Spelling

[tombkk]

After a long time, I finally drove from Bangkok to Pattaya again.

The roads signs when I left Bangkok advised that me that I was driving to "Phatthaya". Pronouncing this catastrophic spelling, I ended up saying "Fat-Thigh-A".

Who comes up with this? More importantly, who wants to spend their vacation in Fat-Thigh-A? Shouldn't the authorities ask somebody who can read English before they change the spelling on some signs?

And what happened to consistency, shouldn't all signs be changed to Fat-Thigh-A now, instead of only some?

So many questions...

[Spoonman]

Who comes up with this

Google The Royal Thai General System of Transcription (RTGS), it is the official system for rendering Thai language words in the Latin alphabet.

RTGS = Mueang Phatthaya.

Edited August 20, 2011 by Spoonman

[bdw]

I agree that the RTGS is AFU

[Soutpeel]

Who comes up with this

Google The Royal Thai General System of Transcription (RTGS), it is the official system for rendering Thai language words in the Latin alphabet.

RTGS = Mueang Phatthaya.

Always wondered about that one.....so Phatthaya is the "correct" spelling

[tropo]

LOL! Perhaps you have an obsession with fat thighs.

When I see "Phatthaya" I think Pat-ta-ya which is pretty much what I'm supposed to think.

We could easily come up with a hundred odd pronunciations of the English language, so who are we to speak.

Here's one of our better ones: Say "woman", and then "women" - or a personal favourite absurdity: "colonel"...absolutely ridiculous isn't it.

[endure]

LOL! Perhaps you have an obsession with fat thighs.

When I see "Phatthaya" I think Pat-ta-ya which is pretty much what I'm supposed to think.

We could easily come up with a hundred odd pronunciations of the English language, so who are we to speak.

Here's one of our better ones: Say "woman", and then "women" - or a personal favourite absurdity: "colonel"...absolutely ridiculous isn't it.

Lieutenant?

[tropo]

LOL! Perhaps you have an obsession with fat thighs.

When I see "Phatthaya" I think Pat-ta-ya which is pretty much what I'm supposed to think.

We could easily come up with a hundred odd pronunciations of the English language, so who are we to speak.

Here's one of our better ones: Say "woman", and then "women" - or a personal favourite absurdity: "colonel"...absolutely ridiculous isn't it.

Lieutenant?

Wow, I was just going to edit my post and stick in a note about "lieutenant colonel" and you beat me to it. The Americans have "lieutenant" sorted, but try saying "lieutenant colonel" if you're British and get a non-English speaker to spell it.

[Darrel]

Lieutenant?

Boatswain?

[tombkk]

Who comes up with this

Google The Royal Thai General System of Transcription (RTGS), it is the official system for rendering Thai language words in the Latin alphabet.

RTGS = Mueang Phatthaya.

You have answered my question, thanks.

[tombkk]

LOL! Perhaps you have an obsession with fat thighs.

When I see "Phatthaya" I think Pat-ta-ya which is pretty much what I'm supposed to think.

We could easily come up with a hundred odd pronunciations of the English language, so who are we to speak.

Here's one of our better ones: Say "woman", and then "women" - or a personal favourite absurdity: "colonel"...absolutely ridiculous isn't it.

(This is not my poem, but it's all over the internet.)

Dearest creature in creation,

Study English pronunciation.

I will teach you in my verse

Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.

I will keep you, Suzy, busy,

Make your head with heat grow dizzy.

Tear in eye, your dress will tear.

So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,

Dies and diet, lord and word,

Sword and sward, retain and Britain.

(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)

Now I surely will not plague you

With such words as plaque and ague.

But be careful how you speak:

Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;

Cloven, oven, how and low,

Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,

Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,

Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,

Exiles, similes, and reviles;

Scholar, vicar, and cigar,

Solar, mica, war and far;

One, anemone, Balmoral,

Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;

Gertrude, German, wind and mind,

Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,

Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.

Blood and flood are not like food,

Nor is mould like should and would.

Viscous, viscount, load and broad,

Toward, to forward, to reward.

And your pronunciation’s OK

When you correctly say croquet,

Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,

Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour

And enamour rhyme with hammer.

River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,

Doll and roll and some and home.

Stranger does not rhyme with anger,

Neither does devour with clangour.

Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,

Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,

Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,

And then singer, ginger, linger,

Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,

Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,

Nor does fury sound like bury.

Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.

Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.

Though the differences seem little,

We say actual but victual.

Refer does not rhyme with deafer.

Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.

Mint, pint, senate and sedate;

Dull, bull, and George ate late.

Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,

Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,

Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.

We say hallowed, but allowed,

People, leopard, towed, but vowed.

Mark the differences, moreover,

Between mover, cover, clover;

Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,

Chalice, but police and lice;

Camel, constable, unstable,

Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,

Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.

Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,

Senator, spectator, mayor.

Tour, but our and succour, four.

Gas, alas, and Arkansas.

Sea, idea, Korea, area,

Psalm, Maria, but malaria.

Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.

Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,

Dandelion and battalion.

Sally with ally, yea, ye,

Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.

Say aver, but ever, fever,

Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.

Heron, granary, canary.

Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.

Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.

Large, but target, gin, give, verging,

Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.

Ear, but earn and wear and tear

Do not rhyme with here but ere.

Seven is right, but so is even,

Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,

Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,

Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)

Is a paling stout and spikey?

Won’t it make you lose your wits,

Writing groats and saying grits?

It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:

Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,

Islington and Isle of Wight,

Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough,

Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?

Hiccough has the sound of cup.

My advice is to give up!!!

[Thaddeus]

Bicester.

[GamLing]

How about พัทยา ?

That is the only correct spelling

[tombkk]

How about พัทยา ?

That is the only correct spelling

Good point. And พ is pronounced as a "P" while "PH" is pronounced as an "F" - in English and most other European languages.

Come to think of it, why do they transcribe ท as "tth"? According to the logic I just read, it should be "th".

Of course, the added "h" makes sense only to academics, not to tourist for who these signs are made.

[GamLing]

How about พัทยา ?

That is the only correct spelling

Good point. And พ is pronounced as a "P" while "PH" is pronounced as an "F" - in English and most other European languages.

Come to think of it, why do they transcribe ท as "tth"? According to the logic I just read, it should be "th".

Of course, the added "h" makes sense only to academics, not to tourist for who these signs are made.

It's all about aspirating the พ and the extra-aspiration of the ท ....... obvious, innit?

[tropo]

(This is not my poem, but it's all over the internet.)

Dearest creature in creation,

LOL! Good find. You've uncovered 100's of English pronunciation absurdities in one poem.

Here's a nice version of the poem that you can listen to. It would appear that the poem was originally written to help people pronounce difficult words.

[endure]

Leicester

[tombkk]

How about พัทยา ?

That is the only correct spelling

Good point. And พ is pronounced as a "P" while "PH" is pronounced as an "F" - in English and most other European languages.

Come to think of it, why do they transcribe ท as "tth"? According to the logic I just read, it should be "th".

Of course, the added "h" makes sense only to academics, not to tourist for who these signs are made.

It's all about aspirating the พ and the extra-aspiration of the ท ....... obvious, innit?

Of course it is. Please give every arriving tourist a pamphlet explaining why the extra 'h's are there, so that they don't pronounce the city name the obvious way following the spelling!

[BB1950]

Basically it's because the Romanisation of Thai is difficult, if not impossible.That's why English>Thai dictionaries are so useless. It depends on the system of transliteration used.

Even in English we are not consistent. i.e. colour (British)=color (American).

Same thing with Jomtien>Chom Thian, baht>bath, and let's not forget Suvarnabhumi Airport.

I still haven't figured out how some Europeans call it put-thai-ya. with the emphasis on the thai.

Just go with the flow. The spelling is only important in Thai (even then you will get disagreements, as noted above).

Edited August 21, 2011 by BB1950

[soundman]

"PH" is pronounced as an "F" - in English and most other European languages.

Works well for Phuket......

[Atmos]

^ Phuket

formerly Bhuket

Bhuket still appears in company names and websites, don't know when the Ph became the first choice, have seen reprints of old postcards using Bhuket.

[tombkk]

"PH" is pronounced as an "F" - in English and most other European languages.

Works well for Phuket......

My point exactly!

But there is another problem: Phuket is spelled ภูเก็ต, i.e. with ภ rather than พ at the beginning. According to RTGS, it should be transliterated as "ph" as well, but then: Suvarnabhumi is also spelled with ภ which is transcribed as "bh". Confusing, init?

This wikipedia article says that the RTGS transcription is not the only acceptable:

QUOTE

TranscriptionThere is no universal standard for transcribing Thai into the Latin alphabet. [...] What comes closest to a standard is the Royal Thai General System of Transcription (RTGS), published by the Thai Royal Institute.^[5] "

UNQUOTE

I think Pattaya should stay Pattaya, and Don Muang is not Don Mueang.

[tombkk]

^ Phuket

formerly Bhuket

Bhuket still appears in company names and websites, don't know when the Ph became the first choice, have seen reprints of old postcards using Bhuket.

Interestingly enough, Google showed me 46,500 hits for Bhuket.

In fact, the correct pronunciation of the first consonant is what English-speakers pronounce when we encounter a "P" at the beginning of a word. I'd say, "Bh" is even wronger than "Ph" (if there is such a word as "wronger", that is.)

[Atmos]

WIki etc not always reliable, but this is their version of Bhuket/Phuket. Plenty of Bukits in Malaysia/Singapore.

Bhuket - Phuket is a thai name for the original name Bukit, of Malay origins, meaning, hill, mountain.

[Thaddeus]

Leicester

Upper Peover.

Ooooo missus.

[tropo]

I still haven't figured out how some Europeans call it put-thai-ya. with the emphasis on the thai.

Actually they say pat-tai-ya. There's no "put" sound.

The reason is simple. It rolls off the English tongue a lot easier than the harsh sounding strict Thai pronunciation. Americans prefer "patty-a".

There's nothing unusual or incorrect about place names being converted into an English form - it's done the world over. Place names are converted into many different languages. If you're talking to your own kind, there's no problem at all. If you speaking to a Thai person, then you may have to use strict Thai sounds.

[BB1950]

I still haven't figured out how some Europeans call it put-thai-ya. with the emphasis on the thai.

Actually they say pat-tai-ya. There's no "put" sound.

The reason is simple. It rolls off the English tongue a lot easier than the harsh sounding strict Thai pronunciation. Americans prefer "patty-a".

Thanks for clearing that up.

[rodcourt49]

Lieutenant?

Boatswain?

..manslaughter (is it laughter of the man or killing of the man)

[Traxster]

Anybody who has been in Thailand for any length of time will know that

there are at least three ways of spelling everything

[CGW]

If you look for the weather report on the BBC website for "Pattya" you wont find it, if you look for the correct spelling "Phattaya" it is there! SOME of the road signs have always been correct! When I first used to drive down to Pattaya 20 + years ago they used to cause me some consternation!

[PattayaParent]

LOL! Perhaps you have an obsession with fat thighs.

When I see "Phatthaya" I think Pat-ta-ya which is pretty much what I'm supposed to think.

We could easily come up with a hundred odd pronunciations of the English language, so who are we to speak.

Here's one of our better ones: Say "woman", and then "women" - or a personal favourite absurdity: "colonel"...absolutely ridiculous isn't it.

What about

Worcester

or

Bicester