Day And They

[stonybonytony]

As a quid pro quo for learning Thai I also have to help my friends learn English. When they phonetically write day and they, they write them both starting with daw dek, and I can't think of a way of writing 'th' in thai characters. Is there a way? Is there a standard way to convert roman characters into phonetic thai (and is it any better than the 'official' conversion of thai characters into roman?)

[withnail]

No, is the short answer.

[Rikker]

It is probably worth noting that 'th' is actually two sounds in English, a 'voiced' sound (vocal cords vibrate), as in 'this' and a 'voiceless' sound (vocal cords don't vibrate), as in 'think'. In Thai the former is transcribed as ด do dek, as in เดอะมอลล์ 'The Mall'.

The latter is often transcribed as ธ tho thong to distinguish it from transcription of the regular English 't'. I see it regularly, but it's not standard. As in วิลล์ สมิธ 'Will Smith' on movie posters.

Same goes for 'sh' being transcribed with ฌ cho choe, as in ฌอง เพนน์ 'Sean Penn', also seen on movie posters.

Edited March 8, 2008 by Rikker

[Richard W]

And the long reply is that different dictionaries do it different ways, none of them 'official'.

The most popular methods for the 'th' of 'they' are tho thong (ธ) underlined (ธ) or italicised (ธ). One edition of So Sethaputra's New Model English-Thai Dictionary uses tho nang Montho (ฑ), but that is distinctly idiosyncratic. The spelling ฌอน for Sean may well come from that dictionary's scheme. (ฌอง is usually used for French Jean.)

Incidentally, although underlining is a way of making new characters in at least one of Thailand's languages, Windows XP tends to make a hash of combining combining macron below (U+0331) with vowels above or below.

Edited March 8, 2008 by Richard W

[Briggsy]

You could aim to familiarise them with the international phonetic alphabet.

I always found that trying to represent English sounds using Thai letters gave short-term benefits and long-term drawbacks as Thai pronunciation and Thai spelling are so rigidly linked.

[kokesaat]

It is probably worth noting that 'th' is actually two sounds in English, a 'voiced' sound (vocal cords vibrate), as in 'this' and a 'voiceless' sound (vocal cords don't vibrate), as in 'think'. In Thai the former is transcribed as ด do dek, as in เดอะมอลล์ 'The Mall'.

The latter is often transcribed as ธ tho thong to distinguish it from transcription of the regular English 't'. I see it regularly, but it's not standard. As in วิลล์ สมิธ 'Will Smith' on movie posters.

Same goes for 'sh' being transcribed with ฌ cho choe, as in ฌอง เพนน์ 'Sean Penn', also seen on movie posters.

Your explanation helps explain what my Thai teacher butchers her ch/sh/th sounds when she's trying to speak English, despite many years of English language learning.

[Rikker]

Yeah, very few Thais learning English have it properly drilled into their heads that those are important sound distinctions to make. And in my experience, very few Thai English teachers (meaning the Thais who teach the children English in the schools) can actually pronounce English themselves with any consistency or clarity, so it's the blind leading the blind.

This lack of teaching self-awareness of one's own tongue leads to some pretty bizarre behaviors like pronouncing final t/d as s, as in "How are you?" "Very goose!"

[DurianChips]

I think an important point to remember here is that, while Thai has sounds that English lacks, English also has sounds that Thai lacks.

Withnail's answer of no is correct, but the reason is that the 'th' sound (like the, this, theme) doesn't really exist in the Thai language. When my wife took ESL here in the US, they identified several sounds for her to work on. These included th, v, z, and ch (as distinct from ช or จ). Thai lacks exact equivalents for these English sounds. And of course Thai also lacks some ending sounds, including j, s, and r.

There have been many discussions on here about how important it is to learn the Thai alphabet when learning Thai. Well, I think the opposite is also true. The Thai alphabet is designed for the Thai language. I would encourage any English language learners to learn the English alphabet.

[withnail]

There comes a point though where learning an alphabet doesn't help. Indeed the issue with most Thai learners of English is not that they don't know the Roman alphabet but rather that they don't know or can't reproduce the sounds it represents. What helps is if you actually show people how to make the sounds either through diagrams or physically demonstrating the positioning of your tongue, mouth, to what extent air is coming from your lungs, whether your voicebox is vibrating etc.

I've seen teachers of both Thai and English presume that shouting something louder will help students reproduce it correctly which of course doesn't always work. Many people I know give up learning tones because their Thai teacher tried to get them to copy them without first showing/explaining what a change in tone actually is.

[stonybonytony]

In the วิลล์ สมิธ 'Will Smith' example above, does the final law ling with a garan on top leave the final sounded ling as an 'l'? Would a Thai person see that this word is supposed to be Will rather than Win?

[Briggsy]

In the วิลล์ สมิธ 'Will Smith' example above, does the final law ling with a garan on top leave the final sounded ling as an 'l'? Would a Thai person see that this word is supposed to be Will rather than Win?

No, according to Thai pronunciation rules, this word will always be pronounced as "Win". This is because a ล in the final position is always pronounced as a น. Some more savvy speakers may recognise the word as an English name and pronounce "Will". This is because they are using the English pronunciation.

Thais generally struggle to produce a final 'l' and often adopt an either/or strategy of pronouncing the final 'l' as an 'n' or a 'w'. In fact there are conventions within Thai English so hotel is usually "hoten" and bill is "bin" but milk is "miw".

The garan is there because of Thai spelling rules. Generally when a word ends in 2 or more consonants, a garan is placed over the final one. There are some exceptions, for example จันทร์ and สามารถ.

[Richard W]

In the วิลล์ สมิธ 'Will Smith' example above, does the final law ling with a garan on top leave the final sounded ling as an 'l'? Would a Thai person see that this word is supposed to be Will rather than Win?

No, according to Thai pronunciation rules, this word will always be pronounced as "Win". This is because a ล in the final position is always pronounced as a น. Some more savvy speakers may recognise the word as an English name and pronounce "Will". This is because they are using the English pronunciation.

On the other hand, doesn't lo lo karan scream that the word is European? A savvy speaker wouldn't need to recognises the word to realise that pronouncing it /l/ would be appropriate in some circumstances. Would anyone care, though, to suggest what those circumstance are?

[DavidHouston]

In the วิลล์ สมิธ 'Will Smith' example above, does the final law ling with a garan on top leave the final sounded ling as an 'l'? Would a Thai person see that this word is supposed to be Will rather than Win?

No, according to Thai pronunciation rules, this word will always be pronounced as "Win". This is because a ล in the final position is always pronounced as a น. Some more savvy speakers may recognise the word as an English name and pronounce "Will". This is because they are using the English pronunciation.

On the other hand, doesn't lo lo karan scream that the word is European? A savvy speaker wouldn't need to recognise the word to realise that pronouncing it /l/ would be appropriate in some circumstances. Would anyone care, though, to suggest what those circumstance are?

The canonical example is, of course, เชลล์, a word which many Thais see dozens of times a day.

[Briggsy]

On the other hand, doesn't lo lo karan scream that the word is European? A savvy speaker wouldn't need to recognises the word to realise that pronouncing it /l/ would be appropriate in some circumstances. Would anyone care, though, to suggest what those circumstance are?

What you say is correct but assumes that

a: the Thai speaker has learned the necessary motor control to produce a final 'l'. Many haven't.

b: the Thai speaker feels comfortable introducing non-Thai phonemes into their speech.

For a comparison, how many English speakers say 'restaurant' with a French 'r' and a nasal vowel.

Hope this clarifies the topic for you.

Think this topic should be moved to the "Teaching in Thailand" forum.

[siamesekitty]

Actually, words such as วิลล์ เชลล์ เซลล์ อีเมล์ รีเทล are pronounced not really with -in, -en endings, as the Thai spelling would seem to indicate, nor with the proper -ill, -ell, -ail English sounds, but with a curious mixture that sounds more like an "อิว" or "เอว" sound and an ever so slight bend towards an /l/ sound (more of the /l/ if the speaker knows English and is aiming for a more correct pronunciation).

However, among Thais just using the word as "tap sap" while speaking Thai with each other, there would be less of an inclination to insert the /l/ sound, and it would be more of an อิว/เอว sound, though still with a tiny " /l/ " tinge.

Does that make any sense?

[Rikker]

Final /l/ in some varieties of English isn't a "true" /l/ at all. It's known as a 'dark L', and it's actually pronounced very similarly to /w/, making /w/ (ว) the best substitute available in native Thai phonology. Even in my dialect of American English, /l/ as part of a final cluster (e.g. 'milk') or between vowels (e.g. 'million') is often a 'dark L'. In some dialects of English, such as Cockney, final /l/ is a true /w/, too.

Initial /l/, as in 'love' or 'fly' is an 'alveolar lateral' sound in the language of phonetics, meaning it's produced by placing the tip of the tongue on the alveolar ridge (the ridge of flesh just behind the teeth at the front of the hard palate), and forcing air around the sides of the tongue (hence 'lateral'). (Note that /l/ can also be made by putting the tongue against the back of slightly-opened teeth and forcing air around it in that position.)

In the dark L, the tongue never touches the alveolar ridge. Rather, the base of the tongue moves back and touches the soft palate (velum) at the back of the mouth, similar to the position of the tongue when making the sounds /k/, /ŋ/, or--you guessed it--/w/ (/w/ is actually a combination of moving the back of the tongue up to the soft palate and rounding the lips).

Try saying 'milk' or 'million' naturally, without exaggerated enunciation, and you might find you have a dark L, too. Or maybe you have it some other phonetic environment. For me, enunciation kills it, though.

So I have no qualms with Thais using /w/ for final /l/.

Edited March 10, 2008 by Rikker

[ElZorro]

Every post in this thread is more or less correct, but it takes a SiameseKitty to hit the nail on the head, and Rikker is as interesting and informative as usual. Thank you all!

[Richard W]

Actually, words such as วิลล์ เชลล์ เซลล์ อีเมล์ รีเทล are pronounced not really with -in, -en endings, as the Thai spelling would seem to indicate, nor with the proper -ill, -ell, -ail English sounds, but with a curious mixture that sounds more like an "อิว" or "เอว" sound and an ever so slight bend towards an /l/ sound (more of the /l/ if the speaker knows English and is aiming for a more correct pronunciation).

However, among Thais just using the word as "tap sap" while speaking Thai with each other, there would be less of an inclination to insert the /l/ sound, and it would be more of an อิว/เอว sound, though still with a tiny " /l/ " tinge.

Does that make any sense?

It makes perfect sense.

For a comparison, how many English speakers say 'restaurant' with a French 'r' and a nasal vowel.

While French 'r' is rare in English, nasal vowels are (or were) not rare in all sociolects. I opened the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (1966), and for 'restaurant' the only pronunciation given is /restərã/, which is a hybrid of French and English pronunciation. Similarly, while a mathematical 'envelope' usually starts /en/, in the sense of the cover of a letter, it 'often' starts /ã/ or /ɔn/. (The latter does not feel at all 'fancy' to me - it is my everyday pronunciation of the word.)

Think this topic should be moved to the "Teaching in Thailand" forum.

I disagree. We are not talking about how Thais try to talk English, but what happens to English loanwords in Thai when the Thai speakers have been taught English. This is even relevant for learning to speak Thai - I am never happy that I pronounce English names appropriately when speaking Thai.