Karaoke System: Thai 4 English

[Tod Daniels]

I realize this is the “Thai” Language forum , BUT . .. …

Is there a standardized way that engrish is spelled out using Thai characters?

I’ve got three different books which are designed to teach English to Thais and they ALL use dissimilar methods. Some use the Thai character with something called a “pin-thu” which is a subscript period; some don’t, and another version uses tone marks for engrish words, but one more doesn’t.

Is there any ‘government approved” method of representing English sounds or words in Thai?

If there is, I’ve yet to find it! !!

I now have the need to acquire that specific ‘skill-set’. I know being retarded , errrr I mean ‘retired’ here, who would want that, but I now have a ‘real’ need for it.

If anyone can point me in the correct direction, I’d appreciate it a lot! As in really A LOT!!

[DavidHouston]

See http://www.thai-language.com/ref/transcribing-english .

[bmore99]

See http://www.thai-language.com/ref/transcribing-english .

Unfortunately the Royal Institute transcription tables are not very good.

I transcribe English into Thai a lot, but made my own version (because e.g. to shop and to chop should not be transcribed identical, I decided to use the ช for the sh and the ฉ for the ch). Likewise every dictionary is making its own system.

And if this is not enough, which English are you talking about?

Have a look at this IPA table http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA_chart_for_English

Without the "pin-thu", there is little chance the Thai will make enough sound at the end of the words. I have no clue what it means when I hear "de nai how dao de loh" for "the nice house down the road". Therefore, very often, I change a gaaran into a pin-thu.

It think it is nice to be officially right, but it is nicer to be practical.

[Rikker]

There's also an unofficial variation on the official system, often used for the name of western celebrities and such, that includes using ธ for English 'th' sound (e.g. Ethan Hawke อีธาน ฮอว์ก), and ฌ for the 'sh' sound (e.g. Sean Connery ฌอน คอนเนอรี), among other variations. Even though most Thais would pronounce them the same as in the official system, this kind of thing sort of "clues in" people with more familiarity with English what the proper pronunciation is, and often it helps disambiguate words too.

That's a good breakdown of the official system on thai-language.com, but I'd like to point something out about it, and hope it's not off topic. I know that thai-language.com, for the most part, generates its romanized pronunciations automatically based on spelling rules. But unfortunately foreign loanwords are very often not pronounced according to normal reading rules, and thus the colloquial pronunciation can't be derived programmatically (at least not with the same rules).

The result of this is that many of thai-language.com's phonetic renderings of Thai-ized English words are wildly off.

For example, "pattern" แพตเทิร์น, thai-language.com has analyzed this as [แพด-เทิน] /phaaetF theernM/, when in actual use the pronounciation is [แพ็ต-เทิ่น] /phaetH thernF/ -- with different tones short vowels on both syllables.

Or "cosmic" คอสมิก in the phrase "cosmic ray", which is analyzed as /khaawtF mikH/, while actual pronunciation would almost certainly be [ค็อส-หมิก] /khawsH mikL/ or for some [ค็อต-หมิก] /khawtH mikL/ (many speakers these days, especially younger one, have no trouble pronouncing the "s" sound in loanwords).

And so forth.

I suppose I should be contacting Glenn about this, but I thought I'd post this here in case others find it useful, or helps them avoid "mispronouncing" English words in Thai .