Three Different Thai Language Questions Of Interest

[Tod Daniels]

Here are three different thai language questions lumped into a single post ;

The first question is;

How do you know when a การันต์ cancels out more than one character at the end of a word? I don't have ANY problem with deciphering engrish loan words spelled in thai but just with thai words.

Are they just irregular words which must be memorized as a person comes across them or are there some guidelines to identify them when you see them? The example I'll use is the province สุรินทร์ (Surin). Had I not known it was a province (thereby already narrowing the list to 76 possible choices), I could easily mispronounce it. I might even go so far as to imagine that the น was both an ending consonant and a beginning consonant for the next syllable. It could come out as Su-rin-not by thinking the garan only canceled out the ร. Any insight into this would be appreciated.

The second question is;

(Which I already used it as an example when I mispronounced Surin), how do you know when a consonant is a stand alone or both the ending sound and the beginning sound in the next syllable? Let's use a word like สถานการณ์ (situation). If I didn't know the pronunciation already I'd probably get it wrong. The same is true with พจนานุกรม (dictionary). How would a person discern that จ is both the ending consonant and also acts a stand alone one for the next syllable?

These may be mundane questions and I could be trying to parse this language to death, but I'm practicing on improving my reading skills, and when I come across a word I don't know I'll try to sound it out as best I can. Obviously if I don't know the word, I still don't know its meaning but at least I know what it might sound like. I'm nearing 455 on guessing how they sound syllable wise (and far less than that tone wise but that's a horse of a different color) so I feel quite disheartened in my efforts.

The last question (in this oh-so lengthy post ) is;

When you read thai aloud, how do you know where to pause in a sentence? I've been practicing reading out loud with a thai friend using one of the Andrew Biggs books called วิธีพูดภาษาอังกฤษเหมือนฝรั่ง. It's pretty much written in ภาษาพูด so other than a few words a page I know the vocabulary. What I don't know is when to pause when reading a thai sentence aloud. Unless I take a big breath before reading some of the longer sentences I run outta steam at the end. Without commas in thai, what are the trigger words where you can pause when reading aloud? So far I think I have figured out you can pause at ก็ at แล้วก็ and และ as well, but are there any others? My thai friend says sometimes I pause in the middle of an idea, and that when you read thai out loud you can pause at each action or cause and effect.

Thanx to the thai language pundits on this forum for even reading this far..

If you haven't fallen asleep already, please respond.

[bannork]

Good questions Tod and I'm only able to offer my opinion on number 3. I enjoy reading Thai newspapers, partly for the news and opinions you don't find in The BP or The Nation but also because of the logic and structures of the passages.

If it's a crime story it always starts off with a summary of the scene and characters and then goes into the background chronologically. I enjoy reading some of these stories to my wife and it's easy to see where the pauses should come, ie

'Police were called to a one story house today where the body of a middle-aged lady was found. Neighbours said the victim was a Mrs Suwani who lived with her second husband known as Lek......etc.

If the passage is an analysis of current events it may start with a a quote in bold type, followed by who said it, where, and under what circumstances. The passage is divided into paragraphs making reading easier.

It's difficult to know where to pause if the reader cannot digest the meaning whilst reading and if the writer is using an idiosyncratic style.

I strongly recommend you try The Daily News or Thai Rath for reading practice.

[LazyYogi]

As for 1 and 2, I don't know if there really is any kind of system. But after you see enough words you can maybe get it right about 65% of the time on the first try.

And for part 3, I think นี้ นั้น ว่า คือ and หรือ are all words that will often be followed by a slight pause depending on their exact placement and function in the particular sentence.

[Richard W]

There is one trick that you could apply to pronouncing สุรินทร์ (Surin). When the only final consonant to be omitted is ร (not following a pronounced vowel), and the preceding consonant is a dental stop, one does not write the karan. (There are a few other cases, such as จักร, but I am not sure of the precise rules.) Therefore, if the pronunciation were su-ri-not or su-rin-not, it would have been spelt สุรินทร, not สุรินทร์. In practice the only karanned sequences this rule seems to help with are นทร์ and นตร์.

One trick I have used is that ษ in a word is usually due to an immediately preceding R (including ฤ), I, U or K (including the vowels เ and โ), known as RUKI to some. Thus one can puzzle ลักษณ์ by noting that:

1) It should be lak or lakVt or lakkVt

2) dismissing the last two because the should be no vowel between ก and ษ. Unfortunately, that won't help one with ลักษมณ์ Lakshmana, in which ก is the last sounded consonant.

The trick to pronouncing words like สถานการณ์ (situation) and พจนานุกรม (dictionary) is to recognise them as compounds. You then apply three principles -

1) The vowels and tones of the constituent words are preserved - there are exceptions to this rules, but it seems that Thais don't know the rules either.

2) When sticking two words together, you insert -a-.

3) If you don't pronounce a word syllable initially, how will people know that you know whether it's aspirated?

Now สถานการณ์ is composed of สถาน [L]sa[R]thaan and the common suffix การณ์ [M]kaan 'action'. Now, detaching the 'n' สถาน does not change the tone, so we can stick them together as [L]sa[R]thaa[H]na[M]kaan.

พจนานุกรม is more complicated. It is composed of พจน์ [H]phot 'word' and อนุกรม [L]a[H]nu[M]krom 'order'. Now, sticking the bits together almost unthinkingly would give us [H]phot[H]na[L]a[H]nu[M]krom. However, no-one hearing this would know we knew it had the letter จ in it. This extends the word to [H]phot[L]ja[H]na[L]a[H]nu[M]krom. Finally, Indic words don't permit a sequence of vowels, so [H]na[L]a is simplified. From the spelling, we know that the Sanskrit rule is applied, giving naa. In general, Thai tones are assigned on the basis of spelling, so we have [M]naa. Putting it all together, we get [H]phot[L]ja[M]naa[H]nu[M]krom.

Some words exist in both the more typical Thai form and with the final /a/ preserved. In these cases, if the consonants are the same, the pronunciation of the latter is usually the pronunciation used in compounds.

[mangkorn]

But there are often two acceptable pronunciations of compound words from Indic roots, as even the RID notes, e.g.: ประวัติศาสตร์ /ปฺระ-หฺวัด-ติ-สาด; ปฺระ-หฺวัด-สาด/

In my continuing informal poll of scores of Thai people re: the above example word, it comes out to roughly 50-50.

[RickBradford]

Could something as simple as speech flow play a part?

ปฺระ-หฺวัด-ติ-สาด flows nicely; ปฺระ-หฺวัด-สาด sounds a bit awkward without the little interposed syllable. Same with สถานการณ์, it sounds better with the little '-na-' in there.

But that doesn't apply to ปกติ (bpaL gaL dtiL / bpohkL gaL dtiL). I hear the second pronunciation on television news, the first in conversation.