Pronunciation of บัณฑิต

[QuantumMech]

My mom and I were watching the news and there was a mention of a 91-year-old lady graduating with a degree in มนุษยนิเวศศาสตร์. I had no idea what that was, and my mom, despite being born and university-educated in Thailand, hadn't heard of it either. It wasn't in the dictionaries I checked, but I found a page on a university's website describing their มนุษยนิเวศศาสตร์ program. I was reading the page to my mom and when I came across the word บัณฑิต, I pronounced it [M]ban[H]thit. My mom corrected me and said it was [M]ban[L]dit. I didn't believe her, but it turns out she's right :)

 

The "RTGS and the ThaiVisa Modification" topic here specifically mentions that word, saying "The letter ฑ tho montho appears twice, for there is a small group of words in which it pronounced like ด". Anyone know why it's pronounced that way? Is there any way to tell by looking at the word, or do you just have to remember the words where ฑ is pronounced like ด? If the latter, is there a list somewhere?

 

P.S. Apparently มนุษยนิเวศศาสตร์ is "human ecology". Which I still haven't heard of :) Kids and their new-fangled majors! :)

Edited August 10, 2017 by QuantumMech

[Briggsy]

I don't know the reason. But I do know more than one university that has บัณฑิต in its name so if you have cause to use the name of Thurakij Bundit or any of the others, it will stick fairly quickly.

 

I can't think of any other words off hand that have a ฑ pronounced as a ด but I am sure someone will come along with a list in a minute. I am pretty sure you will have to learn the list and there is no way of knowing just by looking at the spelling.

 

I believe the same Pali-Sanskrit source also gives us the English 'pundit'.

 

Here is a good explanation in Thai.

Edited August 10, 2017 by Briggsy

[QuantumMech]

Thanks for the link! It looks like บัณฑิต is the only remotely common word where the ฑ is pronounced as ด--at least I've never heard of any of those other words (I had heard บัณฑิต spoken, but I didn't know it was spelled that way).

[Briggsy]

The words listed are not familiar to me except บุณฑริก (it's a district of Ubon!). They look like words only used by monks or Thai scholars of Pali-Sanskrit or possibly archaic or terms when addressing the royal family.

 

It would be interesting to ask someone from Ubon how บุณฑริก is pronounced.

[tgeezer]

There is a choice. บุณฑริก น. (บุนดะริก, บุนทะริก) น. บัวขาว


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[digbeth]

While in Thai the letters ฑ ฏ ฐ and such are no longer distinguished from the ด ท ถ I believe it used to sounds like arabic, with a nasal component or like for the d, pronounce it like you have a lisp

[tgeezer]

I don't quite understand what you mean by distinguished. All three of these letters are used to distinguish words from one another.


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[Richard W]

On 11/08/2017 at 11:13 AM, digbeth said:

While in Thai the letters ฑ ฏ ฐ and such are no longer distinguished from the ด ท ถ I believe it used to sounds like arabic, with a nasal component or like for the d, pronounce it like you have a lisp

There's no evidence that the phonetic distinction was ever made in Thai.  The difference is a difference made in Pali and Sanskrit, and preserved in much of India.  The rarer ones are 'retroflex', said with the tongue curled back or at the gums, while the commoner ones are made with the tongue against the actual teeth.  The difference also shows up in Swedish and in the Dentdale dialect in England, where the retroflexion is the reflex of a preceding rhotic consonant (broadly /r/ - I'm not going to argue phonetic details).

 

In the SE Asian scripts that don't have a ด do dek, the modern distinction of /d/ and /t/ is made in writing by using the retroflex consonant for /d/.  This is true for Khmer, which I suspect is the origin of the rare Thai pronunciation /d/ for ฑ, and the Lanna script, which uses its equivalent of ฑ, and no other retroflex, for /d/.  The Thai distinction between ฎ do chada and ฏ to patak would prevent confusing interference from the other specific letter for /d/ in Khmer - its equivalent of to patak.

 

[rak sa_ngop]

On 8/10/2017 at 3:15 PM, QuantumMech said:

Thanks for the link! It looks like บัณฑิต is the only remotely common word where the ฑ is pronounced as ด--at least I've never heard of any of those other words (I had heard บัณฑิต spoken, but I didn't know it was spelled that way).

บัณฑิต

Another similar word is บัณเฑาะก์ which I assume is pronounced ban-do. This word is useful to know if you visit certain schools and need to use the toilets. I saw this on a BBC news feature about some Thai schools having to provide separate  บัณเฑาะก์   signed  toilets for certain male students to put on their make-up etc because the girls objected to them using their toilets.

[Richard W]

17 hours ago, rak sa_ngop said:

บัณฑิต

Another similar word is บัณเฑาะก์ which I assume is pronounced ban-do.

Now that pronunciation (confirmed by the RID) definitely looks Khmer.  It shows the conditional merger of final /k/ and glottal stop after P/S /a/.