Precise System Of Transliteration Of Thai

[Richard W]

I thought I'd found the definition of the Precise System of Transliteration (PST) in a Notification of the Royal Institute concerning the transcription of Thai Characters into the Roman . The announcement defines both the PST and the RTGS. However, I don't understand most of the complex examples it gives.

To see the examples properly, you may have to experiment with fonts - I needed 14 point Doulos SIL to see the text properly. One problem I have encountered is breves and tildes looking like macrons at low resolution.

For กษัตริย์, it gives kăṣăt(triy), whereas I would expect kẵṣẵt(trĭy), with breve plus tilde on the first two syllables to show low tone ans a breve on the bracketed syllable to show a short file. It's just possible that tone marking is optional when there is no tone mark in the Thai, and that the word transliterated is actually กษัตรีย์.

For ประกาศ, it gives prăkat(ś), whereas I would expect prẵḥkãt(sʹ). Now, the missing tildes may again be a matter of tone-marking being optional, but I do not understand why the transliteration given has no ḥ. Secondly, the transcription of ศ is given as sʹ, not the Sanskritist ś. However, the latter is what I see in the example.

For ปากลัด, the transliteration is given as pãk-lã̂t, which seems correct. But why are the tones shown in this word, and not the others?

Does anyone know of another defining source for the system? I suspect the definition of the system may have been mangled in translation, but it's also conceivable that the system was never tested and then revised. There also seem to be several problems with reversing the transliteration. I'm also having difficulty finding samples of the system in operation - all I have found is examples by one man, http://de.wikipedia...._Brown_Griswold . He was no advocate of the system.

[AyG]

The system was created in 1939, extending the 1932 General System. It never took off, and today all one encounters is the General System as is used (albeit inconsistently) for road signs. All the diacritical marks were removed in the 1968 revision of the standard. The current standard is dated 1999.

[Richard W]

The system was created in 1939, extending the 1932 General System. It never took off,...

I'm not surprised the Precise System never took off. Even today it is a typographical challenge. The immediate cause may have been that it does not seem to have been thought through - and it can't have helped that most of the examples given in the specification seem not to follow the system! It's not even a faithful transliteration, as สุด and สุต are transliterated the same! That is, unless something was lost in translation. The reference I gave has a macron and a breve instead of two breves in the transliteration of เอือะ, which looks like a typo to me.

I'm still interested in documentation of the Precise System, including good faith attempts to use it.

... and today all one encounters is the General System as is used (albeit inconsistently) for road signs.

The graphic 'system' isn't dead yet - 'Suvarnabhumi' is the most recent manifestation of the diacritic-stripped form, even though some of us would prefer 'Suvarrnabhumi'.

All the diacritical marks were removed in the 1968 revision of the standard.

Did this removal extend to the precise system? I can't find a stand-alone definition of the 1968 form of the RTGS - I'm having to rely on the changes from the 1968 to the 1999 version and what was in the 1939 version. I get the impression that the Precise System was never formally updated.

One irritating removal from the general system was the removal of optional length marking. The 1932 system even allowed IPA length marks, which are a lot easier typographically than breves or macrons. It's a shame the General System never included optional tone marking.