Are these two words correct, for GUI CHAAI?

กูไฉ้ GUI CHAAI (shown as Chinese leek 韭菜)

กูไฉ้ขาว GUI CHAAI KAAO (shown as white Chinese leek 白韭菜)

I have only come across กุยช้าย as GUI CHAAI so far, for Chinese Chives. Perhaps they are different vegetables, or a mistake.

Thanks for your help.

Edited May 18, 201412 yr by Kanga Japan

(deleted) I have no better idea than กุยช้าย

http://www.thai-language.com/id/140476

http://www.thai-language.com/mp3/E140476.mp3

The other spellings give ? on all dictionaries that I use.

Edited May 18, 201412 yr by KhunBENQ

Dear KhunBENQ,

Thanks for your reply. I appreciate you checking.

The sound attachment is good too.

The spelling is กุยช่าย mai aek, not mai toe.

If you do a verbatim search for the first word, there are very few results and virtually all of them are for Chinese websites.

I suspect that what has happened is that someone Chinese has written a phonetic version of their pronunciation in Thai script, not knowing the correct Thai name.

In short: I think those words are wrong.

Thanks Murf,

I appreciate your information.

Thanks AyG,

I sort of guessed that it may be a wrong spelling. Glad to have it confirmed.

I will remove it from the list.

Thanks for the info. I always thought it was pronounced กุ๊ยช่าย

Thanks for the info. I always thought it was pronounced กุ๊ยช่าย

You're not alone in thinking that. There are lots of websites that use mai trii on the first syllable, though mai chattawa appears to be more common.

Thanks for the info. I always thought it was pronounced กุ๊ยช่าย

You're not alone in thinking that. There are lots of websites that use mai trii on the first syllable, though mai chattawa appears to be more common.

Could it be that the rising tone changes to high tone that's why you sometimes see mai tri? E.g. หนังสือ (นั้งสือ)

Could it be that the rising tone changes to high tone that's why you sometimes see mai tri? E.g. หนังสือ (นั้งสือ)

Not quite sure what you mean. หนังสือ is irregular. It's written with a rising tone for the first syllable, but it's actually pronounced mid tone. No high tone there that I'm aware of.

Could it be that the rising tone changes to high tone that's why you sometimes see mai tri? E.g. หนังสือ (นั้งสือ)

Not quite sure what you mean. หนังสือ is irregular. It's written with a rising tone for the first syllable, but it's actually pronounced mid tone. No high tone there that I'm aware of.

That's really interesting. There seems to be a dialectal or generational difference here. I checked my dictionary, and it says that the first syllable in "book" is mid tone, but some sources (and my native consultants) say it with a high tone. My point was that based on the assumption that the first syllable is high tone in "book", gui chaai would have the same pattern, i.e. the first syllable is written with rising tone but pronounced as high tone. This is an interesting topic.

หนัง is definitely a rising tone. 100%.

หนัง is definitely a rising tone. 100%.

Oh I know it is.

We were talking about หนัง in หนังสือ in non-careful speech which is often not pronounced as rising tone by people from Bangkok.

I've never heard a Bangkokian pronounce it any other way.

I've never heard a Bangkokian pronounce it any other way.

I don't know where she's from but she doesn't pronounce the first syllable as rising tone:

The attached image is from sealang.net The dictionary acknowledges that "book" has irregular pronunciation as AyG said.

There was an intro to Thai book that I've read which also says that "book" has irregular pronunciation along with ฉัน เขา.

I have two native Thai speakers sitting next to me right now, and they both only say the first syllable as rising in careful/citation speech. (note though that if it was by itself, i.e. "skin" then it would always be rising tone). In connected speech, they don't pronounce the first word of the disyllabic word (or some linguists analyze it as a sesquisyllabic word) as rising tone.

Edited May 27, 201412 yr by nalaknarak