Would Thailand Benefit From Switching?

[aTomsLife]

As one capable of reading Thai, I can tell you it's damn near impossible to reproduce the Thai vowels sounds with the English alphabet. Not trying to be malicious, but your question seems absurd.

Actually all Thai sounds can be reproduced using the English alphabet but applying German pronounciation.

Remain the tones

I don't speak German, so I can't disagree with you. But that doesn't mean I have to believe you, either.

[aTomsLife]

As one capable of reading Thai, I can tell you it's damn near impossible to reproduce the Thai vowels sounds with the English alphabet. Not trying to be malicious, but your question seems absurd.

The Chinese successfully implemented pinyin, their romanised version. And I daresay Chinese is also tonal and have sounds not easily replicated.

And when romanising, they probably won't use "English alphabet" but some thing called international phonetics alphabet. It's not a new thing, this transliteration and Romanising of a language.

I got a feeling it's a question of control over the language...can't have foreigners playing around with it and becoming better at it than a Thai!!!

If the Chinese agree that a particular group of Roman letters make a particular sound in Chinese, who am I to argue. However, would a native English speaker read those same letters and produce the appropriate sound / tone / overall pronunciation as would a native Chinese speaker? I don't think so, if the way NES pronounce transliterated Thai is any indication.

My point is, even if the Roman alphabet were to be fully adopted in Thailand, it still would not function the same way as it does for Europeans. So then, what's the point? Thai has it's own functioning alphabet. It isn't the same as Chinese, with it's 10's of thousands of characters. There is no reason to Romanize Thai, and it wouldn't be written in a way that allowed westerners to learn correct pronunciation any easier. It's much simpler to spend some time diligently studying the Thai consonants, vowels and tone marks. It's not rocket science.

[manarak]

As one capable of reading Thai, I can tell you it's damn near impossible to reproduce the Thai vowels sounds with the English alphabet. Not trying to be malicious, but your question seems absurd.

Actually all Thai sounds can be reproduced using the English alphabet but applying German pronounciation.

Remain the tones

I don't speak German, so I can't disagree with you. But that doesn't mean I have to believe you, either.

"I don't speak German, so I can't disagree with you. " Disappointed? :-)

Actually, I wasn't completely accurate, the "open" vowels u,a and o, which occur in French have to be added to the German sounds for complete coverage of Thai sounds.

Edited May 16, 2013 by manarak

[Star Dust]

I speak read and write German, English, French and Thai and I can tell you that there is NO WAY a switch for the Thais could be possible in any way.

Besides; Thai is a wonderfully simple language once you get your head around it. Very hard to learn, but so simple in structure.

[Gsxrnz]

Personally, I think Thailand is being held back in its development politically, socially, and economically by its strong desire to hold on to some aspects of the culture. Language/Script is one area, as are other simple things such as the calendar (2556 etc), telling of the time of the day, and adherence to the address registration and other archaic government systems. These all made sense one or two centuries ago, but the world has moved on.

As to Romanising the Thai language - It's already been done in quite a number of forms of transliteration styles. All that really needs to be done is pick a style of transliteration, introduce it into schools at the same time as the Thai script is taught. At the same time teach English as mandatory. The country would obviously benefit tremendously from having English as a second language, and foreigners would have a fair chance of being able to learn to read and speak Thai using standard Romanised Thai, on the assumption that the native Thai reader/write/speaker knows the standard form of Romanisation. Imagine if there was a transliterated national newspaper? I'd be a subscriber for sure!

Many posters have stated that the tones and some consonants in Thai do not easily transliterate. Fine, they probably don't - but is that 3% that is difficult to Romanise, or 97%? I suspect from my admittedly limited Thai language skills that it's 3%. Not really a reason to discount the OP's suggestion.

Most posters are also assuming there is one form of spoken English. Far from the truth - there is one form of written English with some slight allowance for different spellings (color, colour - airplane,aeroplane etc.), but there are hundreds of spoken dialects and accents across the English speaking world that are never, or rarely written down.

Spoken English forms of Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Northern UK, Yorkshire, and many parts of the USA (to name a few), are rarely written down the way they are spoken. I'm sure therefore that the vagaries of the Thai spoken language can easily be accommodated into Roman characters. Look at the accents across the UK. At a guess I'd say that 50% of all spoken words are different to every other accent, yet written down identically.

I have a better chance of understanding a Norwegian speaking English that he learned from a Spaniard than I do understanding a Welshman speaking his own form of English without him modifying his speech for my ear. So if we assume that hundreds of variations of English have been standardised to one written form, it's not a huge leap to assume that the Thai written language can be Romanised satisfactorily for writing and speaking.

[aTomsLife]

Many posters have stated that the tones and some consonants in Thai do not easily transliterate. Fine, they probably don't - but is that 3% that is difficult to Romanise, or 97%? I suspect from my admittedly limited Thai language skills that it's 3%. Not really a reason to discount the OP's suggestion.

It's way, way more than 3%. Over 50% is my humble estimate. Most of the consonants can be transcribed, it's the vowels in addition to the tones where it gets funky. Again, if you studied Thai diligently, you'd realize it's more work to learn to correctly pronounce transliterated Thai than if you just studied the Thai alphabet.

As for referencing the many dialects of English, it's just not the same thing. With a few notable exceptions (Geordies, for one), NES can navigate the accents of native and non-native speakers alike. Most Thais, however, seem unable, or are simply unwilling to make the effort. If millions of westerners suddenly began speaking Thai, I'm sure they'd adapt. But there just aren't enough of us speaking Thai to encourage the progression.

I'm not PC at all, but this thread is so socially backward, made even more so by some posters assertions that Thais themselves would benefit from such a change.

Edited May 16, 2013 by aTomsLife

[aTomsLife]

As one capable of reading Thai, I can tell you it's damn near impossible to reproduce the Thai vowels sounds with the English alphabet. Not trying to be malicious, but your question seems absurd.

Actually all Thai sounds can be reproduced using the English alphabet but applying German pronounciation.

Remain the tones

I don't speak German, so I can't disagree with you. But that doesn't mean I have to believe you, either.

"I don't speak German, so I can't disagree with you. " Disappointed? :-)

Actually, I wasn't completely accurate, the "open" vowels u,a and o, which occur in French have to be added to the German sounds for complete coverage of Thai sounds.

Ah, I see. Why didn't you say so in the first place? Now, let's be clear: in order to learn Thai, one would be better served by a transliteration system that required learning the German alphabet and a few French vowels. Yes, I see now. That's much easier, and totally worth a society giving up a significant part of its cultural identity for.

[Gsxrnz]

Many posters have stated that the tones and some consonants in Thai do not easily transliterate. Fine, they probably don't - but is that 3% that is difficult to Romanise, or 97%? I suspect from my admittedly limited Thai language skills that it's 3%. Not really a reason to discount the OP's suggestion.

It's way, way more than 3%. Over 50% is my humble estimate. Most of the consonants can be transcribed, it's the vowels in addition to the tones where it gets funky. Again, if you studied Thai diligently, you'd realize it's more work to learn to correctly pronounce transliterated Thai than if you just studied the Thai alphabet.

As for referencing the many dialects of English, it's just not the same thing. With a few notable exceptions (Geordies, for one), NES can navigate the accents of native and non-native speakers alike. Most Thais, however, seem unable, or are simply unwilling to make the effort. If millions of westerners suddenly began speaking Thai, I'm sure they'd adapt. But there just aren't enough of us speaking Thai to encourage the progression.

I'm not PC at all, but this thread is so socially backward, made even more so by some posters assertions that Thais themselves would benefit from such a change.

I appreciate what you're saying, but I don't think you've grasped my main point regarding transliteration. I'll use a totally obscure comparison here unrelated to Thai - if the letters gh in English can be used in various words to make totally different sounds such as rough, bough, borough, thought, drought, ghost, ghoul etc, then it really doesn't matter what Roman characters are used in Transliterated Thai, as long as the rules are known and pronunciation is as spoken by a native.

In transliterated Thai, the letter Z could be used to replace ngor ngue if you wanted to. Ok, that's not really logical I agree, but provided the standardisation was widely used by westerners and Thais, whatever spelling was used would be standard for writing, and standard for speaking.

Re my comparison of the English accents, just think of how many ways we can pronounce so many words but they are all written the same. To the extent that a bloke from Liverpool speaking his English to an American from the everglades of America may as well be speaking a totally different language - that's why they put subtitles on TV, and why there aren't too many Liverpudlians in the Everglades.

I can see you're an enthusiast and you've mastered written and spoken Thai, I wish I had the diligence and the stamina to get to that level. It does seem however that the majority of developing countries around the world have their own script, while those that have Romanised, or are more willing to have a dual system, have prospered more.

[aTomsLife]

Thanks for your thoughtful reply, Gsxrnz. I grasp what you're saying, I simply don't agree for the most part is all. Heavily accented, and even mildly mispronounced English, is still understandable. In Thai, it's easy to say a completely different word if vowel length or tone is off even slightly.

To pick up your point, sure, what the Chinese have done with the letter 'X' is truly commendable. But, again, it's a necessity for them, as most people don't have the time to learn thousands, much less tens-of-thousands of characters. This issue simply doesn't exist in learning Thai.

As for having mastered Thai, I'm in no position to make that claim. But if anything, my level lends credence to my arguments: even for one such as myself with a basic grasp of Thai, it's simpler and more efficient to study the Thai alphabet; transliteration only muddies the water. Now this in no way is meant to discredit your argument about developing countries benefiting from a properly thought out and implemented transliteration system. Transliterating Khmer, for example, given there are no tones, may indeed benefit Cambodia. I'm just saying this isn't the case for Thais and Thailand.

Edited May 16, 2013 by aTomsLife

[HeijoshinCool]

You can lead a horse (perhaps mule is more appropriate) to water, but you can't make 'em drink ....

[samran]

Why do I get the feeling that those who support this idea are those who really can't be arsed to learn a bit of Thai?

[jvs]

Samran maybe your feeling is wrong?

[manarak]

Ah, I see. Why didn't you say so in the first place? Now, let's be clear: in order to learn Thai, one would be better served by a transliteration system that required learning the German alphabet and a few French vowels. Yes, I see now. That's much easier, and totally worth a society giving up a significant part of its cultural identity for.

I just wanted to correct the misconception that Thai sounds don't exist in western language.

Actually, I'm totally in favor of Thailand keeping its alphabet - maybe some further simplification is needed.

As they regularly drop letters from the alphabet, they could get rid of 5 or 6 more letters.

If only more people could learn English!

Edited May 16, 2013 by manarak

[beechguy]

As one capable of reading Thai, I can tell you it's damn near impossible to reproduce the Thai vowels sounds with the English alphabet. Not trying to be malicious, but your question seems absurd.

Actually all Thai sounds can be reproduced using the English alphabet but applying German pronounciation.

Remain the tones

I don't speak German, so I can't disagree with you. But that doesn't mean I have to believe you, either.

"I don't speak German, so I can't disagree with you. " Disappointed? :-)

Actually, I wasn't completely accurate, the "open" vowels u,a and o, which occur in French have to be added to the German sounds for complete coverage of Thai sounds.

And why would we bother? My leases and agreements are in English, I can easliy get translated copies of accounting records, business documents, etc. and my accountant and lawyer speak and write English. Not to mention signs and other items have English translations, what else would I need that's not available.

Edited May 16, 2013 by beechguy

[ravip]

I guess life is a cycle... a long cycle.

When you have the cake you expect all to bow down to you.

But the cake change hands...

History says so.

Today, we are experiencing how the cake is moving...

Edited May 16, 2013 by ravip

[jvs]

@Ravip can you explain?

[bangkockney]

The problem is you'd end up with some other system to represent tones.

Thai script does a wonderful job already of telling your exactly how words should be pronounced.

Edited May 16, 2013 by bangkockney

[fletchsmile]

If Thais really knew what was best for them, don't you think they'd like to speak English? It is the latin of the modern world. If you want to do business you learn English.

I suspect that in 20 years time you'll be saying 'if you want to do business you learn Mandarin'.

Except that english is firmly entrenched as the language of business, not least because many contracts are written in english and enacted under the English law - which commands a level of international trust that the Chinese might struggle attaining,

More linguistic arrogance. In the 19th century German was firmly entrenched as THE language of science. If you wanted to do science you learnt German. Nowadays you learn English. Next century?

All is change...

Except also that German and English languages share many common roots and histories, so the transition from German to English was not such a drastic change, and more of an evolution.

Chinese as you suggest would be a whole different leap to another branch of language rather than an evolutionary change.

Fletch

[Star Dust]

bla bla bla bla bla bla.......

Get Thai'd.......

bla bla bla bla........

[Jaybonnaza]

Impossible for it to do . Thai people as nice are they are can hardly calculate let alone use a new alphabet ... The wife is relearning the ten times table as we speak

[Naam]

Mandarin, which is much more tonal than Thai, has been romanized by developing Hanyu Pinyin more than 30 years ago, i.e. nobody can tell me this is not possible with Thai. but that of course is not a valid reason why Thailand should abolish its script which is indeed a part of its culture.

[impulse]

As long as you can get all the characters on one keyboard, I don't see any technical advantage to changing the alphabet.

Mandarin has been standardized with Pinyin, but typing requires entering the Pinyin, then selecting from several choices based on tones, etc.

I do think Thailand would be well served if they were to standardize the western spelling as the Chinese did with Pinyin, not so drastic as giving up the alphabet...

Edited May 17, 2013 by impulse