เพชร

[tgeezer]

The pronunciation of เพชร (เพ็ด) The vowel shortened. สระ เอ has become สระ เอะ. รร in บรร is pronounced บัน and with a final consonent รร becomes อะ. So ร seems to be acting as อะ shortening the vowel with a final consonent. Are there others and do you know from where it comes?

[5tash]

i can't explain why, but i can give you some more examples. the thai provinces of เพชรบุรี and เพชรบูรณ์

incidently have you noticed that in เพชรบูรณ์ the ช is pronounced and in เพชรบุรี it isn't.

i'm sure there are some more examples.

[tgeezer]

i can't explain why, but i can give you some more examples. the thai provinces of เพชรบุรี and เพชรบูรณ์

incidently have you noticed that in เพชรบูรณ์ the ช is pronounced and in เพชรบุรี it isn't.

i'm sure there are some more examples.

I hadn't noticed but in the 'big tome' there are two ways of pronouncing it in combinations เพชร- (เพ็ดชะ- เพ็ดชะระ-) (เพ็ดบุรี)? ร seems to have some link with อะ

[Rikker]

เพชร was formerly often spelled เพ็ชร, although this is nowadays only seen in proper names (which are not standardized like other spellings). It's my understanding that it was removed for aesthetic/etymological reasons (ไม้ไต่คู้ was officially "disallowed" in Pali/Sanskrit words, I believe). So a related question is when exactly the ไม้ไต่คู้ came into the equation. This word has ever been pronounced with a long falling tone, as in [เพด], so far as I know. So it's not a matter of สระเอ becoming สระเอะ, but rather สระเอ being used to represent สระเอะ.

The possible Indic roots are:

Sanskrit วชฺร, which gave us the cognate forms วัชร-, วัชระ, พัชร-, พัชระ, พชระ, etc.

Pali วชิร, which gave us the cognate forms วิเชียร, พิเชียร, in addition to the obvious ones วชิระ and วชิร-, as in วชิรพยาบาล Vajira Hospital.

My best guess is that เพชร derives from one of the Sanskrit forms, because of the lack of สระอิ.

Edit: One more thing: this phenomenon is also seen in เพชฌฆาต 'executioner', pronounced [เพ็ดชะคาด], where เพชฌ- is from Pali วชฺฌ 'kill', which has the modern reflex วัชฌ์.

[Rikker]

i can't explain why, but i can give you some more examples. the thai provinces of เพชรบุรี and เพชรบูรณ์

incidently have you noticed that in เพชรบูรณ์ the ช is pronounced and in เพชรบุรี it isn't.

i'm sure there are some more examples.

เพชรบุรี is officially pronounced [เพ็ดชะบุรี], which you'll hear on the news, but the colloquial pronunciation remains [เพ็ดบุรี], as noted. A fellow of the Royal Institute told me that this official imposing of the so-called proper pronunciation has caused more than a little rancor with citizens of the province, who resent being told by a panel of experts in Bangkok that they're pronouncing the name of their hometown incorrectly.

[Rikker]

รร is a remnant of a former spelling rule, where any doubled consonant represented อะ plus that consonant, i.e. in the original Ramkhamhaeng inscription, ญงง corresponds to modern ยัง. Just as modernly we call รร 'ร หัน' [รอหัน], งง was called 'ง หัน' [งอหัน], and มม 'ม หัน', etc.

I believe this has its origin in Pali/Sanskrit, but รร itself is apparently a conflation of the two languages. If you look at the root words for ธรรม, we have:

Sanskrit: ธรฺม, appears to be the orthographic cognate. (The English cognate of this word is spelled/pronounced 'dharma'.)

Pali: ธมฺม, appears to be the phonological cognate.

So for ธรรม, it appears that we have the Sanskrit spelling with the Palicized pronunciation, which I presume led to รร to being pronounced as simply อะ when followed by any consonant.

I don't know how รร came to be pronounced อัน, though. I hope Richard will come along to correct my ideas and expound further.

[tgeezer]

I don't know how รร came to be pronounced อัน, though. I hope Richard will come along to correct my ideas and expound further.

Isn't this as you said? รร ร อัน because of มาตราตัวสะกด Thanks for that, an ancient word indeed. I wont now forget how it is spelt.

[Rikker]

Isn't this as you said? รร ร อัน because of มาตราตัวสะกด Thanks for that, an ancient word indeed. I wont now forget how it is spelt.

Yes, I suppose you're right (or am I right?). We don't see the combination อัร in modern Thai, but อัน is the logical pronunciation of it. Gotta think things through a bit more..

[Richard W]

I don't know how รร came to be pronounced อัน, though. I hope Richard will come along to correct my ideas and expound further.

You've said just about everything I can think to say on the immediate topics, and more, unless people are interested in how P/S 'v' often becomes พ. All I can add is speculation on words like สวรรค์ from Sanskrit svarga (สฺวรฺค) and some more examples.

The Sanskrit-derived pronuciation is [L]sa[R]wan if the borrowing is recent enough to have /a/ and not /o/. If we use the doubling rule to indicate the vowel, we automatically get สวรรค์.

Another example of Sanskrit /a/ becoming /e/ is the prefix เบญจ- [M]ben[L]ja from Sanskrit/Pali pañca-. I strongly suspect the change has some connection with Khmer phonology or phonetic history, but I know no details. The trigger seems to be the following palatal consonant in the same syllable.

Another example of an unexpected vowel in Thai is แพทย์ [FL]phaet from Sanskrit vaidya. There are three other words showing the same correspondence:

แทตย์ 'giant, demon' from daitya

แพศย์ 'vaishya' (the mechant/artisan caste) from vaiçya

แสนย์ 'soldiers' from sainya

The trigger seems to be the sequence ai..y, but I know no more.

Richard.

[Richard W]

We don't see the combination อัร in modern Thai, but อัน is the logical pronunciation of it.

One instance - ตระคัร [L]tra[M]khan.

[Rikker]

Thanks for the additions, Richard. I hadn't known the vaidya/แพทย์ connection. It immediately caused me to make the connection with ไวทยา in the name of Prince Wan Waithayakorn (พระองค์เจ้าวรรณไวทยากร).

[Rikker]

We don't see the combination อัร in modern Thai, but อัน is the logical pronunciation of it.

One instance - ตระคัร [L]tra[M]khan.

Well done. After doing a wildcard search of RID, it appears that's the only one in the dictionary.

[DavidHouston]

Gentlemen,

Are there any "Grimm's Law" equivalents which describe the transformation from Sanskrit to Thai? That is, is there a set of linguistic "rules" and customs whereby the ancient langauge was transformed over time into what we know today as Bangkok Thai? Both of you seem to refer to these standard transformations from time to time. Thanks.

[Richard W]

Gentlemen,

Are there any "Grimm's Law" equivalents which describe the transformation from Sanskrit to Thai? That is, is there a set of linguistic "rules" and customs whereby the ancient langauge was transformed over time into what we know today as Bangkok Thai? Both of you seem to refer to these standard transformations from time to time. Thanks.

You'll be pleased to know there's no Verner's Law

If you can read Sanskrit in the Thai script, you'll know it's mostly very simple. It's more complicated when it comes to transcription, as you then encounter the Great Thai consonant shift, which you could compare to Grimm's Law.

For all but the oldest loans, the rules for the consonants are then, ignoring the reduction of contrasts in syllable-final consonants:

Sanskrit k(ก) c(จ) ṭ/T(ฏ) t(ต) p(ป) > Thai k(ก) j(จ) t(ฏ) t(ต) p(ป)

Sanskrit kh(ข) ch(ฉ) ṭh/Th(ฐ) th/Th(ถ) ph(ผ) > Thai kh(ข) ch(ฉ) th(ฐ) th(ถ) ph(ผ)

Sanskrit g(ค) j(ช) ḍ/D(ฑ) d(ท) b(พ) > Thai kh(ค) ch(ช) th/d(ฑ) th(ท) ph(พ)

Sanskrit gh(ฆ) jh(ฌ) ḍh/Dh(ฒ) dh(ธ) bh(ภ) > Thai kh(ฆ) ch(ฌ) th(ฒ) th(ธ) ph(ภ)

Sanskrit ṅ/G(ง) ñ/J(ญ) ṇ/N(ณ) n(น) m(ม) > Thai ng(ง) y/n(ญ) n(ณ) n(น) m(ม)

Sanskrit y(ย) r(ร) l(ล) v(ว) > Thai y(ย) r(ร) l(ล) w(ว)

Sanskrit ś/ç/z(ศ) ṣ/S(ษ) s(ส) h (ห) > Thai s(ศ) s(ษ) s(ส) h(ห)

Pali is the same, but Pali lacks ศ and ษ (they had merged with ส), and additionally had ḷ(ฬ), which gives Thai l(ฬ) and corresponds to Sanskrit ḍ/D(ฑ) between vowels, as in the Thai words กรีฑา and กีฬา 'sport', from Sanskrit and Pali respectively.

Where alternatives are given for Sanskrit, the final form is the Harvard-Kyoto system, which only uses ASCII characters. Sanskrit ñ/J(ญ) gives y(ญ) syllable-initially and n(ญ) syllable finally. In a few Thai words, ฑ is pronounced /d/, possibly reflecting the Northern Thai and Khmer usage of the letter.

Now we come to the complications. Firstly, some of the old alphabets (e.g. Old Khmer) did not distinguish พ and ว, and for that matter, Malay, the language of the Buddhist kingdom of Sri Vijaya, did not distinguish /b/ and /w/. Probably as a result of these influences, Sanskrit and Pali v(ว) is represented by Thai ph(พ) in many of the oldest loanwords.

Secondly, in Khmer /p/ and /t/ did not occur before vowels; their place was taken by implosive /ɓ/ and /ɗ/ (as distinct from old /b/ and /d/). Combining this with the Great Thai Consonant Shift, Sanskrit/Pali ปิตา /pitā/ yield Thai บิดา.

The vowels are mostly straight copies, but there are several complications.

• The most striking is that final /a/, /i/ and /u/ generally become silent, but this is not universal.
  
• In the oldest loans, /a/ in what is now a closed syllable became /o/, but /aw/ (in forum notation) before /r/, e.g. Pali/Sanskrit นคร nagara gives Thai นคร [H]na[L]khawn, and /aw/ before /h/, e.g เคราะห์ from Sanskrit graha.
  
• Sanskrit /ai/ and /au/ becomes เ /e:/, เ-า /o:/ in Pali, and I suspect also in some loans from Sanskrit. Sanskrit /au/ > Thai /ao/ can be seen in เสาร์ [R]sao 'Saturn, Saturday'.
  
• The vowel /a/ may be lost in ways I find hard to predict, e.g. ครุฑ [H]khrut from Sanskrit ครุฑ garuda, but พจน์ [H]phot and วจนะ [H]wa[L]ja[H]na from วจน vacana.
  
• Contrariwise, /a/ may be inserted so that listeners can see you know what the consonant is, e.g [L]sat[L]ta[H]wa สัตว- corresponding to Sanskrit sattva-.
  

Some of the vowel corresondences I have yet to fathom, such as เกียรติ์ [M]kian / เกียรติ [F]kiat from Sanskrit กีรฺติ, possibly with a contribution from cognate Pali กิตฺติ. I suspect a Khmer contribution because of the British English-like vocalisation of /r/.

[Rikker]

Richard, thanks for that. My knowledge in this area is still rather haphazard, and that goes a long way to helping me remember the correspondences more systematically.

I have one for you. According to RID, เขต and เกษตร are cognate, the former from Pali เขตฺต, the latter from Sanskrit เกฺษตฺร. This helps explain why เขต has alternately been spelled เขตร เขตร์ เขตต์ (as well as variations using ฃ) over the years.

Do you know anything about the relationship between ข and กษ?

Edit: Here are some more examples of กษ/ข correspondences:

Poetic กษณะ and the common form ขณะ

กษัตริย์ and the form ขัตติย-

เกษม and เขม-/เขมา.

There's even เกษียน, an annotation inserted into a ใบลาน text, which RID says is from เขียน 'write'. เขียน is Tai, is it not? If so, this alternation is also occasionally applied beyond Indic. Kerr's 1972 Lao dictionary lists ກະສຽນ /ká sĭaːn/ in the same sense as Thai, as well as ຂຽນ /kʰĭaːn/, obviously.

Edit again: I wanted to make clear that I'm aware there's a correspondence between ษ and ข already, as in พฤษ์/รุกข์, or ศึกษา/สิกขา, I'm just curious why/how กษ corresponds to ข so often, particularly word initially.

[Richard W]

Do you know anything about the relationship between ข and กษ?

I'm not sure I have much to add to what you already know.

To simplify matters, I'll speak as though Pali descends from Sanskrit, though in fact it is known that it doesn't.

Sanskrit clusters with a stop consonant and no nasal generally become geminates in Pali, counting clusters such as 'tth' as geminates - we don't have 'thth'. The clusters with 's' become aspirate clusters. We can see the start of this process in Sanskrit, where instead of 'sc' we have 'cch', e.g. the -ccha- formative of present tenses such as []i]gacccha:mi[/i] 'I go'. (This corresponds to the -sco: of Latin and -sko: of Greek.)

Geminates generally don't occur word initially in most languages (though Russian has a few words starting vv-), and thus initial clusters simplify to a single consonant in Pali. Thus for Sanskrit kṣ (กฺษ) we generally have Pali kkh (กฺข), but word initally we can only have Pali kh (ข).

We also have the word-initial correspondence of Sanskrit sk- and Pali kh-, but the law of palatals often results in one or both having ch-, and I'm having trouble finding examples of intervocalic -sk- - I presume the law of palatals has turned most possible examples into -cch-, as in the example above. It's possible that this is exceptional, and that we have instead -sk- corresponding to -kk- - I found one example of that. Note that the Sanskrit retroflex combination -ṣṭ- () gives the Pali geminate -ṭṭh-, whence the Thai doublets ราษฎร์ and รัฐ (Pali รฎฺฺฐ raṭṭha).

[Rikker]

That makes a lot of sense, Richard, thanks. As soon as you explain it, it seems obvious. The fricative that corresponds to ษ becomes aspiration, thus ก > ข. Excellent.

[DavidHouston]

Do you know anything about the relationship between ข and กษ?

To simplify matters, I'll speak as though Pali descends from Sanskrit, though in fact it is known that it doesn't.

Two questions:

1. What is the relationship between Sanskrit and Pali? Do they have a common ancestor?

2. Do word migrations from Saskrit to Thai generally carry the same meaning in Thai or do new meanings emerge? Is there a measurement of continuity or divergence of meaning, as well as sound?

Thanks to both of you for the excellent discussions.

[Richard W]

Two questions:

1. What is the relationship between Sanskrit and Pali? Do they have a common ancestor?

They are quite close in many ways - you have to look quite hard to realise that Pali is not descended from Sanskrit. It's a bit like Modern English and standard (i.e. West Saxon) Old English - most of the time the fit is quite good.

The common ancestor is not recorded.

2. Do word migrations from Saskrit to Thai generally carry the same meaning in Thai or do new meanings emerge? Is there a measurement of continuity or divergence of meaning, as well as sound?

There is a fair amount of change in meaning. For example, the primary meaning of Sanskrit vajra is Indra's weapon; while 'diamond' is a derived meaning in Sanskrit, 'jewel' is not. Similarly, Sanskrit vaidya basically means 'learned' or 'to do with the vedas', whereas แพทย์ means a medic - it seems not to have the wider connotations of หมอ.