Voicing In Thai (phonetics)

[Richard W]

Here is the link to the consonant ตอ เต่า , with audio file for pronounciation.  I agree with our joint "moot point" that  ตอ เต่า, is not pronounced exactly like the sharply aspirated English "TH".    On the other hand, Thais taught it to me as much closer "TH" than "DT" or "D" and I just listed to the audio file and it still sounds like "TH" to me, laughing out loud.

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I think we have an aspirated-voiced sequence that goes:

Thai /th/ e.g. ถ and ท

English [th] as in talk

Thai /t/ e.g. ต

English /d/ as in deck

Thai /d/ e.g. ด

(I don't think this bulleting board supports superscripts, and I know most fonts don't support the characters that are superscript in themselves.) Am I right in thinking that the Thai /d/ is much more fully voiced than English /d/?

...

PS:  I tried to upload the .WMA audio file of ตอ เต่า, but could not upload directly, sorry; but the link above has a good audio of good quality.

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It's probably more proper to cite it from the referring page - breaking the conection with the website, which has absorbed a lot of effort, verges on theft.

[Mr. Farang]

Here is the link to the consonant ตอ เต่า , with audio file for pronounciation.  I agree with our joint "moot point" that  ตอ เต่า, is not pronounced exactly like the sharply aspirated English "TH".    On the other hand, Thais taught it to me as much closer "TH" than "DT" or "D" and I just listed to the audio file and it still sounds like "TH" to me, laughing out loud.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I think we have an aspirated-voiced sequence that goes:

Thai /th/ e.g. ถ and ท

English [th] as in talk

Thai /t/ e.g. ต

English /d/ as in deck

Thai /d/ e.g. ด

(I don't think this bulleting board supports superscripts, and I know most fonts don't support the characters that are superscript in themselves.) Am I right in thinking that the Thai /d/ is much more fully voiced than English /d/?

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Dear Khun Richard,

When I listen to the audio file for ต is does not sound like English "deck" (in my ear-mind congition)... The way I was taught is that it should be prouounced like ตอ เต่า. as recorded at Thai-Dictionary.Com.

Here is a quote from the same site:

Thai Transliteration

Transliteration is the process of rendering the sound of a Thai word with a foreign alphabet. In general, it is a haphazard practice which suffers from many pitfalls:

    * There is no prevalant or standard system of transliteration in Thai, and many codified systems are inadequate

    * Geographical names may have multiple different, widely-used transliterations

    * Thai is a tonal language, and there is no predefined way to represent the five tones in Western alphabets

    * There is no obvious way to represent the short versus long duration of Thai vowel sounds using a Western alphabet

    * Many of the sounds used in the Thai language cannot be represented with a Western alphabet (or English regional phone set)

    * Different people pronounce a given word spelled in a Western alphabet differently. For example, American versus Australian versus British pronounciation.

    * Every phrase book, dictionary, guide book, tutorial, or Western text uses a different transliteration scheme

Further complicating matters is the fact that the "phone" or sound of a Thai consonant depends on whether it appears in the beginning ("initial") or ending ("final") position of a syllable. Unsophisticated transliteration systems don't account for this, which is why you sometimes see the Thai greeting สวัสดี transliterated as, "sa was dee" rather than "sa wat dee;" the ส character is pronounced with an 's' as an initial, and with a 't' sound as a final.

In fact, many of the final sounds which are not present in the Thai language, such as '-s' or '-r' seem to be unhearable by some native speakers; to these persons, the sounds are perceptually indistinguishable from other endings which are clearly dissimilar to a English speakers. Of course the converse is true for Westerners encountering certian sonic aspects of Thai.

Audio clips for the dictionary entries can go a long way towards eliminating the need for transliteration on a web site such as this one.

One of the most important quotes above is this one:

* Different people pronounce a given word spelled in a Western alphabet differently. For example, American versus Australian versus British pronounciation.

Therefore, I think it is not formally correct for anyone to say that their native English pronounciation is more correct than anothers. As I have pointed out, Thai Monks teach entire classrooms in America, to Thai children, that the 21st consonant is more closer to a "TH" sound. And when I listen to the Thai-Language audio file I hear "TH" for this consonant. Also, I have two recording made just for me, on cassette tape, of the Thai alphabet, one by a Senior Thai Monk from Wat Po and another (on the same tape) of a Thai female teacher. Both sound like "TH" to me .... much more than "DT" and certainly not (to me) "D"........

You and Khun Meadish (obviously) hear something different, based on your native English language, which I think is more Eurpean. Glenn of Thai-Language.com says:

* Different people pronounce a given word spelled in a Western alphabet differently. For example, American versus Australian versus British pronounciation.

I agree with Glenn, completely. ไม่เป็นไร.

Cheers!

Yours sincerely,

Mr. Farang

PS: Please, everyone, please try to be "civil" in your responses about cross-cultural, and cross-language topics such as pronounciation, transliteration, and transcription. For example, "no cheap shots."..... Thank you.

PPS. Dear Khun Richard, I do not think that Khun Glenn Slayden, creator of the Thai-Dictionary site has any problem if people, referencing his site, upload one of over 10,000 small audio files, as an example in a threaded discussion. But, I will ask him to make sure :-) He seem like a perfectly normal "chap" to me, laughing out loud. - But the point is pretty moot, as you point out, since we can't upload them anyway, laughing out loud (again), so, ไม่เป็นไร.

[Richard W]

I think we have an aspirated-voiced sequence that goes:

Thai /th/ e.g. ถ and ท

English [th] as in talk

Thai /t/ e.g. ต

English /d/ as in deck

Thai /d/ e.g. ด

(I don't think this bulleting board supports superscripts, and I know most fonts don't support the characters that are superscript in themselves.)  Am I right in thinking that the Thai /d/ is much more fully voiced than English /d/?

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Dear Khun Richard,

When I listen to the audio file for ต is does not sound like English "deck" (in my ear-mind congition)... The way I was taught is that it should be prouounced like ตอ เต่า. as recorded at Thai-Dictionary.Com.

Here is a quote from the same site:

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As this is not Glenn's site, I will voice my criticism here. I stilled my tongue when talking on his site. I've removed a layer of quoting as I think I was overloading the board's renderer.

Thai Transliteration

Transliteration is the process of rendering the sound of a Thai word with a foreign alphabet.

Technically, this is 'transcription'. Transliteration is suppose to render the spelling. Many practical schemes are a mixture fo the two.

In general, it is a haphazard practice which suffers from many pitfalls:

    * There is no prevalant or standard system of transliteration in Thai, and many codified systems are inadequate

There is a standard system of transcription, the RTGS, and there is a standard system of transliteration. The RTGS is woefully inadequate for expressing the pronunication, and the official transcription system, ISO 10940:1998, is vomitous to behold, unsupported by most fonts, and appears not to be used. I think it no accident that it was not approved until 2003.

    * Geographical names may have multiple different, widely-used transliterations

True.

    * Thai is a tonal language, and there is no predefined way to represent the five tones in Western alphabets

Untrue. Thai is amenable to the simple system of the IPA accents, which you may have noticed Meadish use. The only problem is the caron on vowels - font limitations encourage the naughty use of a breve instead. At typical font screen resolutions, one rarely notices the difference. However, for readability, I prefer a superscripting or suffixing method. For superscript numbers, there are two conventions in non-comparative work - number from 0 to 4, or number from 1 to 5, using the tone sequence for the mid class consonants. The Chinese scheme for Tai, of subscripting from 1 to 8, would be inappropriate. (It's isomorphic to the usual Western method of A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2, D1, D2 as used by Li, Gedney and Ostapirat and lacks the ability to handle real but historically impossible combinations of initial, syllable type and tone.)

    * There is no obvious way to represent the short versus long duration of Thai vowel sounds using a Western alphabet

Doubling is a pretty obvious method, as any literate very Ancient Greek (omega is double omicron, and eta has an element of double epsilon in its history), Dutchman, Finn, or early Modern Englishman (-ee-, -oo-) could tell you.

    * Many of the sounds used in the Thai language cannot be represented with a Western alphabet (or English regional phone set)

    * Different people pronounce a given word spelled in a Western alphabet differently. For example, American versus Australian versus British pronounciation.

    * Every phrase book, dictionary, guide book, tutorial, or Western text uses a different transliteration scheme

The main problem is that these books are generally targeting an unsophisticated audience - possibly even one knowing only English. Condoleezza!! A more sophisticated audience will assume the Spanish/Italian (i.e. original) values of the 5 vowels of the Roman alphabet and not rely on unreliable correspondences to their own English pronunication. This does leave the two problems of the low vowels แ and อ and the two back unrounded vowels (long open forms เออ and อือ).

For แ the scientific choice is a matter of æ or epsilon (a matter of taste and fonts - ææ is inelegant, the IPA epsilon is missing from fonts, and a Greek epsilon may not align nicely and may have problems with accents), tradition is a mark below the vowel (as in Yoruba), and the usual ASCII hack is E. As we should know, the RTGS uses 'ae'. For อ the scientific choice is a reversed c, but there are genuine font problems. The ASCII hack is O. One problem here is that an obvious combination such as 'ao' (e.g. 'Aoi') conflicts with the RTGS and precedents such as 'Lao', while 'au', 'aw' and 'or' are Anglocentric.

The back unrounded vowels are a problem - mostly one of fonts. A common solution is to cheat and write them as front rounded vowels, whence ö and ü and the RTGS 'oe' and 'ue'. (I've seen a cunning use of 'eu' for the short vowel and 'ue' for the long vowel. I like it!). There's one Thai course that dives straight in with an IPA-based system, but uses 'y' for อือ! A scientific solution when good fonts are not available is to use schwa ('e' rotated 180 degrees) and a double dotted or barred 'i'.

Glenn's solution to the vowel issue is a scheme that only a frequent user is likely to understand. For a long time it was not even unambiguous.

Transcription of the initial consonants presents almost no trouble to anyone acquainted with the continental Eastern languages (other than via pinyin), especially the Indic languages. Just conceivably one might have problems with 'ng' for someone acquanted with African or Melanesian languages (e.g. Tok Pisin) - 'Ngaio' is not a common English forename.

The problem with different pronunciations overwhlemingly applies to vowels. There are some quite considerable variations with /t/ - just make sure there is some sort of [t] in what you say, and the dialect variations mostly vanish. Pre-glottalisation of final stops is the only other significant variation I can think of. (The quick solution is not to make 'English' the reference point of the transcription scheme.)

Further complicating matters is the fact that the "phone" or sound of a Thai consonant depends on whether it appears in the beginning ("initial") or ending ("final") position of a syllable. Unsophisticated transliteration systems don't account for this, which is why you sometimes see the Thai greeting สวัสดี transliterated as, "sa was dee" rather than "sa wat dee;" the ส character is pronounced with an 's' as an initial, and with a 't' sound as a final.

These spellings result from adding a touch of transliteration to transcription! End of story.

In fact, many of the final sounds which are not present in the Thai language, such as '-s' or '-r' seem to be unhearable by some native speakers; to these persons, the sounds are perceptually indistinguishable from other endings which are clearly dissimilar to a English speakers. Of course the converse is true for Westerners encountering certian sonic aspects of Thai.

Audio clips for the dictionary entries can go a long way towards eliminating the need for transliteration on a web site such as this one.

Quite true. Here endeth my response Glenn's remarks.

At this point, according to 'preview post', the quoting capacity of the bulletin board gives out!

Mr Farang:

QUOTE:

As I have pointed out, Thai Monks teach entire classrooms in America, to Thai children, that the 21st consonant is more closer to a "TH" sound. And when I listen to the Thai-Language audio file I hear "TH" for this consonant. Also, I have two recording made just for me, on cassette tape, of the Thai alphabet, one by a Senior Thai Monk from Wat Po and another (on the same tape) of a Thai female teacher. Both sound like "TH" to me .... much more than "DT" and certainly not (to me) "D"........

/QUOTE

Me:

I actually agree that Thai initial /t/ sounds more like English /t/ than English /d/, but to me Thai initial /p/ sounds more like English /b/ than English /p/. However, the slightness of actual voicing in English /d/ is (also?) an American phenomenon. It has been descibed as often 'having all the features of voicing except the actual voicing itself' - Ladefoged. I have heard a Polish lecturer tell how he has to teach Poles to reduce voicing when pronouncing initial English /d/. (I did wonder if he had been working for the Polish intelligence services!)

Mr Farang:

QUOTE:

You and Khun Meadish (obviously) hear something different, based on your native English language, which I think is more European.

/QUOTE

Me:

Meadish Sweetball = Swedish Meatball. His native language is Swedish.

[Mr. Farang]

Dear Khun Richard,

Yes, I agree that Glenn's site mixes up "transliteration" and "transcription", and if Glenn responds to my query mentioned earlier, I'll ask him about this.

Sent today, BTW:

Subject: Referencing and Uploaded Audio File from your Site.

Dear Glenn,

Do you have a problem if we reference your site in an online forum and, occasionally, upload a small audio file (with reference to your site) as an example of pronunciation?

PS:  GREAT SITE, BTW.  I use your site almost every day.

As far as discussing transliterations, transcriptions, pronounciation, and the other fun and friendly "fuzzy" subjects, I always enijoy your posts Khun Richard, even we we have different perspectives, you have the admirable quaity of keeping things at an "idea" and "information sharing" level.

After all, what fun is life is we cannot have different experiences, ideas, perspectives, and kamma! I was thinking after our posts, the old "Tomato" ditty,

You say "toe mae toe" ... I say "toe maa toe" :-)

Back on the subject of Glenn's site, I really like what he has done and was considering a PayPal contribution, but I was going to see how and if Glenn responded to my email first :-)

Cheers! I'm off to the movies, to the "March of the Penguins"..... will type more later when I have time.

Yours sincerely,

Mr. Farang

[Abandon]

You and Khun Meadish (obviously) hear something different, based on your native English language, which I think is more Eurpean

Hey meat - Welcome to Old Blighty

I see you have been made an honourary Englishman ....

And honoured we are to have you

I must admit that I can pronounce 'deck' with a dor dek or a dtor dtow sound. I was taught to use the 't' sound as in 'stop' (by Thai monks too as it happens)

[sabaijai]

Perhaps this has already come up (I haven't logged on to the Thai Language branch in a while) but English (at least some dialects) does contain an unoviced, unaspirated dental in intervocalic positions, e.g., the /t/ in 'forty', just as you'll find an unvoiced, unaspirated velar and bilabial in 'skin' and 'stopper' (again, in at least some English dialects, can't claim to know them all).

[withnail]

I think we all agree what ต เต่า sounds like, it sounds like ต เต่า and I'm pretty confident that everyone that has been discussing the issue here has no problem pronouncing it correctly.

For me the transliteration of Thai is not so much an accurate guide to pronunciation as a means of differentiating between the individual letters. This is why I would favour using dt to represent ต so as not to confuse it with ด ถ ฐ ธ ท etc.

I had a problem with the pronunciation of ด dek and ต dtao when I started however interestingly it was ด dek I was having problems with.

If you study English pronunciation you will learn that the positioning of the tongue when pronouncing a d is in the same place (at the front of the mouth, just behind the teeth) as it is when pronouncing the letter t. The difference between the two is the ammount of pressure applied to the roof of the mouth.

Hence when my Thai teacher was helping me with my Thai pronunciation she kept telling me that ด was a d sound yet everytime I pronounced d she was saying no. I was getting annoyed because she said my d often sounded like ต to which I was saying trust me it's a d I use it everyday.

I then realised that my ด sounded a lot better when I moved my tongue further back so that it was touching the back of the ridge behind my teeth and my teacher began finding it easier to differentiate between my two sounds. I would also like to add though that the way I pronounce ต is with my tongue further foward than it is for a d or a t, actually touching the back of my teeth.

This method works for me anyway (sometimes). My advice to anyone that needs to practice the two sounds would be to ask a Thai friend to listen whilst you say alternating words using either letter and see if they can tell the difference. For example ดีี good versus ตี hit.

Withnail

[Mr. Farang]

    * Thai is a tonal language, and there is no predefined way to represent the five tones in Western alphabets

Untrue. Thai is amenable to the simple system of the IPA accents, which you may have noticed Meadish use.

Dear Khun Richard,

I was also taught that "Thai was a tonal language" and don't think I can agree with your opinion to the contrary. Admittedly, I am not a linguistic expert, or even close, so I refer to "Google Knowledge" (GK) and Google on the phrase:

"Thai is a tonal language" (in double quotes)

Results: 858 hits.

"Thai is not a tonal language" (in double quotes)

Results: 0 hits.

Here are a few quotes:

Thai is a tonal language with 5 tones. The tone of a syllable is determined by a combination of the class of consonant, the type of syllable (open or closed), the tone marker and the length of the vowel.

Reference: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/thai.htm

Tones

Thai is a tonal language in which words can be distinguished by five tones: middle, low, high, rising and falling. They are determined by a combination of the class of the syllable-initial consonant (high, mid or low), vowel length (long or short), and by the syllable-final consonant. The chart below from Wikipedia shows Thai tones:

Reference: http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/may/Thai.html

There are quite a number of similar references (over 800) and quotes such as these from credible sources, including the PDF attachment from Thailand, I found on this site: http://www.nectec.or.th/tindex.html, called:

Standardization and Implementations of Thai Language

... which is a nice document, BTW, and the first paragraph, written by a Thai academic, says Thai is a tonal language..

Yours sincerely,

Mr. Farang

thaistd.pdf

[Abandon]

    * Thai is a tonal language, and there is no predefined way to represent the five tones in Western alphabets

Untrue. Thai is amenable to the simple system of the IPA accents, which you may have noticed Meadish use.

Dear Khun Richard,

I was also taught that "Thai was a tonal language" and don't think I can agree with your opinion to the contrary.

Yours sincerely,

Mr. Farang

Duh .... He said he disagreed that 'there is no predefined way to represent .....'

yours sincerely

Mr Pandit

Nice new avatar Withnail - is it a hat???

[withnail]

Nice new avatar Withnail - is it a hat???

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It can be.

[Abandon]

Nice new avatar Withnail - is it a hat???

It can be.

looks nice and waterproof ...

wouldn't suit me though - I'd look a right &lt;deleted&gt;

[meadish_sweetball]

You and Khun Meadish (obviously) hear something different, based on your native English language, which I think is more Eurpean

Hey meat - Welcome to Old Blighty

I see you have been made an honourary Englishman ....

And honoured we are to have you

I must admit that I can pronounce 'deck' with a dor dek or a dtor dtow sound. I was taught to use the 't' sound as in 'stop' (by Thai monks too as it happens)

The honour is all mine, but my balls remain sweet(ish).

In fact, the Swedish 'd' is more like the Thai one; now that withnail so eminently explained how he pronounces 'd' in English, I could reproduce it myself and fully realize why his teacher was not altogether satisfied. Maybe this is something you could test with your Thai students too, withnail - reversing the process, so to speak.

The other important point he made is that we should concentrate on what the Thai letters sound like when pronounced by (educated, Central Plains) Thai native speakers - obviously, if the Thais one tries out one's ด and ต's on cannot hear the difference or say the pronunciation is wrong, one needs to go back to the drawing board - if not, then your pronunciation is probably good enough.

Our dialects (or in my case, accent) when speaking English differ, and it can be an interesting subject in itself, but perhaps better discussed elsewhere unless it has a direct bearing on learning Thai. Blaming somebody else's dialect for being wrong is counter-productive. You could blame me for mistakes in my English though, since it is not my native language... but only withnail and Pandit know what it actually sounds like.

Apart from that, it is just a matter of preferred transcription. As Richard says, the IPA-based systems favour 'd' for ด, 't' for ต and 'th' for ท ถ ธ ฑ etc. This does not coincide well with the English spelling system, but it is an accepted and consistent standard. I would prefer it if everyone used IPA-based transcriptions since they take vowel length into account and are developed to be as consistent as possible from a phonetic point of view, but I realize it is not likely to happen, because it would deter people from posting in the forum if I or any other Mod blocked posts with unwanted transcriptions. Editing is hardly feasible either, as moderation is a volunteer activity that most people engage in on top of their day jobs.

My personal opinion here is that since none of the major systems of transcription use 'th' for ต, it would be better to avoid it for the sake of consistency, if nothing else. Consistency makes for less misunderstandings.

[Andrew Mac]

I had a problem with the pronunciation of ด dek and ต dtao when I started however interestingly it was ? dek I was having problems with.

If you study English pronunciation you will learn that the positioning of the tongue when pronouncing a d is in the same place (at the front of the mouth, just behind the teeth) as it is when pronouncing the letter t. The difference between the two is the ammount of pressure applied to the roof of the mouth.

Hence when my Thai teacher was helping me with my Thai pronunciation she kept telling me that ด was a d sound yet everytime I pronounced d she was saying no. I was getting annoyed because she said my d often sounded like ต to which I was saying trust me it's a d I use it everyday.

I then realised that my ด sounded a lot better when I moved my tongue further back so that it was touching the back of the ridge behind my teeth and my teacher began finding it easier to differentiate between my two sounds. I would also like to add though that the way I pronounce ต is with my tongue further foward than it is for a d or a t, actually touching the back of my teeth.

This method works for me anyway (sometimes). My advice to anyone that needs to practice the two sounds would be to ask a Thai friend to listen whilst you say alternating words using either letter and see if they can tell the difference. For example ดี? good versus ตี hit.

Withnail

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Hi Withnail

If it's any help ... it's not just you. I had -- and probably still have -- the same problem. My "d" is apparently pronounced a bit too "sharp", a bit too much like "dt". I think the "d/dt" phonetic distinction is one that doesn't usually matter in English, and my own pronunciation has probably always been a bit too sharp. I think it's the same with the Thai "b" and "p/bp" sounds as well.

One day I'm going to have to find some Thai person patient enough to sit down with me for an hour or two and drill me until I get it right. And then, if I do manage to get it right, ask them to help me repeat the exercise in a few weeks, to make sure I don't slip back into any old habits!

[withnail]

I have just found this excellent link Interactive Sagittal Section It's an interactive diagram of the position of the mouth/tongue etc. when making certain sounds.

Perhaps someone more experienced (Meadish cough cough) could look at it and explain the various Thai sounds for future referrence.

[Abandon]

You could blame me for mistakes in my English though, since it is not my native language... but only withnail and Pandit know what it actually sounds like. 

From what I hear your accent got decidedly off key by the end of the night. In fact, it was (I'm told) hard to distinguish when you were speaking English and when Swedish .... or was it pasaa prasom ??

Well, you can expect only one thing going on the town with Withnail

[sabaijai]

For me the transliteration of Thai is not so much an accurate guide to pronunciation as a means of differentiating between the individual letters. This is why I would favour using dt to represent ต so as not to confuse it with ด ถ ฐ ธ ท etc.

The standard RTGS already takes care of this nicely, using T for the unaspirated, unvoiced ต, TH for unvoiced, aspirated ถ ฐ ธ ท and D for voiced, unaspirated ด. Thus no need to double consonants as in DT (or BP or GK). This is the system used for most government documents, highway signage, etc although it's not always used consistently.

I suppose it's subjective whether you perceive the Thai /ต/ to sound more like the English /d/ or the English /t/. For me /ต/ sounds closer to /d/. Of course it's neither, so the question isn't all that relevant - what counts is that you can pronounce it like native speakers do.

[Abandon]

This is the system used for most government documents, highway signage, etc although it's not always used consistently.

I suppose it's subjective whether you perceive the Thai /ต/ to sound more like the English /d/ or the English /t/. For me /ต/ sounds closer to /d/.  Of course it's neither, so the question isn't all that relevant - what counts is that you can pronounce it like native speakers do.

So you mean that it is sometimes used consistently?

I think that the transliteration of Pali form Thai to Roman script had a lot to do with starting the mixup ... with their d's out t's etc....

[meadish_sweetball]

You could blame me for mistakes in my English though, since it is not my native language... but only withnail and Pandit know what it actually sounds like. 

From what I hear your accent got decidedly off key by the end of the night. In fact, it was (I'm told) hard to distinguish when you were speaking English and when Swedish .... or was it pasaa prasom ??

Well, you can expect only one thing going on the town with Withnail

Cheap shot! Bet you're right though... My recollections are rather vague. Withers?

[Abandon]

Withers is the guy on the left

[withnail]

Withers is the guy on the left

 

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LOL

He's making it all up Meadish although I do recall you saying that you were speaking in technicolor the next day.

How would you say that in Thai?

[Abandon]

he was hardly talking to anyone the next day - though he did kick the cat for stamping its feet ....