Spelling

[zenbangkok]

hello all, a friend of mine (not living in Thailand) wants to know how to write his name in Thai.

His name is David. I did get someone to wirte for me, it would seem Thai people would tend to write this as Day-id (i.e with out the hard 'v' sound).

Also he would like the same for his girlfriend, Stefanie.. I know some of you are very good at Thai, I am just starting out, so all help would be appreciated.

[PvtDick]

That's because there IS no hard 'v' sound in Thai. Closest you can get is the soft "w" sound.

I can't in good conscience help your friends put ridiculous tattoos on themselves, though. Have they thought this through?

[zenbangkok]

That's because there IS no hard 'v' sound in Thai.  Closest you can get is the soft "w" sound.

I can't in good conscience help your friends put ridiculous tattoos on themselves, though.  Have they thought this through?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yeah I thought that is the closest sound you can get.

I tend to agree on the tattoo front. I do not fully understand myself. they do not live in Thailand, do not speak Thai etc.. I think it is only my friend who wants the tattoo, he has other tattoos and is 36 and not stupid, so I presume he wants a subtle tattoo somewhere. I think he has thought it through as he was first talking about it nearly two years ago.

[Jack Jones]

Nothing like having a badly spelt name tatooed on your body for life. As mentioned before Dawid is the closest you'll get

[Neeranam]

ดิคแหด

Maybe check it out first!

Edited December 23, 2004 by Neeranam

[snowleopard]

ดิคแหด

Maybe check it out first!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

ดิคแหด

Neeranam!

It's Yuletide.How can you suggest such a thing?

Think about your karma,Dude!

Cheers,

Snowleopard

[Neeranam]

Neeranam! 

It's Yuletide.How can you suggest such a thing? 

Think about your karma,Dude! 

Cheers,

Snowleopard

You are right, Snowy. Is there still time to stop my negative karma?

แดวิด

Doesn't matter if it is a subtle tattoo and not in Thailand.

It would matter however if it was on his forehead and living in Thailand

Every time I see someone with Thai writing on their body I go up to them and read it. Some don't like it, bloody stupid getting it done in that case.

David Beckham has a rather nice one done in Hindi, which I can read.

I wish Thai were as easy as Hindi.

Merry Chrismas to All

Big Party at my house tomorrow, in Khon Kaen. Pm me if you want to come.

[Richard W]

You are right, Snowy. Is there still time to stop my negative karma?

แดวิด

Surely it's เดวิด

Doesn't matter if it is a subtle tattoo and not in Thailand.

It would matter however if it was on his forehead and living in Thailand

Every time I see someone with Thai writing on their body I go up to them and read it. Some don't like it, bloody stupid getting it done in that case.

I agree. Writing is an invitation to read.

David Beckham has a rather nice one done in Hindi, which I can read.

Weren't there some suggestions that 'Victoria' had been misspelt?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Edited December 24, 2004 by Richard W

[gburns57au]

Agree with the second spelling....

[Neeranam]

Surely it's เดวิด

Yeah I think it could be, depends of course where you come from.

I was on a phonetics course once in Spain and we all wrote different phonetic symbols for a few words. One guy from South Cornwall, one Welsh , one from Newcastle and I am from West Scotland. The guy from South England was always saying he was right. For example he never pronounced the r in farm, which I think sounds stupid but it is how it is in the Oxford dictionary.

Yes, I think David probably is as you say, my mistake.

[Neeranam]

Weren't there some suggestions that 'Victoria' had been misspelt?

I don't know, but I thought the spelling read a bit funny, but I can only just read it.

[bannork]

Weren't there some suggestions that 'Victoria' had been misspelt?

I don't know, but I thought the spelling read a bit funny, but I can only just read it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yes, an Indian Man U fan,(a dwindling breed), pointed out the error, but I don't recall which letter. Perhaps the 'v' ? Is 'v' absent in Hindi like Thai?

But 'Becks' was never too hot in his native tongue. Perhaps he's getting on better with Spanish.

bannork.

[Neeranam]

Yes, an Indian Man U fan,(a dwindling breed), pointed out the error, but I don't recall which letter. Perhaps the 'v' ? Is 'v' absent in Hindi like Thai?

But 'Becks' was never too hot in his native tongue. Perhaps he's getting on better with Spanish.

bannork.

Actually there is a 'v' in Hindi. If my memory serves me right, I don't think there is a 'w', but could be wrong. I can't think of any words with a 'w' sound.

I learnt this alphabet 13 years ago just before coming to Thailand - yes I was in India.

The 'v' kind of is between an English "v" and 'w'.

I would love to see the word in question again.

[Neeranam]

When I was starting to learn the Thai alphabet, I noticed that certain consonants were similar to Thai - M,Y,J were 3.

I remember reading somewhere that the Thai alphabet came from Sanskrit, as did the Hindi. King Ramhamhaeng used or modified some to make the modern Thai alphabet.

Would love to know the history of the Thai language if anyone knows?

[snowleopard]

When I was starting to learn the Thai alphabet, I noticed that certain consonants were similar to Thai - M,Y,J were 3.

I remember reading somewhere that the Thai alphabet came from Sanskrit, as did the Hindi. King Ramhamhaeng used or modified some to make the modern Thai alphabet.

Would love to know the history of the Thai language if anyone knows?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm sure our history scholar Richard W is gonna give you more than you ever bargained for when he drops by later!

I will read that refresher course with some interest too!

Snowleopard

[Richard W]

When I was starting to learn the Thai alphabet, I noticed that certain consonants were similar to Thai - M,Y,J were 3.

I remember reading somewhere that the Thai alphabet came from Sanskrit, as did the Hindi. King Ramhamhaeng used or modified some to make the modern Thai alphabet.

Would love to know the history of the Thai language if anyone knows?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm sure our history scholar Richard W is gonna give you more than you ever bargained for when he drops by later!

I will read that refresher course with some interest too!

Snowleopard

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The history of the Indic alphabet in SE Asia may be more complicated than it seems. I have seen a sober reference to King Ramkamhaeng as mythical! Discussion on this issue may be banned here, as it is a very sensitive topic possibly exposing one to charges of lèse majesté.

The ancestral Indic alphabet is the Brahmi script. The scripts of SE Asia are related to the south Indian developments of this script, as can most easily be seen by looking at the placement of the /e/ and /i/ vowels. (There is a treasury of information on scripts at the Unicode Consortium website.)

The scripts used in Thailand seem to divide into a Khmer and a Mon branch. The Thai (and Lao) script belongs to the Khmer branch, and the Lanna script belongs to the Mon script, which is used for Burmese. However, there seems to have been much borrowing of ideas between the scripts. The first two tone marks and extra consonants are mostly shared by the Thai and Lanna scripts. Lao and Lanna scripts have a few features they do not share with the Thai script. As all these scripts can (if you ignore recent governmental meddling) be used for writing Pali and Sanskrit, it is quite natural to think of them as different styles of writing the same underlying letters. (Michael Everson, a major contributor to Unicode, would seen to disagree with me.)

It is important to note that the scripts of the Mon, Khmer, present-day Thailand and points North and East were adopted before the great consonant shift, in which the old contrasts between voiced and unvoiced consonants were lost. These contrasts now manifest themselves as splits in the old tones in Tai languages, as differences in the vowels in Standard Khmer, and, I think, as the original distinction between 'breathy' and normal vowels in Mon.

Shan adopted an Indic alphabet after the great consonant shift.

In adopting the Indic alphabet for Thai, the following issues should have been and have been addressed:

Q1) The Tai languages have tone - anciently a three-way contrast on live syllables, but no contrast on dead syllables. (This ancient distinction is a feature of the entire Tai-Kadai group.)

A1) The commonest tone received no mark, the second comonest tone was marked by a single vertical stroke, and the least frequent tone was marked by a two strokes - originally as a cross, but now often looking like a European '2'. Both the Thai and Lanna scripts use this solution.

Q2) The Tai languages had fricatives not known in the Indic languages:

• /x/ like 'ch' in Scottish loch or <kh> in Russian. However, many dialects lost the contrast between this and Tai /kh/ at an early stage.
  
• Its voiced equivalent.
  
• /z/
  
• /f/
  
• /v/
  

A2) The letters ฃ ฅ ซ ฝ ฟ were created. Interestingly they mostly correspond to letters that may be created in Devanagari (the alphabet used for Hindi) by adding a nukta.

Q3) The Tai and Mon-Khmer languages had preglottalised or implosive consonants that are now frequently perceived as /b/ and /d/. The original Khmer solution was to use the same letter for them and /p/ and /t/ - they tended not to be contrasted in unstressed syllables. Simplicity dictates that I write these multiply used letters as บ and ด.

A3a) The Thai solution was to split บ into บ and ป, and ด into ด and ต. The modified forms were only made where it affected the pronunciation, so we see such developments as Sanskrit /paapa/ > Thai บาป. Thai got carried away, and also created ฏ from ฎ.

A3b) The Khmer solution to this problem was to re-use the retroflex consonants for the implosive consonant now perceived as /d/ - it uses ฎ and ฑ to represent this sound, except in unstressed initial syllables, where either could still be found before Lon Nol's coup. For /b/, see the Khmer solution A5b) below.

A3c) The Lanna solution is a mix of the two above. It added ป but re-used ฑ for the new /d/.

Q4) Thai had additional vowels compared to Sanskrit.

A4) Many of these extra vowels are shared with Khmer, and Thai, Lana, Lao and Khmer use very similar solutions. I suspect แอ was borrowed from a South Indian script - it is reminiscent of the way short and long /e/ are distinguished in the scripts for Dravidian languages.

The great consonant shift brought about a new problem:

Q5) After the tone splits, there was no way of writing certain combinations of tone and initial consonant. This was exacerbated by the tone splits in checked consonants occasioned by vowel length. In Khmer, the corresponding issue is different sets of vowels.

A5a) New tone marks were introduced in Thai and Lao.

A5b) In Thai, a new low consonant, ฮ, was created as the partner of the high consonant ห. Very similar changes were introduced in Lao and Lanna, but in these cases the driving force seems to have been the desire to preserve Indic /r/ as the sound [r] while the native /r/ had become /h/, with a different set of tones to the original /h/.

A5c) In New Tai Lue, a form of Lanna which does not have a concept of mid consonants, new low consonants were created as counterparts of the high consonants บ ฑ (or should I say ด) อ. This was a late 20th centure reform.

A5d) In Khmer, there are two sets of consonants, Series 1 and Series 2, corresponding to originally unvoiced and originally voiced consonants. Two special marks were introduced to convert Series 1 to Series 2 and vice versa from unpaired consonants. บ would now represent Series 1 and [p]. To show that [p] is intended, Khmer uses the Series 2 to 1 [sic] conversion mark.

A5e) Thai naturally acquired a contrast between high หล and low ล etc. This contrast is also used in Khmer, but the words using a digraph seem to be loans from Thai.

Another new issue is been the introduction of length contrasts in all the Thai vowels. The solutions are complex and partial.

There are two striking innovations in Thai. One is the complete elimination of special forms for initial vowels. The second is the elimination of vertically stacked conjuncts. The latter may have been a long struggle - to this day, Lao writes หล as a vertically stacked conjunct, but I suppose one could reasonably regard that as a new letter. However, without some marker like phinthu or yamakkan, this elimination may be regarded as a retrograde step. Tamil has (with one exception, which you may regard as tantamount to a letter 'x') also eliminate conjuncts, but they do use the equivalent of phinthu, which they call pulli.

I would love to know the dates of these introductions. Solutions A1, A2 and A3a seem to have been in the Sukhothai script, but I've a feeling that อึ and อื were later additions.

[booma]

Just be very, very careful.

I know many, many horror stories!

[Richard W]

Yes, an Indian Man U fan,(a dwindling breed), pointed out the error, but I don't recall which letter. Perhaps the 'v' ? Is 'v' absent in Hindi like Thai?

But 'Becks' was never too hot in his native tongue. Perhaps he's getting on better with Spanish.

bannork.

Actually there is a 'v' in Hindi. If my memory serves me right, I don't think there is a 'w', but could be wrong. I can't think of any words with a 'w' sound.

I learnt this alphabet 13 years ago just before coming to Thailand - yes I was in India.

The 'v' kind of is between an English "v" and 'w'.

I would love to see the word in question again.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

There's a photograph at David Beckham's Tattoos, and it agrees with the clearer citation at the BBC report on Beckham's tattoo misspelt. However, I would transliterate it as, using double for long, 'vhiktooriyaa'. I wonder if some of the discussion has confused it with 'vikthooriyaa', which would make sense.

[Neeranam]

There's a photograph at David Beckham's Tattoos, and it agrees with the clearer citation at the BBC report on Beckham's tattoo misspelt. However, I would transliterate it as, using double for long, 'vhiktooriyaa'. I wonder if some of the discussion has confused it with 'vikthooriyaa', which would make sense.

Thanks for that link Richard W. Yes, there is no need for the 'h'. There are some words that have this 'k' joined to an 'h' like 'bakhti' and 'shakti'. These are religious words that maybe the tattoo artist has seen before. maybe he is a 'hare krishna', maybe Beckham is

You will know more than me that this 'h' causes the 'k' to be voiced or aspirate or something. Why is the 'h' joined to the 'v' , I am confused, a plain simple mistake. Surely if giving a superstar a tatoo he would have checked with an India scholar, many Indians around Manchester.

As for the other info you gave - thanks for the time you must have taken to write this. Very interesting !

Have you written a book?

I appreciate this and will spend some of this Boxing day searching the web for more on this.

Mythical - very very interesting.

A Merry Christmas to you, Sir!

[sabaijai]

digression 1:

It seems to be generally accepted by Thai academia nowadays -- without any suggestion of lese majeste -- that an 11thC stone slab found at Wiang Kum Kam, near Chiang Mai (and now on display at the Chiang Mai National Museum) bears the earliest version of recognisably Thai script. This examples predates King Ramkhamhaeng's famous Sukhothai inscription (1293) by over a century. Some scholars thus consider the inscription at Sukhothai to be a reformed version, like the revision that came under King Lithai ( Ramkhamhaeng's grandson) in the mid 14th C.

King Lithai wrote what's considered the first Thai literary work by a Thai author, Three Worlds of King Ruang

[sabaijai]

digression 2:

Disgruntled Asian Tattoo Artist Inks His Revenge

Symbols on the back of a Pitt Student inked by Sakai (inset) were originally meant to say, "princess." They really say, "prostitute."

Reprinted from Sept. 2002 -- Pitt junior Brandon Smith wanted a tattoo that proclaimed his manliness, so he decided to get the Chinese characters for “strength” and “honor” on his chest. After 20 minutes under the needle of local tattoo artist Andy Sakai, he emerged with the symbol for “small penis” embedded in his flesh.

“I had it for months before I knew what it really meant,” Smith said.

“Then I went jogging through the Carnegie Mellon campus and a group of Asian kids started laughing and calling me ‘Shorty.’ That’s when I knew something was up.”

Sakai, an award-winning tattoo artist, was tired of seeing sacred Japanese words, symbols of his heritage, inked on random white people. So he used their blissful ignorance to make an everlasting statement. Any time acustomer came to Sakai’s home studio wanting Japanese tattooed on them, he modified it into a profane word or phrase.

“All these preppy sorority girls and suburban rich boys think they’re so cool ‘cause they have a tattoo with Japanese characters. But it doesn’t mean shit to them!” Sakai said. “The dumbasses don’t even realize that I’ve written ‘slut’ or ‘pervert’ on their skin!”

In the last month, seven people unknowingly received explicit tattoos from the disgruntled artist. Kerri Baker, a Carlow College freshman, paid $50 to have the symbols for “beautiful goddess” etched above her belly button, but when she went into Szechuan Express Asian Noodle Shop sporting a bare midriff, the giggling employees explained to her that the tattoo really said, “Insert General Tso’s Chicken Here!”

“I don’t even like General Tso’s!” Baker sobbed. “I’m a vegetarian!”

Sakai doesn’t feel guilty about using hapless college students as canvases for his graffiti.

“I think I’m helping my fellow man by labeling all the stupid people in the world,” he explained. “It’s not a crime, it’s a public service.

http://www.soufoaklin.com/tattooartist.html

[caveat: not sure if the above article is real or a parody ... amusing nonetheless]

[Richard W]

It seems to be generally accepted by Thai academia nowadays -- without any suggestion of lese majeste -- that an 11thC stone slab found at Wiang Kum Kam, near Chiang Mai (and now on display at the Chiang Mai National Museum) bears the earliest version of recognisably Thai script. This examples predates King Ramkhamhaeng's famous Sukhothai inscription (1293) by over a century. Some scholars thus consider the inscription at Sukhothai to be a reformed version, like the revision that came under King Lithai ( Ramkhamhaeng's grandson) in the mid 14th C.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

What modifications does it show for the Thai language? Is there a (ideally very literal) transliteration or legible copy readily available anywhere?

I am intrigued by the following statement about Sukhothai inscriptions:

Even in this heartland of Thai language and new Thai script, Khmer script was sometimes preferred for writing Thai, as seen in No. 9 (1301-1369-1406), no. 86 (1528) and no. 54 (1548).

As one can see, I should be a reader rather than a writer of books!

[sabaijai]

What modifications does it show for the Thai language? Is there a (ideally very literal) transliteration or legible copy readily available anywhere?

I've seen copies of the inscriptions (both the Wiang Kum Kam and the later RKH one) printed here and there -- can't remember any exact citations as it's been quite a few years since I looked at them. I think you could probably go to any good Thai bookstore, ask a knowledgeable clerk, and find them both in books about Thai history or historical linguistics.

Or you could look at the originals at the Chiang Mai National Museum and Ramkhamhaeng National Museum (Sukhothai).

If I remember correctly, the 4-sided RKM pillar had four different languages - proto-Thai, Mon, Khmer and a fourth that I forget (Lanna?) and to my eyes the Thai and Mon looked more similar than the Thai and the Khmer. That impression, of course, is keyed to the fact that I can't read either Khmer or Mon, so it's pretty subjective.