Schweppes Or Schweb ?

[RDN]

So I was in this bar the other night.... yeah, OK .... and I asked for Schweppes Soda Ma-naao (มะนาว - Lime soda), and the girl said "Schweb?", so I said "No, Schweppessss", and she said "Schweb?". So I said...

Several minutes later.... I looked at the can and tried to interpret the way Schweppes is splelt in Thai. It appears to be ชเวปส์ which is probably pronounced "Chwebs", except that there appears to be a "gaa-ran" symbol over the final "S" to make it silent:

I wonder why they did that?

On a less pedantic note, I bought a USB floppy disk drive for my new computer last week:

Where did I put that viagra?

[samran]

I think it is common practice that when transliterating into thai, the final consonant will have the little ‘garran’ to make it silent. Helps people know that it is an English/foreign word, so I have been told.

Having said that, there are always regional variations on certain words/brandnames. The Nissan car in North America is pronounced Nee-saan. Australians say Ni-sun. So, when LOS, I think it is Schewb all the way.

[johnh101]

I always thought that Thais just had difficult pronouncing the English but my wife assured me they are just reading the Thai script, some other ones she has come out with are:

Low Toot = Lotus

Car Full = Carrefore

Centran = Central

[khunlungphudhu]

My last name ends with an 'S', so in Thai script it has a garon over it. ( ส์ )

I am told that the garon shows it to be a foreign word and the usual rule for Thai does not apply. i.e. it does not change from 'S' to 'T' phoneticaly(sp?)

Whether it is pronounced or not depends largely on who taught the speaker to speak English, if ever anyone did!

[withnail]

I always thought that Thais just had difficult pronouncing the English but my wife assured me they are just reading the Thai script, some other ones she has come out with are:

Low Toot = Lotus

Car Full = Carrefore

Centran = Central

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I think it's a bit of both because even if there was no Thai script they would still transliterate the final letter to whatever the closest Thai equivalent might be and then apply the normal rules.

A student of mine that I'm teaching English to told me that Thai people consider pronouncing things different from their way of thinking as being against their culture. I find that if a word exists in both Thai and English they will always slip back into their way of pronouncing it even if they don't seem to have any problem with the English one.

Many times I have found a classroom of students laughing at a pupil who is saying a word differently to the rest of the class i.e. correctly.

[Richard W]

My last name ends with an 'S', so in Thai script it has a garon over it. ( ส์ )

I am told that the garon shows it to be a foreign word and the usual rule for Thai does not apply. i.e. it does not change from 'S' to 'T' phoneticaly(sp?)

Whether it is pronounced or not depends largely on who taught the speaker to speak English, if ever anyone did!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

ก๊าซ does not need a final karan for the final consonant to frequently be pronounced as /s/.

The karan in, for example, โจนส์ shows, amongst other things, that the word is not pronouced [L]ja[L]noot (just plausible) or [M]coo[H]not. The basic meaning is that the letter below is silent, at least if you speak in accordance with the rules of Thai phonology. It does distress me when I see Thai English textbooks giving โจนส์ or something similar as the pronunciation of 'Jones'.

Richard.

[meadish_sweetball]

There are pronunciation rules for every language, and deviating from those in an effort to show the original, foreign pronunciation is often ridiculed by other native speakers.

Examples:

IKEA according to the original, Swedish spelling/sound system, should be pronounced "ee-kay-uh", but the vast majority of English speakers will pronounce it "eye-key-uh"...

The English pronounciations of "sachet", "Chardonnay", "champagne", "übermensch", "schadenfreude" etc. are all incorrect according to the rules of French and German... If you pronounce these words as would a Frenchman or German most "ordinary" people think it sounds affected.

All languages have their own unique sound systems - the Thai sound system just happens to deviate more strongly from most European languages than these languages do amongst themselves.

That being said, the words I have the most trouble with pronouncing (according to Thai rules) and discerning myself when listening to Thai speech, are the English loan words, because so much of the initial phonemic information is lost in the transfer.

Love your pic, RDN. A real classic.

[RDN]

ก๊าซ does not need a final karan for the final consonant to frequently be pronounced as /s/...

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Interesting that http://www.thai2english.com/dictionary/7214.html indicates that it should be pronounced as "gaat", whereas http://www.thai-language.com/default.aspx says it should be pronounced "gaas"

[RDN]

...The English pronounciations of "sachet", "Chardonnay", "champagne", "übermensch", "schadenfreude" etc. are all incorrect according to the rules of French and German.....

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I remember being very puzzled a few years back when there was trouble in China. I wanted to know how far Beijing was from Peking.

....Love your pic, RDN. A real classic.

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I have another coming soon...

[meadish_sweetball]

ก๊าซ does not need a final karan for the final consonant to frequently be pronounced as /s/...

Interesting that http://www.thai2english.com/dictionary/7214.html indicates that it should be pronounced as "gaat", whereas http://www.thai-language.com/default.aspx says it should be pronounced "gaas"

Both are ok - but in my experience, most people do not pronounce the final 's'.