Back To Basics Question

[glenbat]

please excuse my simple question but I'm starting from scratch so will be asking some very basic questions over the next few weeks

I just searched for my name in Thai and came up with เกล็น and have looked through a basic Thai book I have, and the Thai letters (are they called letters?) individually do make up the sound of 'Glen'

Is this always the case? I cant really explain this too well, but in the English language, the 3 letters C, A, T make up the word cat, and if spoken quickly together do make the sound/word 'cat'

So if I see one of the 4 characters used in my name in Thai, will they always sound as it does in Glen?

I hope that makes a little sense

[aanon]

please excuse my simple question but I'm starting from scratch so will be asking some very basic questions over the next few weeks

I just searched for my name in Thai and came up with เกล็น and have looked through a basic Thai book I have, and the Thai letters (are they called letters?) individually do make up the sound of 'Glen'

Is this always the case? I cant really explain this too well, but in the English language, the 3 letters C, A, T make up the word cat, and if spoken quickly together do make the sound/word 'cat'

So if I see one of the 4 characters used in my name in Thai, will they always sound as it does in Glen?

I hope that makes a little sense

hey glenbat,

your question makes plenty of sense. and, good news, the answer is 'yes, much of the time'.

the vowel เ_ always has a sound like eh/air (british pronunciation), and when used with the ็ symbol is the same sound, only shorter (as in your name).*

if you see ก at the start of any syllable, it will always have a 'G' sound.

at the end of a syllable it will have a sound like an unaspirated 'ck' sound. like the final sound of 'stick' without any puff of air.

if you see a ล at the start of any syllable or in combination at the start of a syllable (eg. กล..., คล...) it will have an 'L' sound.

if it's at the end of a syllable, the sound changes to an 'N' sound.

once you learn the way each letter functions, you can very accurately sound out words, so it's worth putting in the intial work.

all the best.

* not wanting to confuse you, but the เ symbol also appears with other symbols to make different vowel sounds. rather than try to explain it myself, i recommend having a look at a chart of the different Thai vowels (anyone have a good link?) to see what i mean.

Edited December 23, 2007 by aanon

[DavidHouston]

I hope that you will find that many people will respond to you on your questions. First, welcome to ThaiVisa; I hope that you will continue to join our discussions and ask questions. Please do not be intimidated - we have people here at all levels of knowledge and sophistication and generally I have found that forum participants and members are very willing to help out and lend their knowledge to others.

A few words about Thai: Thai is a fairly phonetic language; once you know the letters and marks and rules, you can read almost any Thai word, even without knowing the meaning. This feature is true for many languages; however, English is not one of them. Think how much trouble a Thai person has trying to pronounce the English word "though" or "through" without knowing the word first. Thai writing is make up of the following basic elements:

1. consonants: 44 of them, some of which have direct English counterparts (like the Thai equivalents of M and N) and some of which have no English equivalents. Consonants may have different sounds when they come at the beginning of a syllable or word than they have at the end of a syllable or word.

2. vowels: 22 of them alone and in various combinations. Some are close to their English counterparts; others are very different. Some vowels are inherently short in speech while others are inherently long.

3. The defining feature of Thai, as well as some other Asian languages, is that Thai is tonal. There are five basic tones (and others in various geographical regions), almost all of which are inherent in the system of Thai writing. Although there are four defined "tone marks", which along with the absence of tone marks constitute symbols for the five tones, the marks do not serve the same function in every syllable or word. Absence of a tone mark does not indicate absence of a tone. Other factors affecting tone are initial and final consonants and vowel length, for example.

This note is not about teaching you Thai, just a brief thought on learning to read and write the language. My recommendation is for you to get a Thai teacher to help you at least through your initial learning process. Trying to learn by yourself via books and tapes is a daunting task for most of us.

As to your initial question, "if you see the components of the word เกล็น in other contexts, will they have the same sound?" The answer is, "not necessarily."

I wish you the best of luck in your learning process.