เดิน

 

เดิม

 

เกิน

 

เปิด

 

เสริม

 

My Thai wife says long, but I thought I read that they were short. 

Long

 

Most of these words, you hear them many times every day. Just listen to Thai speakers,  they pronounce them with long vowels.

12 hours ago, Lorry said:

Long

 

Duly noted. Thank you.

12 hours ago, Lorry said:

Most of these words, you hear them many times every day. Just listen to Thai speakers,  they pronounce them with long vowels.

 

I hear them spoken, but must admit I was unable to distinguish whether it was a long or short sound. 

 

To my surprise, I just learned that 

 

ตัว          บัว          วัว

 

have a long sound. 

 

All the times I had heard those words spoken, only to mistakenly think they were short. 

...What about the words:

 

วิว         คิว         หิว

 

Long or short?

You are talking about diphthongs now, 2 vowels.

 

In your first series,  the /u/ is rather long, not so long as in the words of your first post, but longer than the following /a/

So its [u:a]  (u: means a long u).

 

Contrast this with words like กว่า or กว้าง, where the first vowel in the dipthong becomes so short that it is a semivowel, like an Englisk w.

So it's [wa:]

 

In the second series,  they all have very short first vowels, more like the semivowel [j] than a real [i], the following /u/ is much longer.

 

ตัว, บัว, วัว - all short, as are วิว, คิว, หิว.

On 9/22/2025 at 9:48 PM, Zaphod Priest said:

ตัว, บัว, วัว - all short

 

Those ones are long, my man. 

 

Multiple sources, including my Thai wife, have just confirmed so. 

 

For years, I had mistakenly thought they were short.

On 9/22/2025 at 9:48 PM, Zaphod Priest said:

as are วิว, คิว, หิว

 

I'm still not 100% on these ones. 

 

Also, my wife seemed to hesitate here. 

 

Am currently pronouncing them as something between long and short.

According to chatgpt, หิว วิว คิว are short vowels.  Long vowel is   ี