NaiGreg Posted August 2, 2014 Share Posted August 2, 2014 I see conflicting information in dictionaries and other references on the pronunciation of ใต้ (dtâai (long) vs. dtâi (short)) Are there any hard-and-fast rules for this? Any times it is mid-length? Thanks, NG Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phuketsub Posted August 2, 2014 Share Posted August 2, 2014 My wife says it is always 'long'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidHouston Posted August 2, 2014 Share Posted August 2, 2014 Ask the Thai person to say the following two sentences: ไปได้ไหม ไปได้ Compare the vowel length in each ได้. Are they different? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SlyAnimal Posted August 2, 2014 Share Posted August 2, 2014 Ask the Thai person to say the following two sentences: ไปได้ไหม ไปได้ Compare the vowel length in each ได้. Are they different? hehe you made the same mistake I initially did when reading this thread. He's asking about ใต้ not ไต้ (Although as far as I'm aware, the rules should be exactly the same for both ใ & ไ). @OP - Do you have some examples in context, of when you think that ใต้ is short, and when it's long? (similar to what the previous poster posted). 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidHouston Posted August 2, 2014 Share Posted August 2, 2014 You're right, Sly Animal, I did misread his post. However, I think that the long/short distinction in practice exists in the ได้ context also. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AyG Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 It's irregular. It's always pronounced long, though written as if short. Dictionaries sometimes get this stuff wrong. Benjawan Poomsan Becker is particularly notable in this respect, basing vowel length upon the written spelling, rather than the common pronunciation. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NaiGreg Posted August 3, 2014 Author Share Posted August 3, 2014 It's irregular. It's always pronounced long, though written as if short. Dictionaries sometimes get this stuff wrong. Benjawan Poomsan Becker is particularly notable in this respect, basing vowel length upon the written spelling, rather than the common pronunciation.Thanks. You're right about the dictionaries getting it wrong sometimes.thai-language.com has it as both short/longPaiboon Publishing app has it as longSEAlang dict. has it as longthai2english has it short Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AyG Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 To add to the list: LEXiTRON has it long Paiboon = Benjawan Poomsan Becker so I'd ignore that. Frequently wrong. thai-language.com uses a computer algorithm to work out its pronunciation, and freely admits it sometimes gets it wrong. It's definitely long. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kriswillems Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 (edited) Under the tree : ใต้ต้นไม้ : short or long รถไฟใต้ดิน : short or long The south : ภาคใต้ : long only พัทยาใต้ : long only Edited August 3, 2014 by kriswillems 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NaiGreg Posted August 3, 2014 Author Share Posted August 3, 2014 Under the tree : ใต้ต้นไม้ : short or long รถไฟใต้ดิน : short or long The south : ภาคใต้ : long only พัทยาใต้ : long only So, could we generalize and say that ใต้ is short or long when meaning 'under' but always long when meaning 'south' ? If so, that is the only irregularly pronounced word I am aware of that has a conditional pronunciation based on meaning rather than on position in a compound. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AyG Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 Under the tree : ใต้ต้นไม้ : short or long รถไฟใต้ดิน : short or long The south : ภาคใต้ : long only พัทยาใต้ : long only So, could we generalize and say that ใต้ is short or long when meaning 'under' but always long when meaning 'south' ? If so, that is the only irregularly pronounced word I am aware of that has a conditional pronunciation based on meaning rather than on position in a compound. Whilst I'm on the fence as to whether kriswillems is correct about this word having two vowel lengths, it's not the meaning, but it's the positioning. If it comes at the end of a compound word it's always long. If it's at the start it's (possibly) short. It's the same for a few other words such as น้ำ, ไม้ and ได้. The meaning distinction here is purely coincidental. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard W Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 thai-language.com uses a computer algorithm to work out its pronunciation, and freely admits it sometimes gets it wrong.There are also manual overrides (both complete and semi-algorithmic), but there is no way of telling whether pronunciations have been corrected. It also suffers badly from the design assumption that Thai morphemes are invariant, whereas in fact both spelling and pronunciation depend on context. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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