Talk:Royal Thai General System of Transcription

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Horrible little stub, please expand. The obvious thing to add would be the official English/Thai/English mapping tables. Jpatokal 07:44, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Is this the same as the "romanization guideline proposed by The Royal Institute (1982)"? Then http://www.arts.chula.ac.th/%7Eling/tts/ would be a great external link for this article, and there's also a PDF with the complete rules for that romanization scheme. andy 08:11, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Hard to say for sure, but it sure looks like it (and how many royal systems can there be?). Do you have a direct link for the PDF, since I couldn't find it? Jpatokal 08:18, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I didn't find it on that site directly either, but IIRC it came together with that windows software. andy 08:22, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I do agree that the "Royal" trascript has the problems mentioned in the article: "...since it does not differentiate between short and long vowels, or the following differences in pronunciation: จ and ฉ/ช; โอะ and ออ...", however I don't understand the problem with อึ (ue) and เออ (oe). Besides there is another major problem, that the transcript does not include the tones, which are easy to be transcripted as in IPA's system. An improved trascription I saw on http://www.geocities.com/raz_h_h .
Maybe the latter refers to an older version of the system? Anyway I've removed it now. Markalexander100 04:32, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Is H silent in Thai transliteration?

How does the romanization of Thai work? Is the letter H silent in the system? The reason I ask is that Thailand is pronounced as Tailand, Phuket is pronounced as Puket, Phi Phi Islands is pronounced as Pee Pee Islands. Kowloonese 00:47, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)

'H' in combinations means that the preceding consonant is aspirated. If standalone, it's pronounced like the English H. I've added a note about this to the article. Jpatokal 03:40, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. It was confusing because the English language uses PH and TH for different sound more than just aspiration. So in Thailand, do people read English differently? e.g. Tis is my telepone number. Kowloonese 21:28, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)

Thinglish would be worthy of its own article... but yeah, esp. 'th' is among the most unusual phonemes in English and many ESL speakers pronounce it as 't' or 'd'. The 'ph'→'f' thing is relatively well known though and, very confusingly, occasionally even pops up in nonstandard transliterations of Thai. Jpatokal 02:41, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Tinglish. ;) Mark1 04:49, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Just want to clarify that two different (or more) charactors in Thai language are pronounced as the same sound such as ท and ธ. They're pronounced excatly the same but written. So the government define word as T for ท and Th for ธ, then as you known how that sounds?

same as พ and ภ for P and PH respectively. --manop 21:59, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

If you are talking about the Royal Thai General System of Transcription you are mistaken. TH is used both for ท and ธ. The T is used for ต, which is pronounced quite differently. Similarly PH is for both พ and ภ, while P is used for ป.
Sorry for my misunderstading between transcription and transliteration. manop

[edit] T-TH, P-PH

Thai goverment system uses "H" as "a symbol" for different sounds. I saw some learning-Thai book, they use diifferent systems which is be useful for representing the spoken word as shown below

Charactor(s) Royal Thai system Another system Remark
ฐ ฑ ฒ ถ ท ธ TH T sound as /t/
ฎ ต T DT sound closer to /th/ than /t/
พ ภ ผ PH P sound as /p/
ป P BP sound like 50% /b/ and 50% /p/

--manop 23:51, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

It's not clear to me what the above writer is trying to say. Yes, there are many ways of transcribing Thai, used by various editors of language guides. For consistency, Wikipedia tries to stick to the RTGS Royal Thai General System of Transcription (using only the standard latin alphabet) and to the IPA International Phonetic Alphabet, (including some special characters and diacritics).
As to the facts in the table above:
  • th (ท thahan) and ph (พ phan) are aspirated (pronounced with a puff of air)
  • t (ต tao) and p (ป pla) are not aspirated
The RTGS system as well as IPA use the symbol "h" to indicate aspiration (IPA as a superscript)
Some confusion may be caused by the following facts in English (but not many other languages using the latin alphabet):
  • a leading t or p before a vowel are pronounced aspirated
  • th and ph have a completely different pronuncation (affricative)
So the statements in the column remark are not correct in the phonetic view outside of English context
−Woodstone 18:22, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
That was I would like to say ^_^ Similar to the word "Phuket" as someone already said that. When it used in THailand pronounced as \aspirated P\ but outside of Thailand pronounced as \f\ --manop 07:10, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Competing transcription methods

Should the article mention competing transcription methods? For instance, the sanskrit transcription method commonly used for royal names (turning "Phumiphon Adunyadet" into "Bhumibol Adulyadej"). Patiwat 02:42, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

  • Write an article about it and it'll definitely be worth a "See also" link. Jpatokal 03:07, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
    • Sorry, but I'm too lazy. Partly because the Royal/"Indian" method is very inconsistant. I never figured out why "Ubol Ratana" was used rather than "Ubol Rat", whereas "Sirindhorn" is used rather than "Sirindhara". For that matter, "Bhumibol" should be "Bhumibala". Generally, the Royal/Indian system is pretty consistant with consonants, but falls apart with vowels. Patiwat 02:55, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Major Reworking of Article 25 Sept 2006 -- Plus Request for More Work

I've reworked the article substantially to present the information more clearly. Both the bulleted items in the former "Features" section, and the chart with imitated English pronunciaiton in the former "Criticisms" section were awkward or confusing.

To Be Done Still:

Add an IPA phonetic symbol for "ue" in the new "Features and Limitations" section (and correct the symbols I used for "ae" and "oe" if not accurate).

Expand/Redo the chart. It needs IPA symbols, and these should be for each sound. This means reworking the chart so that, for example, there is a row for both the short version of a vowel and the long version of that vowel, like:

 Thai letter -- RTGS "a" -- IPA [a]
 Thai letter -- RTGS "a" -- IPA [a:]
I'm afraid I consider the recent "major rewording" not an improvement. The previous version was much clearer on features and criticisms. Adding IPA is not a good idea. That is already explained in detail in the Thai alphabet and Thai language articles. This article is about one partcular transcription method. No need to involve others in detail as well. −Woodstone 16:42, 26 September 2006 (UTC)