Thai To English Transliteration (Thai Names And Other Words)

[ajarnyai]

Peppy, in your last comment.... (edited for brevity and totally screwed up the quoting fuction)

My first example was the English teacher.

Maybe you should have thought about what the Roman characters meant to her, since she's the Thai speaker.

I had the script in Thai, so I was able to compare the two. I didn't expect her to make things easy for me. It's just that in her effort to translate the text, pronunciation was overlooked, because like she said " This is the Thai style of writing in English". What?? I'm the one who has to read it and embarrass himself. A little help here.....

I try my best to meet people halfway in all my dealings here. I know living her is not going to be easy nor is living with me here.

Steak is written and pronounced เสตก and star becomes สตา

Another example is Pepsi becomes แป็บซี่

Those pesky ต’s and ป’s again.

"Steak" and "star" aren't very good examples here, because the "t" after "s" actually does sound like "ต".

You should hear my kids...........SA DEG and SA DAH........

"How many A's do you see in that word, Somchai?" " ....and breath!!!! SsssssssssTTeeeaaaK.

Anyway, this has been very enlightening, I really enjoy teaching and learning about languages, and communication.

This all started a few months ago when I was asked to be part of a teacher's seminar to help improve English teaching in some small Amphoes in Isssan. Pronunciation, phonics and accents was my class. I went over some basic stuff, and was surprised to find out how these teachers thought about English after studying the language for so long and teaching it for even longer. Now, I really want to focus on this aspect of language teaching.

Thank you all for the information and comments. It will come in handy as I move forward...

[Richard W]

Steak is written and pronounced เสตก and star becomes สตา

Another example is Pepsi becomes แป็บซี่

<snip/>

You should hear my kids...........SA DEG and SA DAH........

For เสตก, you could usefully contrast it with the Thai loanword สเต็ก. I'd also suggest writing these words as เสฺตก, สฺตาร์ and เพ็พซี่ to better indicate the English sound. If it's any consolation, I think SA DAH (this suggests you don't voice your /d/) is a better starting point than IS DAH.

[DickFarang]

Would it make you feel better if I said romanized Thai was primarily for English speakers.

Thai will be the third language I've learned to read write and speak, which is why I'm even able to notice the issues in this system, my sarcastic friend. To say they romanized Thai with all romance languages in mind is quite ridiculous. They didn't choose to write some of the signs in French did they? The Spanish "R" and "ร" sound a lot alike, but you don't see el baño written above the mensroom do you?

There's no need for that.....

It's more likely that they didn't consider us foreigners at all when developing this system, since they choose different letters for Thai characters that sound the same (with the exception of tone). It's easy to ignore the faults if you already know what the word sounds like in Thai.

The system was revised about decade ago, and now that Thailand is joining Asean and English will be the common language, it's time to revise it again (IMHO), because like I said in the OP the reality is Thai people don't depend on romanzied Thai the English speaking foreigners do.

The word “baños” (usually plural) for toilets is only used in Latin America; in Spain they use “servicios” (in hotels), “aseos” (in airports), “lavabo” or simply ... “water” or “WC” (from “water closet”).

The men’s room is “caballeros” © in Spain; “señores” (S) in Latin America.

The ladies’ room is “señoras” (S) in Spain; “damas” (D) in Latin America.

[DickFarang]

In general - sounds like the same argument that was made on different postings some time ago - belittling the efforts of the Royal Institute for its inconsistencies etc. etc. etc. - according to some selfappointed "experts".

All systems - I believe - continue to evolve - hopefully for the benefit of all of us.

One of the "notable examples" that was given in the previous thread - was the many different romanized spellings of "ดินแดง" you may encounter - while travelling along the freeways.

1) Din Daeng - correct for English

2) Din Dang - correct for American English

3) Din Deng - correct for Spanish, Italian, German (they may prefer "a with umlaut").

But in Thai "ดินแดง" will always be pronounced correctly as "ดินแดง".

Perhaps Thai should be romanized - per ajarnyai - by a system yet to be developed - for the convenience of all of us native English speakers - without any inconsistencies for us perfect native English speakers.

P.S.

Ohhh - I forgot to mention - I am not a native English speaker (but I do know how to spell foreigners correctly - ajarnyai).

“Jomtien” is sometimes written as “Chom Tian”.

In the beginning I did not realise it was the same place.

I am not a native speaker of English either, but for my children I would prefer a better English teacher than ajarnyai (not only “foriegners”, but also: “Peoples names” instead of “People’s names”, “it's system” instead of “its system” , “romanize” instead of “Romanize”, “governments current efforts” instead of “governments’ current efforts”, “everyday” instead of “every day”, “mensroom” instead of “men’s room”, “romanzied” instead of “Romanized” and wrong punctuation).

[DickFarang]

ิี I see "I" and "ee" in my students names

The 'ee' is probably best identified as part of the 'slapdash' system - write something you hope an English-speaker will understand.

I've just been reading Rama VI's comments on Romanisation, referenced from http://en.wikipedia....ization_of_Thai . His questions and advice in the final paragraph of "Notes on the proposed system for the Transliteration of Siamese words into Roman Characters" are particularly relevant.

In English the /i/ sound is written in at least 7 different ways:

see

sea

receive

siege

ego

bakery

martini

[ajarnyai]

I'm impressed. You were able to catch all those mistakes............. but your own.

{quote}

“governments current efforts” instead of “governments’ current efforts”

{qoute}

How many governments are we talking about?

Don't worry, I won't blame you for errors made at such a late hour. I'm sure you can't help being a Dickfarang.

I patiently await your insightful comments on what were discussing......

[DickFarang]

I'm impressed. You were able to catch all those mistakes............. but your own.

{quote}

“governments current efforts” instead of “governments’ current efforts”

{qoute}

How many governments are we talking about?

Don't worry, I won't blame you for errors made at such a late hour. I'm sure you can't help being a Dickfarang.

I patiently await your insightful comments on what were discussing......

The string “governments current efforts” comes from your post #1; it was not clear to me which and how many governments you were talking about, Mr. อาจารย์ใหญ่.

[DickFarang]

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough in my previous posts, but there are clearly two separate issues here.

The first is the romanization of the Thai language in a way that is easily accessible to foreigners, whatever language they speak. As has been pointed out, people have been working on this for well over a century without a satisfactory solution in sight, in part because of the idiosyncrasies of the Thai language itself, and in part because of the generally laissez-faire culture of its speakers as regards implementation.

The second issue is, basically, how to teach English to Thai students. The OP has indicated his belief that his students' "terrible pronunciation" is somehow a result of the system of romanizing the Thai language, and it can be cured by "matching up" the sounds of the two languages. In fact, it's quite the opposite: Thai students will best learn how to sound like English speakers by learning the ways in which the languages differ, and a teacher familiar with both languages should make a point of educating them to this end. This means pointing out that "ai" is pronounced as long A, not long I, "ph" is F, not P, "th" is pronounced not like T but like F with the tongue against the front teeth, and so on and so forth.

In addition to the phonics website linked to in my earlier post, the following attached document may be of assistance.

A Contrastive Study of English and Thai.PDF

The string “ph” being pronounced /f/ in Western languages has its origin ... in the Latin transcription “PH” of the Greek character “Φ” (/fi/), e.g. “Philippos” for “Φίλιππος”.

The English sound “th” is written “z” or also (before “e” or “i”) “c” in standard Spanish.

[Richard W]

The string “ph” being pronounced /f/ in Western languages has its origin ... in the Latin transcription “PH” of the Greek character “Φ” (/fi/), e.g. “Philippos” for “Φίλιππος”.

But remember that Classical Latin <ph> was pronounced as in Thai. Whether the Latin /pʰ/ became /f/ independently or in imitation of the Greek change to /ɸ/ (almost the same as /f/), I don't know. There are a few native Latin (well, native Italian at least) words which have /pʰ/, e.g. sulphur.

[Mole]

I also used to have problems with the way they use p = ป instead of พ and t = ต instead of ท and k = ก instead of ค

In English it a p = พ, t = ท and k = ก

But for people used with Spanish ortography for example p = ป t = ต k = ก

So, in the end it depends on what ortography you want to use for the latin letters.

I guess they've solved it by adding a h after so that a พ = ph ท = th and ค = kh

Otherwise if they trascribed it according to English, how then would we transcrive the letters ต and ป?

[Mole]

As for words with Sanskrit/Pali origin, they may choose to write it according to its original Sanskrit transliteration.

This is obviously the case with the airport, I think perhaps it may be more auspicious and its meaning more clear since people familiar with Indic languages will instantly understand it. Although even if they wrote it in the Thai pronunciation, Suwannaphum, I'm sure most would be able to comprehend as well.

Thai language has a sound change where they'll pronounce Sanskrit words differently. The irony is that they tend to swap how it's pronounced in Sanskrit and vice versa.

Sanskrit -> Thai - example

ก -> ค - nagara -> นคร

ค -> ก - kama -> กาม

บ -> พ - bumi -> ภูมิ

พ -> บ - pali -> บาลี

ช -> จ - chandra -> จันทร์

ด -> ท - deva -> เทวา

[Mole]

I also used to have problem when they used r at the ending for example porn, but in Thai it is written พร, so in this case it's probably OK to write as porn since "porn" in most English variants, the r wouldn't be pronounced and in Thai it's also written with ร.

But I do have problem with people using r when it's written with อน for example สอน = sorn

It could for example be written as son instead, but depending on the English dialect you use, it may sound like เซิน ซัน ซน

Or maybe write as sohn instead...

So even within the different varieties of English itself, a word written one way may be pronounced quite differently.

For example the sound for เ and แ most of the time isn't clearly distinguished in English and many words may be pronounced using either sound depending on variety of English you use.

No system is "perfect". For example, Chinese pinyin, the letters c, x and q is used to transcribe sound which normally would not be pronounced the same way in English.

How would you have pronounced xing 星 or quan 犬 or Cao Cao 曹操?

Also, the letters b is pronounced like the Thai ป and d is like the Thai ต.

But the sound for b บ and d ด doesn't exist in Mandarin, so the letters are used for other sound which is similar.

It gets more annoying in Thai when they do have nearly all the sounds as in English, but still use it wrong.

For example Peter is pronounced ปีเตอร์ or Pepsi เป๊ปซี่ when they might as perfectly has written and pronounced as พีเตอร์ and เพ็ปซี่

I had to explain to a friend that in English a word which starts with a t is always pronounced as ท and never ever as ต. Only when it's inside words, it may be pronounced as ต. It's the same for p which is always พ at the beginning of words and ป.

Edited October 8, 2012 by Mole