"oil" Or "oy"?

loong · September 18, 2005

GinTonic

I can't type in Thai so usually I have to cut and paste. Obviously I cannot copy Keith so...

Kor - Kwai

sera EE (Long sera ee, not short sera i)

Tor - Ta-hahn

Hor - hip with Garan

This is pronounced Keet and close enough

meadish_sweetball · September 18, 2005

How many suggestions for "Keith" written in Thai?

loong,

As I have seen and known, I think your name in Thai should be written as คีธ, although this spelling can't represent a correct pronounciation if you ask a Thai to read the word - but as you already know we don't have 'th' sound in Thai.

For me, I had been practising how to pronounce 'th' sound a long time ago and I could say your name correctly (I believe) However, I still have some problem saying a word ended with 'th' then 's'. For example, to say 'monTHS' - too much tongue using for me!

So How do you write your name in Thai by the way?

gintOnic

ธ thor thong, like you suggested, is the standard letter to use for "th" in Thai based on the transcriptions I have seen used in Thai newspapers.

Regarding this whole discussion, a few points:

Please indicate how sure you are of something before just throwing claims into the air.

The forum is a place for everyone, but since we are all at different stages of learning Thai, we need to show a bit of humility towards each other, and perhaps suppress any desire we have to show off... The whole climate of the forum will suffer if we have misinformation floating around, and it is tiresome to have to correct what others have written.

In other words, if you are not 100% sure you are correct about what you are saying, please indicate this so that you don't confuse others.

Thank you.

loong · September 18, 2005

How many suggestions for "Keith" written in Thai?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

loong,

As I have seen and known, I think your name in Thai should be written as คีธ, ....gintOnic

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

ธ thor thong, like you suggested, is the standard letter to use for "th" in Thai based on the transcriptions I have seen used in Thai newspapers.....

.......................edited and snipped for clarity.......

.......................In other words, if you are not 100% sure you are correct about what you are saying, please indicate this so that you don't confuse others.

Thank you.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thank you Meadish and GintOnic, so if I use ธ, there is no need to add Hor -heep with Garang. Is that right?

On occasions I have thought that I'm 100% right and have been corrected - I don't get upset about it, happy to add to my knowledge and unlearn something in correct.

Edited September 18, 2005 by loong

meadish_sweetball · September 18, 2005

Yes Loong, correct. You don't need to have two separate letters.

Either way you spell it, the majority of Thais will pronounce your name "Keed" (with high tone and a silent 't' or 'd' sound at the end).

BambinA · September 18, 2005

just an idea

Google คีธ 855 result

Google คีทห์ 0 result

Bambi

~G~ · September 18, 2005

My ex-girlfriend's name is ออย , but in English she wrote it as "Oil". I was very surprised the first time I saw it. When I asked her how to pronounce her name, she said, "Oy. Like Olive Oy".

Edited September 18, 2005 by ~G~

meadish_sweetball · September 18, 2005

just an idea
Google คีธ 855 result

Google คีทห์ 0 result

Bambi

Good idea.

Mr. Farang · September 18, 2005

Regarding this whole discussion, a few points:
Please indicate how sure you are of something before just throwing claims into the air.

The forum is a place for everyone, but since we are all at different stages of learning Thai, we need to show a bit of humility towards each other, and perhaps suppress any desire we have to show off... The whole climate of the forum will suffer if we have misinformation floating around, and it is tiresome to have to correct what others have written.

In other words, if you are not 100% sure you are correct about what you are saying, please indicate this so that you don't confuse others.

Thank you.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

On the topic of English-Thai transcriptions, there is no 100% right or wrong, In fact, there is not even any 64% right or wrong acording to the literature on the subject.

Yes, people should aways say "I think this" or "this is my opinion" or "this might work for me... " (but I don't think it is going to happen here on TV).

We should encourage people to have opinions and express themselves so they can learn. Just like a virtual classroom or community, everyone must be patient. Also important is that the rules of the community should be enforced.

I am very gracious to RDN for the great moderation. I would other topics on TV has such excellent moderation.

RDN · September 18, 2005

....and/or (for fun):
รอเจอะร์ (a bit more, DEEP SOUTH, USA.... kinda, Howdy-Doody "Rawger Dawger".... laughing out loud.)

Sanook, na krap?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Sanook maak maak!

I just got my g/f to pronounce all of the suggested versions, including these from Richard:

There's a whole slew of forms that represent the 'o' better:
ร็อดเจอร์

รอดเจอร์

รอเจอร์

รดเจอร์

รดเจอร์

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

... but the best one (that is, the one that sounded most like the English way of pronouncing 'Roger' was Richard's รดเจอะ์. When my g/f says this version, it actually sounds like the way I say it. But when I said I will spell my name in Thai this way from now on, she said "No, you are English, you must spell it โรเจอร์ ".

I guess this is the difference between transcription and transliteration mentioned by Richard:

....On a pedantic note, most of what I see is transcriptions, i.e. they represent the sound. I much regret that I have never seen serious use of an accurate transliteration - i.e. a representation of the spelling - of Thai that attempts to handle native words in addition to Indic words....
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Please, Richard, continue to be pedantic! So what I was trying to do, was to get the best transcription of "Roger" into Thai, whereas my g/f was thinking of the transliteration.

...I am very gracious to RDN for the great moderation. I would other topics on TV has such excellent moderation.
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The cheque's in the post.

Mr. Farang · September 18, 2005

(by the way ไมคูล์ or ไมคุล์ does look strange to me)

Hi Nong Gin!

As far as ไมคูล์ or ไมคุล์ , yes, they "look strange" and that is why it is SANOOK, because we have the freedom in transcription to be creative and have a bit of fun. Transliteration is different, a bit more "formal" and "rigid" but with transcription we can "play around and have fun"......

BTW: I have many Chinese-Thai friends, and their Chinese names, spelling in Thai, look strange to me to!

We can keep in mind,, like Roger, it is "his name in Thai" and he can choose to spell it as he pleases him. The same for Michael....... They will not "go to jail" for being creative with their names...... There are no laws against having a bit of fun with language - and no "language police"....

Gin, You are wonderful! Take care, na krap.

gintOnic · September 18, 2005

(by the way ไมคูล์ or ไมคุล์ does look strange to me)

Hi Nong Gin!

As far as ไมคูล์ or ไมคุล์ , yes, they "look strange" and that is why it is SANOOK, because we have the freedom in transcription to be creative and have a bit of fun. Transliteration is different, a bit more "formal" and "rigid" but with transcription we can "play around and have fun"......

BTW: I have many Chinese-Thai friends, and their Chinese names, spelling in Thai, look strange to me to!

We can keep in mind,, like Roger, it is "his name in Thai" and he can choose to spell it as he pleases him. The same for Michael....... They will not "go to jail" for being creative with their names...... There are no laws against having a bit of fun with language - and no "language police"....

Gin, You are wonderful! Take care, na krap.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hi Mr.Farang,

Yes, I got what you mean. I am sure we can play around and have fun - people can write their names the way they want but at least it should be based on some real language knowledge, basis or principle or whatever that is.

Like a name Michael, I am not sure how you come up with the spelling as ไมคูล์ or ไมคุล์ . If I have to read the words and write them in English they would be read as 'Mai - Koo' . If that is how 'Michael' is pronounced then your Thai writing is correct. Well, I don't know - my english is just not good enough

gintOnic

Richard W · September 18, 2005

On a pedantic note, most of what I see is transcriptions, i.e. they represent the sound. I much regret that I have never seen serious use of an accurate transliteration - i.e. a representation of the spelling - of Thai that attempts to handle native words in addition to Indic words. The problem is that people want to cram five letters into four symbols, e.g. บ ป ผ พ ภ to b p ph ph bh, which is ambiguous. (Perhaps the ideas is that aspirated sounds should have an 'h'.) Or does the graphic system actually handle native words? An example of such systems is 'Suvarnbhumi'.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I am guessing that the tranliteration may be too difficult. After a couple of years of discussion, the soc.culture.thai language group agreed upon a scheme to represent alphabets, vowels, and tones that the group then used to communicate in Thai before Thai scripts were available on the Internet. Info below is from the soc.culture.th archive posted on 10/31/1996:

LANGUAGE FAQ

This part describes information on language and linguistics.

------------------------------

Subject: L.1) The de facto transcription scheme for soc.culture.thai

The transcription scheme was put together by Khun Wirote Aroonmanakun

([email protected]) with great input from many SCT folks,

notably a consonant table from Khun Rob Reed ([email protected]) and

a vowel table from Khun Parames Laosinchai ([email protected]).

44 CONSONANTS

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

k kh kh kh kh kh ng

j ch ch s ch y

d t th th th n

d t th th th n

b p ph f ph f ph m

y r l w s s s h l ? h

Final Sounds

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Obstruent Endings: k or g, t or d, p or b

Soronant Endings: ng n m y w

Tone Markers

~~~~~~~~~~~~

- for normal tone / 0

' for low tone / 1

" for falling tone / 2

^ for high tone / 3

+ for rising tone / 4

Basic.Vowels

~~~~~~~~~~~~

a as in ka' (estimate)

aa as in kaa- (crow)

i as in ti' (blame)

ii as in tii- (hit)

U as in ?U' (shit)

UU as in mUU- (hand)

u as in du' (scold)

uu as in duu- (look)

e as in te' (kick)

ee as in thee- (pour)

A as in lA^ (and)

AA as in lAA- (look)

o as in to^ (table)

oo as in to- (big)

O as in kO" (island)

OO as in rOO- (wait)

E as in lE^ (dirty)

EE as in rEE- (Belch)

Compound Vowels

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ua as in yua^ (angry)

uaa as in tuaa- (body)

ia as in pria^ (tight)

iaa as in miaa- (wife)

Ua (no example)

Uaa as in rUaa- (ship)

Excess Vowels (sa'ra'kEEn-)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ay or ai as in nay- or nai- (in)

aw or au as in daw- or dau- (guess)

Perhaps this scheme can also be used here when Thai words are spelled out in English?...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

transliteration is for the birds. if you want to speak and pronounce thai correctly, learn and memorize the alphabet, the tones, and the little rules, and you will be in good shape. otherwise, depending on just transliteration and your years is a recipe for poor pronuncuation.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

loong · September 18, 2005

GintOnic

Many english people will pronounce Michael as

Mai-kool

The ending being the same as in "School"

Totster · September 18, 2005

No, gintonic is not formally correct, as there are no spelling rules in any text books that I have ever seen that support his (strong) opinion.
Bambi can provide an excellent transcription for Micheal. Bambi, can you help Micheal with his Thai transcription?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I totally agree with ginTonic ...

I agree with Bambi :-)

So... um.... gintOnic was correct then ?

On the topic of English-Thai transcriptions, there is no 100% right or wrong, In fact, there is not even any 64% right or wrong acording to the literature on the subject.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

As far as ไมคูล์ or ไมคุล์ , yes, they "look strange" and that is why it is SANOOK, because we have the freedom in transcription to be creative and have a bit of fun. Transliteration is different, a bit more "formal" and "rigid" but with transcription we can "play around and have fun"......

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

By your own admission there is no 100% right or wrong... yet you still said earlier in the topic...

"No, gintonic is not formally correct"

oops there I go again... adding nothing to the topic.. sorry..

You take care of yourself na khrap

totster

gintOnic · September 18, 2005

GintOnic
Many english people will pronounce Michael as

Mai-kool

The ending being the same as in "School"

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

loong,

That's what I was doubting - if the name might be read in another way else (Mai-Kool) as well. Even so, still ไมคูล์ or ไมคุล์ are read as Mai-Koo. If we want it to be read as Mai-Kool then Mr.Farang needs to remove the garun away - then we will get ไมคูล = Mai-Kool (as in school)

gintOnic

Totster · September 18, 2005

GintOnic
Many english people will pronounce Michael as

Mai-kool

The ending being the same as in "School"

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

loong,

That's what I was doubting - if the name might be read in another way else (Mai-Kool) as well. Even so, still ไมคูล์ or ไมคุล์ are read as Mai-Koo. If we want it to be read as Mai-Kool then Mr.Farang needs to remove the garun away - then we will get ไมคูล = Mai-Kool (as in school)

gintOnic

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Would ไมคูล be pronounced as mai-koon by Thais though..?

totster

Nepal4me · September 18, 2005

On a pedantic note, most of what I see is transcriptions, i.e. they represent the sound. I much regret that I have never seen serious use of an accurate transliteration - i.e. a representation of the spelling - of Thai that attempts to handle native words in addition to Indic words. The problem is that people want to cram five letters into four symbols, e.g. บ ป ผ พ ภ to b p ph ph bh, which is ambiguous. (Perhaps the ideas is that aspirated sounds should have an 'h'.) Or does the graphic system actually handle native words? An example of such systems is 'Suvarnbhumi'.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I am guessing that the tranliteration may be too difficult. After a couple of years of discussion, the soc.culture.thai language group agreed upon a scheme to represent alphabets, vowels, and tones that the group then used to communicate in Thai before Thai scripts were available on the Internet. Info below is from the soc.culture.th archive posted on 10/31/1996:

LANGUAGE FAQ

This part describes information on language and linguistics.

------------------------------

Subject: L.1) The de facto transcription scheme for soc.culture.thai

The transcription scheme was put together by Khun Wirote Aroonmanakun

([email protected]) with great input from many SCT folks,

notably a consonant table from Khun Rob Reed ([email protected]) and

a vowel table from Khun Parames Laosinchai ([email protected]).

44 CONSONANTS

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

k kh kh kh kh kh ng

j ch ch s ch y

d t th th th n

d t th th th n

b p ph f ph f ph m

y r l w s s s h l ? h

Final Sounds

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Obstruent Endings: k or g, t or d, p or b

Soronant Endings: ng n m y w

Tone Markers

~~~~~~~~~~~~

- for normal tone / 0

' for low tone / 1

" for falling tone / 2

^ for high tone / 3

+ for rising tone / 4

Basic.Vowels

~~~~~~~~~~~~

a as in ka' (estimate)

aa as in kaa- (crow)

i as in ti' (blame)

ii E as in lE^ (dirty)

EE as in rEE- (Belch)

Compound Vowels

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ua as in yua^ (angry)

uaa as in tuaa- (body)

ia as

Uaa as in rUaa- (ship)

Excess Vowels (sa'ra'kEEn-)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ay or ai as in nay- or nai- (in)

aw or au as in daw- or dau- (guess)

Perhaps this scheme can also be used here when Thai words are spelled out in English?...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

transliteration is for the birds. if you want to speak and pronounce thai correctly, learn and memorize the alphabet, the tones, and the little rules, and you will be in good shape. otherwise, depending on just transliteration and your years is a recipe for poor pronuncuation.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

This transliteration (is that the right word) is full of problems, just as any transliteration Eng to Thai system is. The main problem is there is no standard. In the English to Mandarin system (at least the mainland China) version has a very strict sound association. Any word spelled out in the Roman Pinionization sytem can be accurately pronounced in Mandarin.........with the exception of the tone rules. They have similar tone marks for teaching purposes, but when you read the station name on the subway, you can pronounce it perfectly.........except you can't get the tones right and therefore you can't make them understand. But that's off topic, the only way to get your pronounciation really good is to learn the Thai script, it's still hard to make some of the sounds, the ng, the bp, the dt sounds are still hard for me. In the event you want to learn Thai using the transliteration system, the Benjawan Boonsan Becker version of Beginner, Intermediate and Advance books are good and she has a dictionary that allows you to look up words 3 ways, in English, in Thai and in the transliteration system. Beyond her significant variety of publications, her phontetic system for by far the clearest I've seen especially for Americans. Again, altho her system is very clear, learning the Thai alphebet and practicing reading is by far the best thing to do. If you're going to be here long term, bite the bullet, get into the Thai alphabet and after some months, you'll read fairly quickly. Your pronounciation will improve and it even helps to be able to memorize words because sometimes the spelling can serve as a trigger to remember the words, especially if you're a good speller.

gintOnic · September 18, 2005

Would ไมคูล be pronounced as mai-koon by Thais though..?
totster

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Actually YES!! ...I forgot thinking about that

gintOnic

Mr. Farang · September 18, 2005

Would ไมคูล be pronounced as mai-koon by Thais though..?

totster

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Actually YES!! ...I forgot thinking about that

gintOnic

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I was taught (by Thai Monks) that when words are "imported" or "loan words" from other countries, that gaaran can also be used to only create a "beginning sound" out of a consonant with a "final sound" , in this case:

ไมคูล์ == "Mai Kul"

where we desire "L" as a final sound v. the normal "N" final sound.

because it is an exception to the "silence rule" (as a loan word) one of the many exceptions and special cases. This is the same process, as I was told, as Monks use to translate Pali - Sanskrit to Thai.

Please keep in mind that I was taught how to use the Thai alphabet in a Thai temple, not in elementary school or the university. Maybe there are special rules and exceptions? I'm not sure...... (anymore).... :-)

Does this work for anyone?

ไมคูลล์ == "Mai Kul"

Do we get a "final L sound" this way?

Edited September 18, 2005 by Mr. Farang

Richard W · September 18, 2005

I am guessing that the tranliteration may be too difficult. After a couple of years of discussion, the soc.culture.thai language group agreed upon a scheme to represent alphabets, vowels, and tones that the group then used to communicate in Thai before Thai scripts were available on the Internet. Info below is from the soc.culture.th archive posted on 10/31/1996:

<snip>

Tone Markers

~~~~~~~~~~~~

- for normal tone / 0

' for low tone / 1

" for falling tone / 2

^ for high tone / 3

+ for rising tone / 4

Basic.Vowels

~~~~~~~~~~~~

a as in ka' (estimate)

aa as in kaa- (crow)

i as in ti' (blame)

ii as in tii- (hit)

U as in ?U' (shit)

UU as in mUU- (hand)

u as in du' (scold)

uu as in duu- (look)

e as in te' (kick)

ee as in thee- (pour)

A as in lA^ (and)

AA as in lAA- (look)

o as in to^ (table)

oo as in to- (big)

O as in kO" (island)

OO as in rOO- (wait)

E as in lE^ (dirty)

EE as in rEE- (Belch)

Perhaps this scheme can also be used here when Thai words are spelled out in English?...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Small chance, I fear. We tried expanding on the RTGS to get round its appalling lack of discrimination, but that expanded scheme has fallen out of use. It was hoped that the modified RTGS would work because the RTGS is the dominant scheme in official Thai documents. Probably the best we (= RDN & Meadish) can do is to demand that people cite their scheme. Possibly they can be pinned here for reference, if we can get a nice clean post to do the job. Can this bulletin board do tables? It can do lists, but you have to know the codes.

Incidentally, the basic soc.thai vowel scheme can be succinctly summarised as the following 9-vowel square:

i U u
e E o
A a O

transliteration is for the birds. if you want to speak and pronounce thai correctly, learn and memorize the alphabet, the tones, and the little rules, and you will be in good shape. otherwise, depending on just transliteration and your years is a recipe for poor pronuncuation.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

This doesn't stop transcription for having its uses for words whose pronunciation you can't represent in Thai, such as เงิน (ngEn-, not ngEEn-) and เล้น (len^, not leen^) in the scheme above.

Both transcription and transliteration are useful for discussing Thai with people who have some knowledge but not enough to learn the script. For example, when I was trying to find out whether สุนัข was related to 'hound', I was able to get an authorative answer because I transliterated. I have no reason to believe my correspondent reads Thai - the affirmative answer, apart from the relatively well known history of 'hound', was provided entirely in terms of Pali.

They're also extremely useful for people who can't type Thai - some browsers simply don't support it, and some non-residents can't type Thai on their firm's PCs! I don't think we've got anyone here who uses their TV to make posts - they're likely to have zero support for writing Thai - not even cut and paste from an alphabet - and with modern systems you'd need a palette of at least 500 items to do pure cut and paste.

A strange event happened when replying - I clicked 'reply' and a null reply was immediately posted. I wonder if that's why so many replies contain absolutely nothing new. Browser: Firefox 1.06, installed yesterday. I tried eiting the reply, but seem to have been timed out, so I've had to make a fresh reply. Fortunately, I didn't have to recompose my reply.

samran · September 18, 2005

Guys,

I'm keeping an eye on this topic. So is RDN. Please keep the tone civil and the childish snide comments to yourself, its the Thai language forum for Petes sake, not Bedlam.

Totster · September 18, 2005

ไมคูลล์ == "Mai Kul"
Do we get a "final L sound" this way.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm just wondering whether some may pronounce ไมคูลล์ as Mai Koo Lo(n) ?

totster

Totster · September 18, 2005

Guys,
I'm keeping an eye on this topic. So is RDN. Please keep the tone civil and the childish snide comments to yourself, its the Thai language forum for Petes sake, not Bedlam.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

totster

Mr. Farang · September 18, 2005

transliteration is for the birds. if you want to speak and pronounce thai correctly, learn and memorize the alphabet, the tones, and the little rules, and you will be in good shape. otherwise, depending on just transliteration and your years is a recipe for poor pronuncuation.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Dear Newworks.

Please allow me to kindly disagree and I'll explain why.

Both transliteration and transcription are mappings between systems.

A mapping is required for many purposes. Here is an example:

US Dollars - that is a system, a system of currency. Thai Bhat - another system of currency. For commerce between the two nations, there must be a mapping between the systems, a currency exchange.

Language is no different. In this case, it is much more complex than simple currency exchange. That is why both transliteration and transcription are important. In your example, you correctly suggest that Thai speakers should learn English and English speaker should learn Thai. Excellent idea, but the problem is this ---- the sounds do not match!

For example, in Thai, there is no ending "L" consonant. In the current object of discussion, an English proper name with an ending "L" sound, we are discussing how to insure the "information content" in the English word is not "lost' in the Thai word.

If Michael, for example, wants to be called "Michael" in Thailand (correctly), does he have a choice? Or must he resolve to be called "Mai Kun" etc. Or, should he simply change his dear name, laughing out loud?

The same problem arises when Monks translate Pali - Sanskrit to Thai, and in other languages.

Edited September 18, 2005 by Mr. Farang

Mr. Farang · September 18, 2005

A strange event happened when replying - I clicked 'reply' and a null reply was immediately posted. I wonder if that's why so many replies contain absolutely nothing new. Browser: Firefox 1.06, installed yesterday.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Dear Richard,

It is not your browser, according to my experience on this end. I am having the same problem with Netscape 7.1. There is some odd problem on the server or the network.

Yours sincerely,

Mr. Farang

Richard W · September 18, 2005

I was taught (by Thai Monks) that when words are "imported" or "loan words" from other countries, that gaaran can also be used to only create a "beginning sound" out of a consonant with a "final sound" , in this case:
ไมคูล์ == "Mai Kul"

where we desire "L" as a final sound v. the normal "N" final sound.

because it is an exception to the "silence rule" (as a loan word) one of the many exceptions and special cases. This is the same process, as I was told, as Monks use to translate Pali - Sanskrit to Thai.

I think I know what you're talking about, but I don't understand what you're saying about it. I believe a simple example (with trivial conversion) is Thai ทันต์ /than/ from Pali & Sanskrit ทนฺต /danta/ 'tooth'. However, if there is any 'conversion', it is no different from Thai พิษ /phit/ 'poison' from Pali วิิส /visa/ and Sanskrit วิิษ /vi.sa/ (/viṣa/ if you've got an extensive enough font). Do you simply mean that a karanned consonant in Thai is syllable initial in Pali? (Doesn't always work for Sanskrit - Sanskrit อินฺทฺร Indra v. Thai อินทร์ /In/.)

If you think the stop variations are bad enough, you should have been at our wat (Wat Amaravati in Great Gaddesden, England) this morning. The congregation is a Thai/Sri Lankan/English believers/English husbands mix, and the abbot(?) comes from Seattle, but studied in Thailand. I had to stop and think to convert 'punya' to Thai บุญ 'merit'.

Does this work for anyone?
ไมคูลล์ == "Mai Kul"

Do we get a "final L sound" this way?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'd say it stood as good a chance as anything, cf. เซลล์ 'cell' in Word and Excel.

Edited September 18, 2005 by Richard W

samran · September 18, 2005

Just my two cents. I've always pronounced Micheal as Mai-Ken. I think thats how most Thai's would pronounce it, though I don't know for sure how it would be spelt (I assume it would be with a ล์)

Mr. Farang · September 18, 2005

Just my two cents. I've always pronounced Micheal as Mai-Ken. I think thats how most Thai's would pronounce it, though I don't know for sure how it would be spelt (I assume it would be with a ล์)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I have a Chinese-Thai friend in the North who has both a first and last name that ends with ล and I have heard the name pronounced by Thais with both an ending "L" sound and an ending "N" sound. He does not use gaaran over the ending ล on his business cards now, but I thought he did quite a few years ago.

Either way, he is Thai and Thai people often misprononce his (original Chinese) name, which I find interesting- reminding me that the confusion is not only limited to English-Thai, but also found in Chinese-Thai, name transcriptions.

Richard W · September 18, 2005

I have a Chinese-Thai friend in the North who has both a first and last name that ends with ล and I have heard the name pronounced by Thais with both an ending "L" sound and an ending "N" sound. He does not use gaaran over the ending ล on his business cards now, but I thought he did quite a few years ago.
Either way, he is Thai and Thai people often misprononce his (original Chinese) name, which I find interesting- reminding me that the confusion is not only limited to English-Thai, but also found in Chinese-Thai, name transcriptions.

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Confusion is not the right word. Thai long had only 9 syllable-final consonant sounds:

1) k, p, t, glottal stop (voicing not contrastive, explosion often only present at the glottis - pre-glottalisation is typical in the first three cases.)

2) m, n, ng

3) w, y (sometimes counted as vowels - basically a matter of convenience)

While Proto-Tai (if you count the Saek dialect as Tai) had final -l (also evidenced in the re-construction of a fairly obscure group of languages remotely related to Tai, the 'Kra' group - Gelao, Lachi, Laha, Paha, Buyang, Pubiao - scattered from the north of Vietnam to Guizhou), it became a foreign sound, perhaps as alien as initial ng- in English, Dame Ngaio Marsh notwithstanding. I am sure the only reason you hear it pronounced at all frequently is the teaching of English - unless someone's going to tell me we're hearing it on the lips of non-native Thai speakers, such as Malays from the South and Khmers from Isaan.

Final -s and -f have made an appearance, again I'm sure due to the influence of English. The Royal Institute Dictionary on-line (what's become of it?) acknowledges the presence of final /s/ in the pronunciation of some words in Thai.

Karanning final ล is not unknown - consider รถเมล์. However, in this example it definitely has the effect of completely silencing it, rather like the karan in คัมภีร์ 'scripture' (recent borrowing from Khmer คมฺพีร with its naturally silent ร? - Pali gambhi:ra 'deep, impenetrable, profound' may be the ultimate source). I suppose it's just a matter of trying to choose how your name is mangled.

Mr. Farang · September 19, 2005

I suppose it's just a matter of trying to choose how your name is mangled.

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Dear Richard,

That is one of the reasons why I used to have a Thai name, laughing out loud, (when doing business in Thailand) and a very funny Thai nickname.

OBTW: I found this very nice document on the web (attached) when I was "googling for references" on topic - Linguistic Survey of Thailand. This is a very nice document, not exactly on topic, but interesting none-the-less. Enjoy!

Yours sincerely,

Mr. Farang

thailand_v1.1.pdf

Edited September 19, 2005 by Mr. Farang

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