Spelling Rules

[kokesaat]

Would it be correct to consider this as a spelling rule:

In words that begin with a mid or high consonant and have a stop final consonant (ก ด บ etc), the initial consonant will never be preceeded by ห. For example: ตก and บอก carry a low tone as a result of the stop final consonant following a mid/high initial consonant. The initial consonant in words such as these would never be preceeded by ห

Recently, while attempting to spell the word for bark, I wrote it incorrectly as เหปลือก (it should be เปลือก). After my teacher corrected me, I thought to myself, 'of course it's without the ห, because the combination of ป at the beginning and ก at the end give the word a low tone, so it's not necessary to have the ห' (that's my western-rules-oriented brain thinking). When I asked if there was a rule that applied, my teacher said 'no rule', yet I'm unable to find any words in the dictionary that would violate this rule.

Another 'unwritten' rule that helps me with spelling:

words like บอก เก็บ สิบ ลูก ทาบ don't have tone marks because they have a built in tone as a result of the stop final consonant.

I know if I tried to apply these rules in the early stages of learning to read, I would never have understood them. But now, they are my version of 'I before E except after C' rules that work for me.

[kriswillems]

You're right about the rule in your head. Your teacher probably didn't understand what you were explaining or she never thought about it.

Edited August 1, 2008 by kriswillems

[riga]

I don't really understand what is the meaning of the first rule:

obviously an high class consonant will never be preceeded by ho hip (because it want "change" its class, being already high).

A mid class consonant has a behaviour similar to low class consonants only in live syllable (open or closed with a sonorant), in all other cases (death syllables or with tone marks mai tho and mai ek) mid class consonants prodece always exactly the same tone as high class consonants and so there's no reason to add ho hip to them.

It seems to me that once you have learned the tone rules your rule is something unnecessary...

However if it helps you there's nothing wrong as far as the conclusion of your rule is correct

[mike_l]

Recently, while attempting to spell the word for bark, I wrote it incorrectly as เหปลือก (it should be เปลือก). After my teacher corrected me, I thought to myself, 'of course it's without the ห, because the combination of ป at the beginning and ก at the end give the word a low tone, so it's not necessary to have the ห' (that's my western-rules-oriented brain thinking). When I asked if there was a rule that applied, my teacher said 'no rule', yet I'm unable to find any words in the dictionary that would violate this rule.

You won't find any because there's only 8 consonants that can have a silent ห before them, and they're all low class consonants ( ง , ญ , น , ม , ย , ร , ล , ว ) . The reason why it's these 8 is that the other low class consonants have high class equivalents with the same sound:

(high) = (low)

ข = ค ,ฆ

ฉ = ช , ฌ

ฐ, ถ = ฑ , ฒ , ท, ธ

ผ = พ , ภ

ฝ = ฟ

ศ, ษ, ส = ช

ห = ฮ

But there aren't any high class consonants with the same sound as ง , ญ , น , ม , ย , ร , ล or ว, hence the need for silent ห sometimes to produce the correct tone. Without it, it'd be impossible to write a syllable which has an initial consonant sound of ง , ญ , น , ม , ย , ร , ล or ว with a low tone for instance.

Edited August 1, 2008 by mike_l

[thithi]

.... geeeeessss r u guys studying for the university admission exam?????

most of the people dnt really know/care about these things or they forgot.

i gave all my thai consonant lessons back to my thai teachers since i graduated from the highschool [last year] like most of thai people do. lol

:D

Edited August 1, 2008 by thithi

[kriswillems]

.... geeeeessss r u guys studying for the university admission exam?????

most of the people dnt really know/care about these things or they forgot.

i gave all my thai consonant lessons back to my thai teachers since i graduated from the highschool [last year] like most of thai people do. lol

:D

Thithi, for Thai people these rules might sound not very useful because they study by gaining experience in stead of following rules. But for foreigners, that start to study the language as an adult these rules are very useful. My wife and her friends all studied at a Thai university, and they have much less knowledge about the tone rules and other grammar than some foreigners I know. But when it comes to speaking and writing they are of course much better than any farang.

[Lithobid]

.... geeeeessss r u guys studying for the university admission exam?????

most of the people dnt really know/care about these things or they forgot.

i gave all my thai consonant lessons back to my thai teachers since i graduated from the highschool [last year] like most of thai people do. lol

Thithi f*** me is all I think about when I see posts like these, lol, but I also hated every second of English in the 14 years that I studied in the US. I think your golden, and right on the mark for those who don't study/analyze the language on a daily basis, though input on these subjects can be useful for those of us studying, if not for gratification in usage, and gratification in knowledge.

[thithi]

yeh just like when we thai people study English Grammartic.

one of my american friends said Thai people study too much in Grammartic as she thought we had better study how to speak...

but I still think studying English grammartic is useful as well.

same same thought....

weird truth....

[kokesaat]

.... geeeeessss r u guys studying for the university admission exam?????

most of the people dnt really know/care about these things or they forgot.

i gave all my thai consonant lessons back to my thai teachers since i graduated from the highschool [last year] like most of thai people do. lol

Thithi f*** me is all I think about when I see posts like these, lol, but I also hated every second of English in the 14 years that I studied in the US. I think your golden, and right on the mark for those who don't study/analyze the language on a daily basis, though input on these subjects can be useful for those of us studying, if not for gratification in usage, and gratification in knowledge.

After misspelling the word 'separate' as seperate.....a friend loooong ago told me how he remembered: you sep - a - rat. It's really stupid. But I'll never misspell that word again. At this stage of my life trying to learn Thai, I'll take any trick in the books. Thanks, as always, for everyone's input.

[DavidHouston]

Seems to me that there are two separate discussions here for two different situations.

The first is where a person grew up with his or her native language, speaks it and reads it fluently, and then has someone impose a set of "rules" on top of what he or she already knows. This can be painful and very uninteresting.

The second situation is where someone is learning a new language and is enthusiastic about learning to understand, speak, read, and write correctly. This person is a glutton for anything that can help him or her, including books on grammar.

This is why we foreigners are mightily uninterested in our own grammars but highly interested in Thai grammar.

[thithi]

Seems to me that there are two separate discussions here for two different situations.

The first is where a person grew up with his or her native language, speaks it and reads it fluently, and then has someone impose a ste of "rules" on top of what he or she already knows. This can be painful and very uninteresting.

The second situation is where someone is learning a new language and is enthusiastic about learning to understand, speak, read, and write correctly. This person is a glutton for anything that can help him or her, including books on grammar.

This is why we foreigners are mightily uninterested in our own grammars but highly interested in Thai grammar.

I couldn't agree more

[dougieboy]

I think this language is so difficult to learn. I am 44 and I feel useless. :-(

[Richard W]

Another 'unwritten' rule that helps me with spelling:

words like บอก เก็บ สิบ ลูก ทาบ don't have tone marks because they have a built in tone as a result of the stop final consonant.

More precisely, because live syllables originally had a choice of three tones and dead syllables had no choice. The dead syllables needing tone marks are generally late additions to Thai, such as loanwords (โต๊ะ [H]to 'table', เค้ก [H]kheek 'cake'), onomatopoeia (เจี๊ยบ [H]jiap 'cheep') or sentence final particles (จ่ะ, ล่ะ).

[Johpa]

The reason why it's these 8 is that the other low class consonants have high class equivalents with the same sound:

(high) = (low)

ข = ค ,ฆ

ฉ = ช , ฌ

ฐ, ถ = ฑ , ฒ , ท, ธ

ผ = พ , ภ

ฝ = ฟ

ศ, ษ, ส = ช

ห = ฮ

Without going into details, as I have forgotten most of them, all these additions and variations to the Thai writing system represent historical phonetic differences, phonetic sounds that once existed, either in an older form of a Tai language, or borrowed Khmer words, or in Pali, especially from Pali where the historical educated religious elites spoke the written languages of South Asia that included phonemes not present in the Tai languages such as the /sh/ sound as in the god 'Shiva'. The tones are determined by the original phonetic environment and not by the letters. The letters came later as an after thought. Then of course the language undergoes change over time, sometimes changing a borrowed phoneme to a Tai phoneme yet maintaining the original tone on the vowel and maintaining the letter that represented the original phoneme. Again I have forgotten most of the details so, yes, I too am a bit confused at this point while drinking my first cup of coffee in the early AM. The point is that the words spelled with a silent /ห/ in front originally had a slightly different historical initial consonant articulation at some point in time, perhaps maybe dealing with aspiration.

Look at English spelling, the ultimate bastard system. for what happens to spelling when you combine borrowings with natural language change.