I got a confused phone call when I sent an SMS to a Thai friend about the fireworks that just went off in Chiang Mai. I sent it in english, because I don't know very much Thai and I don't know the script. Of course, my friend does not know much english, and so couldn't translate "fireworks" and neither could her sister who is slightly better with english. At a loss for how to describe it when the sister called to ask what I meant, I instinctively described it as "boom boom" which I immediately realized was a pretty stupid mistake I quickly corrected myself and said no, that's not what I meant, and I hope she understood that.

Anyway, wanting to try to clear myself, I decided to send an SMS in Thai with the Thai word for fireworks. Google Translate gives me พลุ, which I guess is correct because a search for that comes up with pictures of fireworks. The problem is, I can't figure out how to type that on a cell phone in Thai (numeric keypad only). The พ I can get, but the best I can do for ลุ is ล - same but without the bit at the bottom. It shows up on Google Translate as an extra little symbol there, but on the font here it shows connected - in either case I can't figure out how to get it on the cell phone.

I sent พล to try to cover myself quickly, and I just now (as I'm typing) got a response in broken english and (I think) she understands.

So my questions are as follows - what is the difference between ลุ and ล? If I put พล into Google Translate, it gives me "general", and a search comes up with pictures of what I presume are military generals. However, it seems that she understood. Is the extra mark a tone mark, or something similar, such that while potentially causing confusion พล might be translated by a Thai as "fireworks" given the right context?

Or, did I just translate "fireworks" as "military general" and thoroughly confuse her, and she's just being nice by pretending to understand ?

If they are truly different, then how the heck do I get ลุ into the phone? It doesn't help that it's a low-resolution display and the font is quite different than what I see on Google, but I could find literally nothing like it, and the T9 auto-complete just gave me พล.

Though my pressing mistranslation and "boom boom" problem seems to be resolved, I do want to make sure I was actually understood, as saying "boom boom" to my friend's sister who only knows me as a farang from California (and I think thought I meant boom boom, in the Thai sense, in connection with my friend) is not the impression I want to give off.

Thanks so much for any help!

The little symbol underneath is a vowel (the ล is a consonant). It's not on the keypad but it (and others) are wherever the 'punctuation marks' menu is when set to English (i think on a Nokia you press # for punctuation marks?). Anyway, find where the punctuation marks are, and select it from the list. Normally, I hear ดอกไม้ไฟ for fireworks as well as พลุ (but you still have to find the same menu to type the tone mark above ม). In any case, my guess is she understood what you meant and just read พล as a typo. Conjoined with 'boom boom' (can ALSO mean 'explosion'!) I think it's fairly clear. Stop worrying!

She might imagine the general as having cannons or disarming bombs?

Some further (broken english ) correspondence makes me think that I was actually understood the first time (with "boom boom" )

I wasn't actually that worried, but I *was* pretty embarrassed when I said it

I still can't find it on the phone... it is an older Nokia as you suspected but the punctuation menu (from *, which I did get to previously) only has English punctuation, even when inputting Thai text. Perhaps the overall phone language needs to be set to Thai to get access to Thai "punctuation"?

I will have to play with it some more in case it comes up again... I had a similar problem finding a character previously but I was doing it just for fun that time, and ended up sending a mangled Thai "hello" along with the same in english, so obviously it wasn't a pressing matter

Anyway, thanks so much for the clarification and for easing my mind... and if I figure out how to get to it on the phone I will post how in case anyone else has the same problem (it's a pretty common phone, so who knows).