Lub?

[Bravo Mike]

help required please..... lub fun dee (good dream) lub?

[Rikker]

หลับ means to sleep, as in fall asleep. นอน means to lie horizontally, but หลับ is to actually enter a sleep state. I.e. you can นอน (lie down) without หลับ (sleeping), and you can also หลับ (sleep) without นอน (lying down)--I used to do the latter in school a lot.

So หลับฝันดี means something like "sweet dreams". นอนหลับฝันดี is also common.

[Johpa]

help required please..... lub fun dee (good dream) lub?

Perhaps lap (pronounced same as lop as in lop-eared rabbit) as in nown lap, the common verb to sleep. Basically "sweet dreams".

[Bravo Mike]

to Johpa and Rikker thanks for your help. Sometimes when I get these messages I find it difficult locate the word in my dictionary due to the spelling and translit problems.Thanks again Mike

[Rikker]

Perhaps lap (pronounced same as lop as in lop-eared rabbit)

I have a question about your personal English pronunciation, Johpa. When you say "lop-eared", what vowel are you using (give me IPA or a description of place/roundedness, if you can)?

For me, the vowel in หลับ is more like schwa, either that or short /a/ (low front unrounded vowel), whereas my pronunciation of "lop" is low back unrounded. That's why I ask. English vowel pronunciation varies quite a bit.

[meadish_sweetball]

Johpa must be North American; not sure which part exactly, but there is no other native English speaking area that pronounces 'lop' as Thai หลับ.

[Johpa]

Perhaps lap (pronounced same as lop as in lop-eared rabbit)

I have a question about your personal English pronunciation, Johpa. When you say "lop-eared", what vowel are you using (give me IPA or a description of place/roundedness, if you can)?

For me, the vowel in หลับ is more like schwa, either that or short /a/ (low front unrounded vowel), whereas my pronunciation of "lop" is low back unrounded. That's why I ask. English vowel pronunciation varies quite a bit.

Not being a rabbit breeder I suspect, if anything, I have been pronouncing the word in English incorrectly since birth. But I say [lop-eared] with the same vowel as in the word [cot]. My English dictionary uses a [ä] to denote the sound. It is the closest vowel in an example I could come up with. But I would never consider the vowel in หลับ to be the unstressed schwa [ə].

[Rikker]

You're right that Thai short /a/ isn't schwa, I wasn't being quite clear when I characterized it as such. But there's a difference between short /a/ with a final glottal stop (i.e. an "open" syllable), and with a final consonant.

When one says สระอะ, it's always a clear /a/, but in หลับ, for example, from my experience it is only pronounced like a clear short /a/ when said carefully. It's not schwa, but it's sort of leaning in that direction.

This, for example, is the basis for the punny Thai joke that goes:

ถ้าฉันมีปืนสองกระบอก ฉันจะให้เธอหนึ่งกระบอกและเก็บไว้หนึ่งกระบอก เพื่อจะได้มีกันและกัน

The play is on กัน and gun. If you want an American to say หลับ pretty accurately, just spell "lup" and ask them to read it, and to me that's pretty close to a fluid, colloquial Thai pronunciation of หลับ. What do you think?

[Rikker]

Anyhow, I guess the point is, that if for you หลับ is the same vowel as in the word "cot", then that means you would pronounce "cot" and ขัด the same. Is this in fact the case?

Because as I said, I'm an American who has merged the vowels in "father" and "God", for example, into the same low back unrounded vowel. Whereas the Thai /a/ is low front unrounded. Not the same thing at all to me. "Cot" and ขัด are not the same to me. ขัด is closer to "cut", if you ask me, although the Thai vowel is less centralized, further front.

[sabaijai]

Perhaps lap (pronounced same as lop as in lop-eared rabbit)

I have a question about your personal English pronunciation, Johpa. When you say "lop-eared", what vowel are you using (give me IPA or a description of place/roundedness, if you can)?

For me, the vowel in หลับ is more like schwa, either that or short /a/ (low front unrounded vowel), whereas my pronunciation of "lop" is low back unrounded. That's why I ask. English vowel pronunciation varies quite a bit.

Not being a rabbit breeder I suspect, if anything, I have been pronouncing the word in English incorrectly since birth. But I say [lop-eared] with the same vowel as in the word [cot]. My English dictionary uses a [ä] to denote the sound. It is the closest vowel in an example I could come up with. But I would never consider the vowel in หลับ to be the unstressed schwa [ə].

The vowel in หลับ is closer to the vowel in English 'but' than it is to the vowel in 'lop', to my ears. Most native English speakers, whether North American or British, I believe, would pronounce 'lop' more like ล๊อบ wouldn't they?

Freedictionary.com (North American) sound sample for 'lop':

lop sample

[Rikker]

For me "lop" is *more* like ล็อบ than หลับ, but it's not an exact match. For my dialect of English (Northwestern American), there's no exact vowel equivalent Thai to the vowel I say in "lop". Historically, English has distinguished between the vowels in pairs like caught/cot, where the former is like the Thai vowel ออ (low back rounded vowel), and the latter doesn't have an exact Thai equivalent (i.e. low back unrounded vowel).

For many dialects, though, including mine, those two vowels have merged into a single vowel, which is low back unrounded. And for that, there's no exact Thai equivalent. The Thai vowel อา is low front unrounded, which has no exact equivalent in many English dialects, although it has a famous equivalent in the Boston dialect (as in "Pahk the cah in Hahvud Yahd").

An easy way to check if you have this merger is to see if the words "cot" and "caught" are pronounced identically for you. If they are, your low back vowels are merged. Other pairs to try: "con" and "Kahn", and also see if "father" and "bother" rhyme.

So to summarize the answer briefly, it depends on whether one has merged the two vowels or not, and this merge is extremely common in America, though not universal. For a good article about this merger, follow this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cot-caught_merger

And for a good article explaining the mechanics of vowel articulation in general, here's another link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowels#Articulation