Why does "เปิด" become "bert" or "bpret" ?

[bow]

In a very long thread people translate "เปิด" as "bert" or "bpret".

I don't understand why.

I see a thai "p",

a thai vowel that I, as a swedish speaker, would write "ö" but english speakers might write, I am not sure, but surly not "e" ?

and a letter that is pronounced as a (half) "t"

Where does the "r" come from ? There is no "r'" in the thai writing and no "r" in the thai pronunciation.

[Seligne2]

The vowel is a compound vowel: เ-ิ- (the two dashes there are placeholders for consonants). It is used frequently in words like เดิน (to walk) and เปิด (to open). It has a slight built-in "r" sound.

[RickBradford]

In a very long thread people translate "เปิด" as "bert" or "bpret".

I don't understand why.

I see a thai "p",

a thai vowel that I, as a swedish speaker, would write "ö" but english speakers might write, I am not sure, but surly not "e" ?

and a letter that is pronounced as a (half) "t"

Where does the "r" come from ? There is no "r'" in the thai writing and no "r" in the thai pronunciation.

The sound is exactly the same as the Swedish ö.

Because English doesn't have that vowel, we approximate it by using -er-, as in 'her', 'service' or "Bert".

You can write 'bpöt', we have to write 'bpert'. Sounds the same.

[Happy Grumpy]

Indeed.

Thread closed.

[jspill]

I see a thai "p",

It's a bp

Thai has a b, p, and bp mix

To me it really sounds more like a b than a p, it's a matter of opinion though

Same character in the word 'bai' for 'go' ไป , some write that as 'pai' in transliteration, again a matter of opinion. Sounds like a b to me though.

[KhunBENQ]

a thai vowel that I, as a swedish speaker, would write "ö" but english speakers might write, I am not sure, but surly not "e" ?

and a letter that is pronounced as a (half) "t"

Where does the "r" come from ? There is no "r'" in the thai writing and no "r" in the thai pronunciation.

You opened pandoras box!!! (transcription of Thai words for the English).

Close it quickly

You are Swedish, and of course an umlaut-o (ö) is exactly the right choice (I am Swiss-German),

There is absolutely no "r" sound in เปิด.

The "r" in the "English" transcript serves to lengthen the vowel/umlaut.

Listen to it and tell me where there is an "r"

Click to listen

The whole transcription is a big mess and serves confusion in many ways.

Complete useless examples (followed by RTGS):

Suvarnabhumi (an invention of Thai officials, letter by letter transcript ) -> Suwannaphum

Bhumibol (no Thai word ends with a spoken "L") -> Phumiphon.

เปิด -> poet (umlauts are written as "ae", "oe", "ue").

But as written: better forget it.

Transcripts are widely useless, ambiguous and some downright wrong for every user group (like the first two examples).

One of the consequences is the difficulty to find cities, places and streets with a navigation device by entering names in roman letters.

Without coordinates you are mostlly lost.

RTGS is useless for the English, as they suffer from some medieval vowel-shift which separates them from rest of world

Great Vowel Shift

[KhunBENQ]

Indeed.

Thread closed.

Agree.

It's an endless topic and big chaos.

[Johpa]

The 'r' is simply a relic of a late 19th century transliteration system that used the letter 'r' after vowels to represent phonemes in English that were not well represented in English by a single letter, the reason that Thailand is the hub of "porn". With today's modern keyboards one could insert a schwa 'Ə" to represent the vowel sound in pƏrt, but even that requires opening up the character map program on Windows and most people would have no idea what that letter represents. When learning Thai one just has to get over the fact that you will encounter many transliteration systems and just go with the flow.

Best just to learn Thai as the Thai alphabet was actually designed for the Thai language and his very phonetic. This is in contrast to English which uses an alphabet designed for a distantly related language, Latin, which has far fewer vowels that English. But why English did not adopt the umlaut is an interesting question.

[Richard W]

The sound is exactly the same as the Swedish ö.

Except that the Swedish sound is a rounded front vowel, while the Thai vowel is an unrounded back vowel.

[bow]

I like all your answers. Very polite, very correct. Thank you.

[Maestro]

In a very long thread people translate "เปิด" as "bert" or "bpret".

I believe you meant to write: In a very long thread people translate "เปิด" as "bert" or "bpert".

There is

• transliteration
• transcription
• pronunciation guide

"bpert" is part of the pronunciation guide used by the apparently popular Paiboon Thai-English dictionary and by some Thai language schools, also by thai2english.com. With this particular pronunciation guide, the non-aspirated letter p is shown as bp, the aspirated letter p as p.

"bpert", if pronounced the US English way with the voiced "r", might be a bit difficult to understand correctly by Thais.

[Maestro]

In the Royal Thai General System of Transcription (RTGS), which was intended principally for the transcription of the names of places and persons, เปิด would probably be transcribed as "poet"

Also ISO 11940-2 of the International Standards Organisation transcribes it as "poet"

[bow]

In the Royal Thai General System of Transcription (RTGS), which was intended principally for the transcription of the names of places and persons, เปิด would probably be transcribed as "poet"

Also ISO 11940-2 of the International Standards Organisation transcribes it as "poet"

This is my favorite, except that it should indicate the tone, which, according to "thai2english" is low tone - no surprise.

Thank you all for your interest in my little question. I will now move on.

[Maestro]

Removed an off-topic post.

[bearpolar]

In the Royal Thai General System of Transcription (RTGS), which was intended principally for the transcription of the names of places and persons, เปิด would probably be transcribed as "poet"

Also ISO 11940-2 of the International Standards Organisation transcribes it as "poet"

This is my favorite, except that it should indicate the tone, which, according to "thai2english" is low tone - no surprise.

Thank you all for your interest in my little question. I will now move on.

so you pronounce it like this?

[Richard W]

so you pronounce it like this?

No, it's not po-et. The vowel is 'oe' which, to an English ear, is like the 'oe' in Goethe or Goering, although the native English pronunciations are closer to the Thai vowel than the German pronunciations. Remember, Thai poet is a foreign word, not English.

[Maestro]

Thank you, Richard. Bearpolar seems mighty confused. I pointed out to him privately that nobody has written in this topic that the English pronunciation of "poet" is identical or similar to the pronunciation of the Thai word เปิด, yet he keeps posting that video clip and I keep removing it because it is off topic. I am tired of it now and leave it, letting him make a fool of himself.

[bearpolar]

not even close

[tgeezer]

I don't want to annoy Maestro but I think that goethe is close: เกอเทอ

[KhunBENQ]

I told you from the beginning: close this pandoras box (can of worms)

People who have lost their ability to pronounce proper vowels not to mention umlauts will never understand what it is all about.

"Ish bin ein Bearleener", that was on JFKs handwritten notee for his famous speech in Berlin 1961 (Ich bin ein Berliner / I am a Berliner)

[Richard W]

not even close

Wow! I hadn't realised how many people (women especially) have no idea how to pronounce Goering. I must have seen too many documentaries.

[tgeezer]

Yes, incredible isn't it? I don't think that anyone of my generation isn't familiar with that name.

I make no apology for sounding patronising but if one wants to learn a language why not learn all of it? If you only want to speak it, then you only need to hear it. A person who can do that would be a phenomenon so most 'need' to be able to write it down. Learning to do that entails learning a whole set of new consistent phonetic symbols rather than a higgledy piggledy collection upon which there is no agreement.

[Johpa]

"bpert", if pronounced the US English way with the voiced "r", might be a bit difficult to understand correctly by Thais.

Unless if course they hail from the "down east" coastal section of Maine located northeast of Eddie Bauer's original store in Freeport.