Hi,

I have noticed that different dictionaries use สมมติ or สมมุติ for the same words which include this word. This is a bit confusing because I always hear thai say "Som Mut".

Thank you for any information how to distinguish and when to use these two words.

mni

From the Royal Institute Dictionary:

สมมต, สมมติ, สมมติ, สมมุติ, สมมุติ [สมมด, สมมด, สมมดติ, สมมุด, สมมุดติ] . . . .

Note that all the above words are the equivalent of each other and, apparently, can be used interchangeably. Also, compare the pronunciations in brackets; you can see that there are two sets of variations, both of which are acceptable. So, both spellings and pronunciations can vary.

Also, the word for "hypothesis" has two acceptable spellings and pronunciations:

สมมติฐาน, สมมุติฐาน [สมมดติ . . . , สมมุดติ . . . ] . . . .

thesedays we use only สมมติ

Many thanks.

Now it is all clear.

mni

My impression is that สมมติ is the dominant written/formal form, while สมมุติ [สม-มุด] reflects the dominant spoken form. In my experience, hearing someone (who isn't reading aloud) say [สม-มด] is quite rare.

Does this match anyone else's experience/intuitions?

My impression is that สมมติ is the dominant written/formal form, while สมมุติ [สม-มุด] reflects the dominant spoken form. In my experience, hearing someone (who isn't reading aloud) say [สม-มด] is quite rare.

Does this match anyone else's experience/intuitions?

I asked a Thai about this a couple of days ago. They said สมมติ was the correct form. But when I asked them to pronounce it, it sounded like สมมุติ [สม-มุด] to my ear.

Yeah, that mirrors my experience. If we go by RID as the arbiter of correctness, they're both correct. So we're dealing with matters of convention rather than correctness.

It's funny--English speakers tend to have very strong ideas of what is "correct" or not, and yet there's officially no true standard, no organization with the power to deem something correct or incorrect. We talk about "the dictionary" like there's some single standard, but of course there isn't, and no English dictionary is inherently more authoritative than another (a dictionary can only hope to gain a reputation for authoritativeness through excellence in scholarship, a la the Oxford English Dictionary. Interestingly, "Webster's" is now a generic term, having lost its trademark a few decades back, so ol' Webster has many dictionaries these days (although Merriam-Webster remains the "official" descendant of Noah Webster's original dictionary).

Thailand, on the other hand, does have such an organization (the Royal Institute), and an officially authoritative dictionary (the Royal Institute Dictionary), and yet people's ideas of what is correct don't really seem to be based on it much. Not that I think they should be. It's just funny how that is.