equivalent (but not always). Included are "โหม", to storm or mobilize (pronounced "home", not "moh" - both with a rising tone) and "โหน", to swing or dangle (pronounced "hone") as contrasted with "โหล" meaning dozen ("low" - rising tone). I wrote the latter two pronunciation equivalents using Roman letters because I have difficulty remembering the rule in Thai transliteration about using the dot underneath a consonant ("พินทุจุด" [pin-thu-jut]) to clarify pronunciation difficulties like these. (I believe that Richard in another context explained the use of this mechanism which I have seen in Thai in a preface to the RID.

I also recommend the new Domnern Sathienpong Thai-English Dictionary with accompanying CD which, with a right mouse click, provides oral pronunciation of every English and Thai word in the dictionary.