I took a walk and found seven รับสมัคร signs and none of รับสมัค it got me thinking that I had screwed up and it was one word, I broke off and took a bus to Central where I consulted dictionary and 'lo' I was not mistaken. Why is this? the dropping of a redundant letter represents a significant saving of labour and materials(more than 10%) I interviewed several 'floor walkers' on the mystery and they were unaware of the choice they had. TV should be in the vanguard on this important issue of conservation in these 'resource hungry' times.

Why not spell "through" as "thru"; "though" as "tho"; "right" as "rite"; "thorough" as "thoro"; and "straight" as "strate"? Boy, that would sure save a lot of letters and time and think of al the spelng erors that wood prevnt.

lol to David's response..

Today's written language is the result of centuries of evolving conventions. It's not created in one sitting as a system of perfect logic and efficiency, and rarely is it reformed to be that way either. There are plenty of "worse" cases of orthographic inefficiency than this in Thai, I'm afraid.

I agree with Rikker's points - but as an interesting contrast, Lao is a good example of a language that has had a spelling reform and got rid of the 'superfluous' stuff.