Small translation needed

[Belamar]

I'm not thai (a woman is speaking)

I'm filippina (a woman is speaking)

She is not thai

She is Filippina

How do I translate these 4?

[Mole]

ดิฉันไม่ใช่คนไทย

ดิฉันเป็นคนฟิลิปปินส์

เธอไม่ใช่คนไทย

เธอเป็นคนฟิลิปปินส์

ดิฉัน is somewhat formal, but there will be no ambiguity that both sentences are referring to a woman/female.

If the setting is more casual, one can also just say ฉัน (which is gender neutral) and by context will be understood as female.

ฉันไม่ใช่คนไทย

ฉันเป็นคนฟิลิปปินส์

If the setting is very formal, one can use ชาวไทย instead:

ดิฉันไม่ใช่ชาวไทย

ดิฉันเป็นชาวฟิลิปปินส์

เธอไม่ใช่ชาวไทย

เธอเป็นชาวฟิลิปปินส์

Edited December 27, 2013 by Mole

[Belamar]

Could you tell how it is pronounced roughly using English alphabet? Or a link where I can see it myself because google translate can't translate the first phrase.

[txp158]

ดิฉัน ไม่ใช่ คนไทย

Dee-shan mai-chai kon-Thai

ดิฉัน เป็น คนฟิลิปปินส์
Dee-shan pen kon-philipine.

เธอ ไม่ใช่ คนไทย

Ter mai-chai kon-Thai

เธอเป็นคนฟิลิปปินส์

Ter pen kon-philipine

[Mole]

ดิฉันไม่ใช่คนไทย

di-chan mai chai khon thai

ดิฉันเป็นคนฟิลิปปินส์

di-chan pen khon filipin

เธอไม่ใช่คนไทย

thoe mai chai khon thai

เธอเป็นคนฟิลิปปินส์

thoe pen khon filipin

[Belamar]

Thanks.

[AyG]

Could you tell how it is pronounced roughly using English alphabet? Or a link where I can see it myself because google translate can't translate the first phrase.

I hope you fully appreciate that there's no way that using the English alphabet can represent the sounds of the Thai language accurately, and that the representations others have posted don't include tones which are pretty much essential for a Thai person to understand what you're saying.

In short, I think what you're asking for is not going to produce the results you hope for.

[Richard W]

I hope you fully appreciate that there's no way that using the English alphabet can represent the sounds of the Thai language accurately,...

is no more true than claiming that there is no way that using the Thai alphabet can represent the sounds of the Thai language accurately.

When this forum was new, we thrashed out a way of representing Thai nearly as accurately as any phonemic system. The only tricky part is that vowel nuclei represented by a digraph (namely ae, oe, ue, ia and ua) or trigraph (uea) are long unless otherwise indicated - and it so happens that for these nuclei, being long is commoner than being short. In these cases, vowel length is indicated by an 'L' or an 'S' in the same bracket as the tone, or being long may be indicated by doubling the first vowel. Whether one writes the word for 'mother' as [F]mae, [F]maae or [FL]mae is purely a matter of taste; they indicate the same pronunciation. Apart from that, the scheme is self-evident after a few lines. The scheme has fallen by the wayside, perhaps because it forces people to show details that are sufficiently often not correctly indicated by the Thai spelling.

The main omission from the scheme is stress. There is also a minority view that the presence or absence of a final glottal stop after vowels other than /ia/, /ua/ and /uea/ can be a phonemic difference.

Upgrading Mole's transcriptions of his translations to show tone:

ดิฉันไม่ใช่คนไทย

[L]di [R]chan [F]mai [F]chai [M]khon [M]thai

ดิฉันเป็นคนฟิลิปปินส์

[L]di [R]chan [M]pen [M]khon [H]fi[H]lip[M]pin

เธอไม่ใช่คนไทย

[M]thoe [F]mai [F]chai [M]khon [M]thai

เธอเป็นคนฟิลิปปินส์

[M]thoe [M]pen [M]khon [H]fi[H]lip[M]pin

Remarkably, [M]thoe is the only example of a long vowel nucleus in this sample.

My correction of 'filipin' to '[H]fi[H]lip[M]pin' may be wrong - it is possible that the normal pronunciation actually is '[H]fi[H]li[M]pin' despite the presence of double po pla in the spelling. I thought the last syllable was [M]piin, but that might just be a local (= England) variation or even just my imagination.

I may be wrong about the usual tones of [L]di[R]chan; the informal alternative is supposed to usually be [H]chan, but some claim that [R]chan is in fact its usual form.

[AyG]

I hope you fully appreciate that there's no way that using the English alphabet can represent the sounds of the Thai language accurately,...

is no more true than claiming that there is no way that using the Thai alphabet can represent the sounds of the Thai language accurately.

What you write is, of course, incontrovertibly true. The sounds of any language could be represented by any set of arbitrary symbols. I stand corrected.

I should, perhaps, have written what I was really thinking at the time, but didn't for fear of offending the OP. This was along the lines of "You have asked for a translation which shows that you know nothing about the Thai language. You have no chance whatsoever of being able to pronounce the translations accurately based upon some English alphabet representation of the phrases. Assuming you're a native English speaker you won't be able to pronounce some of the consonants correctly - even if you understand the difference between "p" and "ph" - and that "ph" isn't pronounced as in words like "phonic" or "photo". And some of the vowels sounds are going to be totally alien to you, too. I also suspect that you don't speak a tonal language, and even if you do, it's unlikely to have exactly the same tone profiles as Thai. You also need to bear in mind that Thai people for the most part are exceptionally unable/unwilling to understand foreigners speaking their language with dodgy sounds and tones. In other words, your request was rather naive, and in short you're unlikely to be able to communicate what you want with the Romanisations presented here.

[Richard W]

You have asked for a translation which shows that you know nothing about the Thai language.

I don't agree. Balamar may have been wondering whether verbs/adjectives or nouns would be used, and the use of 'she' may indicate confusion as to what the usual pronoun is.

It is possible to learn to speak Thai without learning to read it, much as one may think that is inadvisable. The request for 'how it is pronounced roughly using English alphabet' could indicate that Balamar felt capable of identifying the words from a rough pronunciation and guessed gloss, and that if he wanted the precise pronunciation, he could then proceed from there.

Alternatively, he could just be looking for some sentences for a novel! Using a dictionary to give foreign colour could be embarrassing, as in 'It's Irish, Jim, but not as we know it'.

You have no chance whatsoever of being able to pronounce the translations accurately based upon some English alphabet representation of the phrases.... And some of the vowels sounds are going to be totally alien to you, too. I also suspect that you don't speak a tonal language, and even if you do, it's unlikely to have exactly the same tone profiles as Thai.... You also need to bear in mind that Thai people for the most part are exceptionally unable/unwilling to understand foreigners speaking their language with dodgy sounds and tones. In other words, your request was rather naive, and in short you're unlikely to be able to communicate what you want with the Romanisations presented here.

Pretty much the same would apply even if Balamar understood the Thai script.