Several Thai English-Thai dictionaries show the pronunciation of English words using Thai letters. English sounds that do not have a corresponding Thai letter are often shown by underlining the letter for the nearest Thai equivalent, so the sound of 'shape' may be written เชป. I want to find out what methods are actually used on computers to do this underlining. Are there any websites that show English pronunication in this way?

The reason for asking this question is that there is currently a query before the Unicode Consortium as to how this sort of underlining should be done for one of Thailand's minority languages. Using mark-up, as I did above, is a poor solution for 'plain text'. There is another method of doing the underlining, namely to add the 'macron below' accent, as in เช̱ป, though this will not work with all fonts. (Many of us will see a square box rather than an underline.)

The real problem comes when the vowel appears below the consonant, as in the pronunciation of 'shoe'. Using mark-up one gets ชู, while with the accent one gets ชู̱. The desired appearance is for the vowel sign to be completely below the underline, as it is in one of my paper dictionaries, and it is currently unlikely that the text will display that way on anyone's computer. A common display is for the underline to cut through the vowel, as it does in a 1998 SE-ED dictionary. At present there is a widespread interpretation that if the accent is used, the underline should be below the vowel, which no-one regards as satisfactory. The solution may be affected by how much the accent is being used, and therefore I am searching for facts to inform the decision.

Note to Admins:

I wasn't too sure where to put this post. I did consider 'Internet, computers, communication, technology in Thailand'.

HI Richard.

PM me if you do not receive any responses here and I will move the topic to the Internet, computers forum for you later.

I'm not sure there is a way to do it, especially one that would be cross-browser and compatible with most fonts. I tried a variation using CSS positioning and Javascript, but the results were only a marginal improvement on using a 'macron below' or similar character, and with the disadvantage of the added markup needed. The printed dictionaries can use a custom font without worrying about other issues, so I'd guess that's how they do it although I don't really know. If you do find a way of doing it though, I'd be interested to know what it is too.