Thai romanization with tones
Rob Reed
Maybe you've already discussed the topic of romanization of Thai in
this news group. I'm new. I'd like to know if there is a standard
way of writing Thai using the English alphabet, that accounts for
tones/inflection, and if there isn't, would one be helpful?
In the off chance you want to write something more than merely "hello"
and "thank you" in Thai, to other readers of this newsgroup, how do
you do it without refering to the English translation? For example,
how do you differentiate between the romanized words for "horse" and
"dog"? And how about the romanization for "hello" and "goodbye"? I
saw someone on this newsgroup spell it "sawasdee krub". You and I
would understand, but would we all know what "Lard Nar - Beef" was?
(I saw that written on a Thai restaurant menu recently. Were they
really offering to sell beef lard?)
I realize there is probably a couple of "established" romanization
methods used in Thailand by Thais, but I am unaware of any that
account for the tones/inflection of Thai. Further, those methods seem
inconsistant. (Does anyone actually use any of these systems to
communicate in Thai? Seems like it's only for the benefit of
tourists.)
I romanize typewritten Thai mostly by the way it SOUNDS, instead of
the way it's written in Thai. I also try not to depart too much from
established romanization. I realize that pronunciation and even
vocabulary is regional, but I think Bangkok Thai is understood by all.
(Hmm. I wonder if we could expand this discussion to account for
Northern/Northeastern/Southern Thai and even Laotian. By the way, I
am not Thai, and I've forgotten what Thai I was able to pick up long
ago. So please try to understand.)
Here are a few points on the method I use to type Thai without a Thai
typewriter:
* The 5 basic tones are designated by placing a 'tone' marker
character prior to the syllable they affect, except for the 'middle'
tone has no tone marker. The tones and their markers are:
middle (no marker)
low ` (left single quote)
falling ^ (up arrow)
high ' (right single quote)
rising + (plus sign)
Examples:
maa (come)
`mai (new)
^mai (no)
'maa (horse)
'mai (?)
+maay (silk)
+maa (dog)
+maay`mai^maay'mai (does new silk burn?)
^mai, +maay`mai ^mai ^maay (nope)
* Capital English characters are only used for Thai vowel sounds we
don't have in English.
Examples:
+sOOn (teach)
+wAAn (ring)
mUU (hand)
dEEn (walk)
^mUa (when)
* Use double letters to specify the long vowels, single for short.
Example:
mii (have)
* Use "ai" for the short sound, and "aay" for the long sound of "I",
Examples:
pai (go)
sabaay (feelin' good)
* Use 'b' for the soft 'b' sound, as in
bai'maay (leaf)
Use 'p' for the hard 'b' sound, as in
pai'mai (shall we go?)
Use 'ph' for the 'p' sound as in
phOO'mai (is that enough?)
* Use 'd' for the soft 'd' sound, as in
`daa (cursed)
Use 't' for the hard 'd' sound, as in
taa (eye)
Use 'th' for the 't' sound as in
^thaa (if)
* Other English characters can be used for special purposes:
Glottal stop
:
as in
'phrO:^waa (because)
and
'lA: (and)
Foreign character designation, similar to "karan"
#
as in
khemprid#j (Cambridge)
Oh crud, I'm getting tired of trying to describe something that's
verbal, in a nonverbal medium. The method isn't all that critical. I
mostly just wanted to emphasize the tonal marks and a few of the
sounds that could be confusing. Instead of going on, I'll just give a
flavor of the system by quoting right from my handy dandy English-Thai
dictionary, page 4:
kham'nA:namnaikaan`aankhamphaa+saa ang`krid
^nUang`jaag sa`ra: nai phaa+saa ang`krid mii+siang
^maitaaytuasa+mEEpai jUng ^tOOng 'chai tua +nang+sUUthai ^thii
^klaikhiang ^thii`sud pen ^khrUang^thiab+siang 'phrO: phaa+saathai raw
^nAA`kwaa (^mai +khian `yaang `nUng 'lAAw `OOk+siang` iig` yaang
`nUng) `tAA `ja: ^hai trongkan ^thiidiaw'nak^mai^dai jam^tOOng rian
`jaag ^than^phuu'ruu 'lA: `fUk`hat^haichamnaan kham. nai phaa+saa
ang`krid mii 'laksa`na: `tAAg `taang `jaag phaa+saathai pai dang 'nii
This comes from:
phajanaa'nukrom
ang`krid - thai
cha`bab'phiddaan
+khOOng
mOO. lOO. maa'nid chum+saay C.B.E.,M.A., Dr. Ed.
`ak+sOOn`saadtrom+haaban`sid
ma+haa'widyaalai khem'prid#j, ang`krid
phOO. +sOO. 2529 raakhaa 60 `baat
+phom 'khid ^waa `ja: `yud +khian ^thii ^nii, 'phrO ^mai ^nAAjai ^waa
`ja: mii khrai ^thii +sonjai ^rUang kaan +khian phaa+saathai dooy 'chai
tua `ak+soon ang`krid. +phom eng ^kO ^chOOb kuay `kab khon thai, 'lA:
`yaag mii oo`kaad `tid`tOO `tOOpai `iig. ^thaa mii khon ^khawjai
kaan+khian `plAAg`plAAg 'nii, karunaa +khian `tOOb `nooy 'khrab.
`khOObkun ^maag
Rob
--
_______________
Rob Reed (801)582-5847 x6442
Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp. Simulation Division SLC, UT 84108
UUCP: ...!uunet!sim.es.com!rreed *NET: rr...@glacier.sim.es.com
_______________
anissapa
Sawasdee krab,
Wow, your attempt is very interesting. I found it's difficult to follow
(and remember). Some words, i.e., ^maay (burn), and mai (no) have the same tone
so it should be written the same way ( I think). The only difference
between these two words is probably when they are written in Thai.
The other difficulty is probably the difference between \/| and 0|
|o |o
(mai malai and mai muan...?), for example sai (clear) and sai (wood smoothening)These two words have the same tone but different writing and meaning.
I think khun Trin made this attempt some time ago.
I personally prefer to leave Thai language as such.
Best regards,
Ayut
Tawit Chitsomboon
Note: I wrote this some time back. But when I saw a post on romanization
of Thai words, I thougth this is a good chance to stick it in.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is interesting to observe that many Thai names are spelled with extraneous
characters or syllables. Start with the word "Thai" itself. Why is it that
we have to stick "h" behind "T"? The only reason I can think of is that
our leader who coined this word intended the word to be pronounced as
T-hai. But if that leader (Who is he?) was such good at English he should
have known that just "Tailand" would be more accurate as far as
pronunciation is concerned. Besides, I hate to stick my tounge out
every time I pronounce "Thailand".
Our nation's name has set an example for many more Thais to follow.
Thongdee-Tongdee, Phongsak(Fongsak?)-Pongsak, Abhisak-Apisak,
Phuget-Pooget, PhangNga-PangNga.
We also get into the habit of adding extra syllables into names (to
make it more Indian?) Here is a double-fault example:
Dhirawatana-Teerawat. The meaning doesn't make any sense to the Westerners
anyway. Why not just make the spelling short and the pronunciation as
close to "Tai" words as possible.
Tawit Chitsomboon
>Hi.
>
>Maybe you've already discussed the topic of romanization of Thai in
>this news group. I'm new. I'd like to know if there is a standard
>way of writing Thai using the English alphabet, that accounts for
>tones/inflection, and if there isn't, would one be helpful?
>
He doesn't appear to be a linguist but rather a computer scientist.
He's now in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, the land of the Mormon.
Perhaps, he had been in Thailand as a Mormon missionary. Is that right
Mr. Reed? If so, would you mind relating to us your frank opinion
about Thailand, her people, her religions, etc..
NGAMSRITRAGUL PANYARAK
Hi,
After reading your article refered above, I found that your suggestion is
quite interesting. However, I wonder if there is simpler way to do the
same thing. In fact what I am concerning is the systemization of romanized
Thai language, not the problem of representation of tones.
Let me express some opinion related to the Romanized Japanese. In Japanse,
it is said that there is no tone, but it actually does have. The difference
is that it is treated as accents like those in English. Every word has its
accent even it does not appear in writing. e.g.
ha-shi : bridge |
^ | word with ^ under it has strong accent
ha-shi : chop-stick |
^ |
a-me : candy
^
a-me : rain
^
Both ha-shi and a-me have different meanings if pronounced differently, but
they are written in the same way without adding any synbol to indicate the
accent. One just guesses the meaning from the sentence it is in. Not only
the Romanized Japanese, the so called Hiragana and Katakana in Japanese which
are used to represent the pronounciation of Kanji (Chinese characters) cannot
give any information about accent too. The Japanese children who start
from Hiragana can read and catch the meaning by experiences. The same
situation should possibly be applied for romanizing Thai language too, IMHO.
The main thing we need to do is only to systemize the stems (Payanchana) and
vowels (Sara).
What is the others' opinoin ?
--
Panyarak Ngamsritragul nee...@mech.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Graduate School of Engineering, pany...@sl.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp
University of Tokyo, Japan a31...@tansei.cc.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Tel. (03)3812-2111 Ext 6403 Always :-)
William Ang
In article <RREED.91J...@mtwire.es.com>
rr...@mtwire.es.com (Rob Reed) writes:
>Hi.
>
>Maybe you've already discussed the topic of romanization of Thai in
>this news group. I'm new. I'd like to know if there is a standard
>way of writing Thai using the English alphabet, that accounts for
>tones/inflection, and if there isn't, would one be helpful?
>
I keep asking myself why Mr. Reed was so much into romanizing Thai language.
I am wondering why anyone in their right mind would like to romanize
any langauge. Look at what a mess the attempt trying to romanize
Chinese in China. Please bear in mind that many languages in the
world are very different from European langauges that uses roman alphabets.
Some convey meaning in their writing, not pronunciation... let alone
tones, accents, etc.
In my opinion, a language is wonderful as is. If someone wants to
express any foreign word, write in the original script and provide the
proper pronounciation in parenthesis (like in most dictionaries).
(Have you ever see French word romanized to their pronunciation???
Boy, won't that be awful!!!) I would feel more comfortable reading Thai
in Thai script and not trying to guess what that romanized Thai word is
really in Thai.
Romanization is just for the sake of limitations on printing equipments
and computers. In the age where laser printer and bitmap display abound,
can't we do better???
Rather than romanizing any languages, we should put the effort toward
a common pronunciation scheme and ways to represent and to input different
writings on computer.
William
Rob Reed
I responded to your message directly to you, not realizing it wouldn't
get posted to the net in general. So I just wanted to say in public
forum here that I appreciate your helpful responses.
I mentioned in that note that I messed up in the words "burn" and "no".
I had mistakenly thought that "burn" in Thai has a long vowell sound, and
"no" in Thai was short. Now I know that they both are short. So I now
write the phrase:
+maai `mai ^mai 'mai
and the response would be:
^mai, +maai `mai ^mai ^mai
And if you wouldn't mind, could you clarify the meaning and indicate
the correct pronunciation of:
'ruu 'wai ^chai ^waa `sai `baa `bAAg +haam
`khOOb khun ^maag 'khrab
Rob Reed
William,
I've really messed up: I replied to your posting, but I think it only
went to you, and not soc.culture.thai in general, so if you have the
reply, maybe you'd like to repost it for me. Thanks.
But meanwhile, first I'd like to reiterate that I am not looking for a
replacement of written Thai, or Chinese, or any other language.
Instead, I was just wondering if there existed a standardized
unambiguous method for romanizing Thai such that it's possible to
communicate in Thai over a computer system restricted to ASCII
input/output.
Second, I was curious to know what the success of romanization of
Vietnamese is. Is it as bad as romanization of Chinese?
Thanks for your opinion.
Rob Reed
Apologies to all for my mistakes in posting. I've never used this system
before. I mailed off a response to khun Panyarak, instead of posting
to this group. So, I'll give it another shot now.
Seems to me that Japanese, while attaching some meaning to
tones/inflection/accent is not based on tones as is Thai. Therefore a
simple "accent this syllable" and "don't accent this one", while better
than nothing, is not as clear as it could be for Thai.
A few comments have been made saying that romanized Thai doesn't really
need tone markers because meaning can usually be inferred. This would
support your position. I agree with it to the extent that most trivial
things can be written without tones, and the meaning will be understood.
But how would communicate something as all-important as:
'yak `yai ^lai 'yak 'lek
getting the tones right with only simple accents? (:-)
Tawit Chitsomboon
The above is my attempt to thainize the English phrase "What you see is what
you get" into Thai and then romanize back into English. To my great
bewilderment,this process seems to violate a basic law of linear algebra : An
inverse of an inverse is equal to the original quantity. Somewhere somehow I
must have a division by a null word or a square root of a negative word.
rr...@mtwire.es.com
William,
I've really messed up: I replied to your posting, but I think it only
went to you, and not soc.culture.thai in general, so if you have the
reply, maybe you'd like to repost it for me. Thanks.
[ ... text deleted ...]
Here we go, I am posting Rob Reed's reply to my previous article:
---------------- cut here-----------------------------
From rr...@mtwire.sim.es.com Fri Jul 26 14:25:09 1991
Date: Fri, 26 Jul 91 10:06:45 -0600
From: rr...@mtwire.sim.es.com (Rob Reed)
To: a...@theory.lcs.mit.edu (William Ang)
In-Reply-To: a...@theory.lcs.mit.edu's message of 26 Jul 91 17:52:40 GMT
Subject: Re: Thai romanization with tones
Hello,
William Ang writes:
>>> rr...@mtwire.es.com (Rob Reed) writes:
>>> I'd like to know if there is a standard
>>> way of writing Thai using the English alphabet, that accounts for
>>> tones/inflection, and if there isn't, would one be helpful?
>> I keep asking myself why Mr. Reed was so much into romanizing Thai language.
> I am wondering why anyone in their right mind
You may have a point there.
> would want to romanize
> any language.
Well I think there are good reasons for romanization. But I didn't mean
to infer that the original language should be replaced - only that since
we on the net are forced to use the standard printable ASCII character set,
it is not possible to write in certain languages. And often it is
difficult to write non-trivial Thai in a clear way without refering to
the English translation.
> Look at what a mess the attempt trying to romanize Chinese in China
I'm unaware of the mess, but I believe you. What is your opinion of
Vietnamese written language?
> If someone wants to
> express any foreign word, write in the original script
Over the network?
> and provide the
> proper pronounciation in parenthesis (like in most dictionaries).
That's the point. Is there a standard way to do this for Thai? For
example, how would one write the proper pronunciation for the Thai
words for "dog" and "horse"? The difference in sound between these
two words is due ONLY to inflection. Am I missing your point?
Rob
Dick Jackson
> (Have you ever see French word romanized to their pronunciation???
> Boy, won't that be awful!!!)
Let's be careful: I think that a Francophone would say that (for the most
part) a word written in French IS giving the pronunciation, and using the
Roman alphabet, besides. Your comment might have intended anglicization
of a French word which is, of course, as difficult/fruitless as writing
English words under French pronunciation rules.
Now, the question might remain: of the languages using the Roman alphabet,
whose pronunciation rules does one adopt when romanizing a language such as
Thai? Pinyin, used for Mandarin Chinese, adopts an interesting blend of
rules, and establishes some of its own as well.
--
Dick Jackson National Research Council Canada
jac...@ciitip.ciit.nrc.ca CIIT - Winnipeg, Manitoba
*** All opinions expressed here are mine, not the Council's, not the Queen's...
CND log
format for almost a century (the Romanization itself is much older, dating
back to the early years of the French occupation) and few Vietnamese I've
talked to would trade it for the picture-character based language of old.
I suppose a big problem with Romanization of Asian languages is that it is
usually attempted by English speakers, so use of helpful symbols such as
accents, umlauts (sp?), etc in addition to the base Roman character set is
discouraged. Vietnamese uses numerous special symbols to indicate sounds that
do not translate well using Roman letters alone, and some letter combinations
such as the Vietnamese "Ng" have no Western equivalent but are used
unambiguously.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Greg Kemnitz | "I ran out of the room - I
Postgres Chief Programmer | didn't want to be killed by a pile
278 Cory Hall, UCB | of VMS manuals" :-)
(415) 642-7520 |
kem...@postgres.berkeley.edu | --A friend at DEC Palo Alto in the Quake
Anucha Pitak
the buddhist bible in a super computer. For a few seconds in the program
I saw something like romanized Bali on the computer monitor. If that is
the case I think romanized Thai is very logical since Bali and some of
early Thai are very close to each other. Anyone knows more about the
program, please provide some more explanation.
anucha
Romklau Nagamati
more difficult for me to understand what is written. I wonder if the goal
is to learn Thai or to communicate in Thai, isn't it better to do it in Thai?
Surely, implementing Thai on graphics-capable terminal isn't that difficult,
but we might have problem with 8-bit, though. I could be wrong. What kind of
terminal, out there, you guy are using? X, PC, Mac, and what else? I think
a software Thai-language driver is already exist for PC, somewhere by FTP.
But we might be missing the s.c.t chartered goal in letting more people
understand what we're talking. Anyone want to comment on this? I'm listening.
Let me take a look at Xterm source code and see what we can do.
Ron
===============================================================================
Mr. Romklau (Ron) Nagamati | Opinion expressed here is solely mine,
naga...@usc.edu | but I can't be held liable for it.
===============================================================================
Graham Fordham
hear hear! I suggest that rather than reinventing the wheel this
thread could move in a more productive direction by looking at what
Thai/English software is available and what is needed. Those interested
in romanisation systems for Thai might care to look at the systems given
in the Thai-English dictionaries by Mary Haas or G. B. McFarland (although
certainly some modification would be needed to use these in an ascii file).
To move on to software I would like to hear more about what software is
currently available to allow me to work in Thai and English on the PC. I
have tried a number of setups, but so far have not found the ideal solution.
I'm looking at software for word processing, data base work and for spread
sheets (Thai.com seems to fill most programing needs).
To date I have used the 4fg card (a hardware mod) - good until it died and
since then have used various software solutions: CW is good, Duangjan is ok,
and the driver Thai.com is particulrly useful as it allows me to work in
dbase. However I still have a few problems. Does anybody know of a Thai
wordprocessor which has a spell checker, and does anybody know of a Thai
driver that works in a similar way to thai.com but which will work with msword.
(thai.com seems to have a problem with graphics mode). I know about the ease
of the mac and some of the thai fonts which are available but I want to
continue with the PC.
Replies to the net please, as this is probably an issue of more than individual
interest
Regards GF
Rob Reed
> From: gra...@deakin.OZ.AU (Graham Fordham)
> Those interested
> in romanisation systems for Thai might care to look at the systems given
> in the Thai-English dictionaries by Mary Haas or G. B. McFarland (although
> certainly some modification would be needed to use these in an ascii file).
Yes. I'm familiar with Haas, but not with McFarland. In Haas and
other romanizations I've seen, they use a special character set. In
addition to a regular English character set, Haas uses upside down
"e", upside down "c", script cap "E", partial question mark, and
special marks ABOVE vowels for tones. We can't do those special
characters on regular text screens and keyboards. This is the reason
I differentiate between capital and lower case letters (let the caps
be the special character set). I also put the tone markers in front
of the syllable they affect instead of above, for convenience and for
saving text lines.
But I suppose it's really no big deal. I doubt anyone will mind if I
continue to use "modified Mary Haas" in my posts.
> To move on to software I would like to hear more about what software is
> currently available to allow me to work in Thai and English on the PC.
I'll call WordPerfect and report back, but I doubt they would have
anything in Thai except possibly for their word processor. Some Indian
fellow told me he thought they had Thai.
Romklau Nagamati
>
>have tried a number of setups, but so far have not found the ideal solution.
>I'm looking at software for word processing, data base work and for spread
>sheets (Thai.com seems to fill most programing needs).
>To date I have used the 4fg card (a hardware mod) - good until it died and
>since then have used various software solutions: CW is good, Duangjan is ok,
>and the driver Thai.com is particulrly useful as it allows me to work in
>dbase. However I still have a few problems. Does anybody know of a Thai
>wordprocessor which has a spell checker, and does anybody know of a Thai
>driver that works in a similar way to thai.com but which will work with msword
The original goal of the Thai driver, like thai.com you mentioned, is to
make it possible to use Thai language with commercial software package. Most
works by tapping the Video, Keyboard and Printer interrupt of the PC BIOS.
As a result, it will work efficiently with most well-behave software. Though,
it won't work with some for technical reason. Graphics mode software is,
kind of, not in the original goal and would require modification in the
software itself.
Most wordprocessor you mentioned use their proprietary data format and will
not be suitable for us to use here in the newsgroup. What I was talking about
is the way to incorporate Thai into the message posting. It will most likely
to be a simple&portable (to some degree) graphics mode text editor which
wouldn't require us to uuencode/uudecode the message for the 7-bit
communication. The data format will most likely be a plain ASCII and
TIS (shifted down by subtracting 80H) format.
Wordwrapping and spell checking in Thai is the most complicate thing in Thai
wordprocessor, due to the way Thai language is written and its grammar.
I haven't seen the package that I, personally, am happy with, so I couldn't
give you any feed back.
Romklau Nagamati
>
>Another possible place to look is the X-Window system. Characters in it
>are just "fonts" or bit-maps -- rectangular areas of pixels that can as
>easily look like a Thai "A" as an English "A".
Not all Thai alphabet & vowel fit nicely in a line. Some vowel is written
above or below the base level. Some requires more than one level. Basically,
you also need a routine to display it in the right place. And also, a
routine to map QWERTY keyboard to Thai keyboard layout. Doesn't sound
difficult. Any X guru around here want to jump in?
> My idea is to use all 8
>bits of a byte, leaving the low 128 combinations to represent ASCII as
>now, and using the high 128 combinations of each font for a Thai alpha-
>bet of the same size as the English font in the low 128.
That is the way Thai software industry has been doing. The problem is
some system communicate using only 7-bit. Someone has proposed, to me,
using an escape sequence to indentified when code shifting is required.
Kok Chen
>Another possible place to look is the X-Window system. Characters in it
>are just "fonts" or bit-maps -- rectangular areas of pixels that can as
>easily look like a Thai "A" as an English "A". My idea is to use all 8
>bits of a byte, leaving the low 128 combinations to represent ASCII as
>now, and using the high 128 combinations of each font for a Thai alpha-
>bet of the same size as the English font in the low 128.
Before this gets too far and we end up with a Babelian set of en-
codings, perhaps I should repost something that Khun Trin sent to the
Thai Newsletter (mailing list that was formed before soc.culture.thai,
and still sporadically active) a little while ago.
I apologize for the lengthiness of this posting and if most people
have already seen this before.
Regards,
Kok Sae Chen, AA6TY kc...@apple.com
Apple Computer Inc.
---------------------- Forwarded Goodies --------------------------
To: th...@mcs.kent.edu
Subject: Standard Thai character names - FYI
Sawatdee Krub,
I don't know if there is any interest on "standard" Thai character names
here or not. I forward it just in case anyone may feel it is useful.
This is supposed to be used in computer application development and in
local/international standards areana. Character name constants (e.g. C
header file) will be developed from this table, and will be finalized later
on.
Character values reflect those of TIS 620-2529 (Thai Industrial Standard
number 620, Buddhist Era 2529 -- the national standard character set).
English alphabets/digits/symbols as well as control codes are located at
positions exactly the same as US ASCII (or ISO 646) -- that is 00-7F. TIS
620-2529 extends ISO 646 to build the Thai/English bilingual 8-bit character
environment.
For ISO/IEC DIS 10646 (Universal Character Set), Thai is located in Plane
32, Group 32, right half of Row 158. Column values are exactly the same as
those mentioned in the table below.
For Unicode 1.0 draft, Thai is located in the range of 0EA0-0E5F. Layout for
code points looks the same as TIS 620-2529 but there might be some changes
in string encoding and/or character values. This is yet to be finalized.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't feel guilty to delete this
message :)
Have fun,
Trin
----
Trin Tantsetthi tr...@tlaeng.enet.dec.com
Digital Equipment (Thailand), Ltd. ...!decwrl!tlaeng.enet!trin
- ------- forwarded message
(I'm the author, so I don't have to ask for anyone's permission)
Technical Committee 536 of the Thai Industrial Standards Institute, Ministry
of Industry (the committee on Information technology for the Thai standard
body) has made a final resolution on Thai character names. These names are
now set in accordance with Annex F (character naming convention) of ISO/IEC
DIS 10646.
TISI will send the list of revised names to ISO and Unicode Consortium for
inclusion into ISO 10646 and Unicode 1.0, respectively.
These character names will be used in the (Wototo) Common Specification for
Thai Software Development.
Note: The (Wototo) Common Specification is likely to be adopted as a TIS
standard later on. The spec covers all major aspects of Thai
processing on computer; including keyboard behavior (input method),
display behavior, character code for interchange, display code,
(backstore) string encoding, API services and RTLs, remote display
facility, etc.
Value Dec Hex Character Name
10/1 161 A1 THAI CONSONANT KO KAI
10/2 162 A2 THAI CONSONANT KHO KHAI
10/3 163 A3 THAI CONSONANT KHO KWAUT
10/4 164 A4 THAI CONSONANT KHO KHWAI
10/5 165 A5 THAI CONSONANT KHO KHON
10/6 166 A6 THAI CONSONANT KHO RAKHANG
10/7 167 A7 THAI CONSONANT NGO NGU
10/8 168 A8 THAI CONSONANT CHO CHAN
10/9 169 A9 THAI CONSONANT CHO CHING
10/10 170 AA THAI CONSONANT CHO CHANG
10/11 171 AB THAI CONSONANT SO SO
10/12 172 AC THAI CONSONANT CHO CHOE
10/13 173 AD THAI CONSONANT YO YING
10/14 174 AE THAI CONSONANT DO CHADA
10/15 175 AF THAI CONSONANT TO PATAK
11/0 176 B0 THAI CONSONANT THO THAN
11/1 177 B1 THAI CONSONANT THO NANGMONTHO
11/2 178 B2 THAI CONSONANT THO PHUTHAO
11/3 179 B3 THAI CONSONANT NO NEN
11/4 180 B4 THAI CONSONANT DO DEK
11/5 181 B5 THAI CONSONANT TO TAO
11/6 182 B6 THAI CONSONANT THO THUNG
11/7 183 B7 THAI CONSONANT THO THAHAN
11/8 184 B8 THAI CONSONANT THO THONG
11/9 185 B9 THAI CONSONANT NO NU
11/10 186 BA THAI CONSONANT BO BAIMAI
11/11 187 BB THAI CONSONANT PO PLA
11/12 188 BC THAI CONSONANT PHO PHUNG
11/13 189 BD THAI CONSONANT FO FA
11/14 190 BE THAI CONSONANT PHO PHAN
11/15 191 BF THAI CONSONANT FO FAN
12/0 192 C0 THAI CONSONANT PHO SAMPHAO
12/1 193 C1 THAI CONSONANT MO MA
12/2 194 C2 THAI CONSONANT YO YAK
12/3 195 C3 THAI CONSONANT RO RUA
12/4 196 C4 THAI VOWEL RU
12/5 197 C5 THAI CONSONANT LO LING
12/6 198 C6 THAI VOWEL LU
12/7 199 C7 THAI CONSONANT WO WAEN
12/8 200 C8 THAI CONSONANT SO SALA
12/9 201 C9 THAI CONSONANT SO RUSI
12/10 202 CA THAI CONSONANT SO SUA
12/11 203 CB THAI CONSONANT HO HIP
12/12 204 CC THAI CONSONANT LO CHULA
12/13 205 CD THAI CONSONANT O ANG
12/14 206 CE THAI CONSONANT HO NOKHUK
12/15 207 CF THAI SPECIAL SYMBOL PAI YAN NOI
13/0 208 D0 THAI VOWEL SARA A
13/1 209 D1 THAI VOWEL MAI HUN-AKAT
13/2 210 D2 THAI VOWEL SARA AA
13/3 211 D3 THAI VOWEL SARA AM
13/4 212 D4 THAI VOWEL SARA I
13/5 213 D5 THAI VOWEL SARA II
13/6 214 D6 THAI VOWEL SARA UE
13/7 215 D7 THAI VOWEL SARA UEE
13/8 216 D8 THAI VOWEL SARA U
13/9 217 D9 THAI VOWEL SARA UU
13/10 218 DA THAI VOWEL PHINTHU
13/11 219 DB (This position will not be used)
13/12 220 DC (This position will not be used)
13/13 221 DD (This position will not be used)
13/14 222 DE (This position will not be used)
13/15 223 DF THAI CURRENCY BAHT
14/0 224 E0 THAI VOWEL SARA E
14/1 225 E1 THAI VOWEL SARA AE
14/2 226 E2 THAI VOWEL SARA O
14/3 227 E3 THAI VOWEL SARA AI MAI MUAN
14/4 228 E4 THAI VOWEL SARA AI MAI MALAI
14/5 229 E5 THAI LAK KHANG YAO
14/6 230 E6 THAI SPECIAL SYMBOL MAI YAMOK
14/7 231 E7 THAI VOWEL MAI TAI KHU
14/8 232 E8 THAI TONE MARK MAI EK
14/9 233 E9 THAI TONE MARK MAI THO
14/10 234 EA THAI TONE MARK MAI TRI
14/11 235 EB THAI TONE MARK MAI CHATTAWA
14/12 236 EC THAI CANCELLATION MARK THANTHAKHAT
14/13 237 ED THAI SPECIAL SYMBOL NIKHAHIT
14/14 238 EE THAI SPECIAL SYMBOL YAMAKKAN
14/15 239 EF THAI SPECIAL SYMBOL FONGMAN
15/0 240 F0 THAI DIGIT ZERO
15/1 241 F1 THAI DIGIT ONE
15/2 242 F2 THAI DIGIT TWO
15/3 243 F3 THAI DIGIT THREE
15/4 244 F4 THAI DIGIT FOUR
15/5 245 F5 THAI DIGIT FIVE
15/6 246 F6 THAI DIGIT SIX
15/7 247 F7 THAI DIGIT SEVEN
15/8 248 F8 THAI DIGIT EIGHT
15/9 249 F9 THAI DIGIT NINE
15/10 250 FA THAI SPECIAL SYMBOL ANGKHANKHU
15/11 251 FB THAI SPECIAL SYMBOL KHOMUT
15/12 252 FC (This position will not be used)
15/13 253 FD (This position will not be used)
15/14 254 FE (This position will not be used)
15/15 255 FF (This position will not be used)
---------------------- end forwarded message ---------------------------
Tom Davis
> ... I suggest that rather than reinventing the wheel this
> thread could move in a more productive direction by looking at what
> Thai/English software is available and what is needed. Those interested
> in romanisation systems for Thai might care to look at the systems given
> in the Thai-English dictionaries by Mary Haas or G. B. McFarland (although
> certainly some modification would be needed to use these in an ascii file).
Another possible place to look is the X-Window system. Characters in it
are just "fonts" or bit-maps -- rectangular areas of pixels that can as
easily look like a Thai "A" as an English "A". My idea is to use all 8
bits of a byte, leaving the low 128 combinations to represent ASCII as
now, and using the high 128 combinations of each font for a Thai alpha-
bet of the same size as the English font in the low 128.
Is there anybody out there who is working on, or has worked on, a Thai
font for X?
--
Tom Davis Internet address: t...@austin.lockheed.com
"Imagine there's no countries; it isn't hard to do;
Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion, too."
[Disclaimer: I speak for nobody but me - and sometimes not even that.]
Anucha Pitak
kc...@Apple.COM (Khun Kok Chen) writes :
>Before This gets too far and we end up with a Babelian set of en-
>codings, perhaps I should repost something that Khun Trin sent to the
>Thai Newsletter ......... (stuff deleted)
The Thai ASCII which proposed by Khun Trin is for representing written Thai.
I think romanized Thai which is being proposed by Khun Rob Reed is for
spoken Thai over ASCII terminal. We can see the problem of pronouncing some
of the alphabets in the Thai ASCII table itself.
The table below is a partial list of the Thai ASCII proposed by Khun Trin.
Value Dec Hex Character Name
10/7 167 A7 THAI CONSONANT NGO NGU
10/8 168 A8 THAI CONSONANT CHO CHAN
10/9 169 A9 THAI CONSONANT CHO CHING
10/10 170 AA THAI CONSONANT CHO CHANG
10/11 171 AB THAI CONSONANT SO SO
I don't see any way of knowing what SO SO should be pronounced.
Is CHO CHANG the same as CHAU CHANG ? And for this particular letter,
I think people in Bangkok do not pronounce it the same as people in
the Northeast of Thailand.
The world has American English, Australian English, ...., etc.
In Thailand we have Northern Thai, Southern Thai, NE Thai, Bangkok Thai.
It would be nice to have American Thai also (by way of romanized Thai).
anucha
Mark Meyer
Sorry if you see this article twice; poster problems...
In article <1991Jul24.1...@eagle.lerc.nasa.gov> fst...@icomp01.lerc.nasa.gov (Tawit Chitsomboon) writes:
tc> Note: I wrote this some time back. But when I saw a post on
tc> romanization of Thai words, I thougth this is a good chance to stick
tc> it in.
What responses did you get?
tc> It is interesting to observe that many Thai names are spelled with
tc> extraneous characters or syllables. Start with the word "Thai" itself.
tc> Why is it that we have to stick "h" behind "T"? The only reason I can
tc> think of is that our leader who coined this word intended the word to
tc> be pronounced as T-hai.
(WARNING: The following responses are those of a native English
speaker for whom Thai is at best a third language.)
I don't know who developed this Romanization, but he had to
have some way of distinguishing the sound of taw-tahan (exactly like
the English T) from the sound of dtaw-dtao (somewhere between English
T and English D). He chose 'th' for taw-tahan and 't' for dtaw-dtao,
I guess, because taw-tahan is a "harder" sound and the h is supposed
to denote the extra force behind the letter. Similarly for gaw-gai
('k') and kaw-kwai ('kh'), and bpaw-bpla ('p') and paw-sampao ('ph').
You might have noticed I didn't use the conventional
transliteration in naming the letters. Like Kun Tawit, I don't think
it's the best way to do it. I've been using the transliteration used
by Gordon Allison in his book "Easy Thai". That scheme makes more
sense to me as a English speaker, and shows a little better how
gaw-gai, dtaw-dtao, and bpaw-bpla, three sounds that English does not
have, are supposed to be pronounced.
What I really hate is transcribing words based only on their
letters, not how they are pronounced. The classic example is
"Sawasdee", which is the title of Thai Airways' magazine and also
appears in large friendly letters on the wall at Bangkok International
Airport's international arrivals area. Now, I know that both s's
represent saw-seua. I also know that the second saw-seua is
pronounced as a 't' because it's at the end of a syllable. So the
word is pronounced "sawatdee". I think it should be written that way
too. Another example is my wife's uncle's name, written "Paisal"
because it ends with law-leeng, but pronounced "Paisan" because
law-leeng has the 'n' sound at the end of a syllable. Why not write
it "Paisan"???
tc> Besides, I hate to stick my tounge out every time I pronounce "Thailand".
Then don't. Taw-tahan is pronounced exactly like the English
T sound.
--
Mark Meyer USENET: {ut-sally!im4u,convex!smu,sun!texsun}!ti-csl!mmeyer
Texas Instruments, Inc. CSNET : mmeyer@TI-CSL
Every day, Jerry Junkins is grateful that I don't speak for TI.
"Did the Corinthians ever write back?"
Pratit Santiprabhob
Sawasdee Krub,
In article <MMEYER.91J...@m2.csc.ti.com>, Khun Mark Meyer writes:
> What I really hate is transcribing words based only on their
>letters, not how they are pronounced. The classic example is
>"Sawasdee", which is the title of Thai Airways' magazine and also
>appears in large friendly letters on the wall at Bangkok International
>Airport's international arrivals area. Now, I know that both s's
>represent saw-seua. I also know that the second saw-seua is
>pronounced as a 't' because it's at the end of a syllable. So the
>word is pronounced "sawatdee". I think it should be written that way
>too. Another example is my wife's uncle's name, written "Paisal"
>because it ends with law-leeng, but pronounced "Paisan" because
>law-leeng has the 'n' sound at the end of a syllable. Why not write
^^^^^
>it "Paisan"???
Well, let's look at it this way. As you know in Thai and many other
languages including English, spelling more or less indicates meaning
of the word. For example, the words "too" and "two" both have
different meanings but are pronounced with the same sound (according to
my dictionary). If we simply write them according to the sound, we
^^^^^
will lose an ability to distinguish the words without referring to the
context. I believe the use of strange(?) romanization for Thai words
and names is to preserve the spellings, hence the meanings. (Most
Thai names are meaningful. It is quite important to some people to
maintain the correct spellings and meanings of their names.) Note
that this romanization is more or less a written language for official
documents such as passports. IMHO, it is not intended to represent
exact pronunciation. Similar to English, some words cannot be
pronounced transliteratedly as written, and need some kind of phonetic
system to represent the correct pronunciations. For a native speaker
of Roman-based languages, what we need to go with the romanization of
written Thai is a romanization based on sounds like one proposed by
Khun Rob Reed.
Regards,
--Pratit
Mark Meyer
>I believe the use of strange(?) romanization for Thai words
>and names is to preserve the spellings, hence the meanings. (Most
>Thai names are meaningful. It is quite important to some people to
>maintain the correct spellings and meanings of their names.)
Okay, I can understand that. However, it is my opinion that
the primary purpose of romanizing a language is so that we ignorant
farangs :-) know how to pronounce words. I realize my opinion has a
Western bias, and I think Kun Pratit is probably right in his guess as
to why Thai romanization is the way it is.
>For a native speaker of Roman-based languages, what we need to go with
>the romanization of written Thai is a romanization based on sounds
>like one proposed by Khun Rob Reed.
Preferably one where the AW sound is not transcribed as O :-).
My personal favorite is the one used by Richard G. Robertson in
"Robertson's Practical English-Thai Dictionary." To use a familiar
phrase for an example: sa-waht! dee (h)krahp! (! denotes a short
vowel, (h) denotes high tone.) I find his pronunciations very easy to
understand. But then again, the symbols are based on those of
English, and a speaker of some other European language may not
recognize the vowels. For example, the vowel in the word for "hand"
is transcribed as "eu", which is perfect for French speakers, okay for
English speakers, but totally confusing for German speakers, who look
at "eu" and think of the "oy" in "noy" (little).
Hm. Maybe I'll look at Kun Rob's suggestion again... :-)
--
Mark Meyer USENET: {ut-sally!im4u,convex!smu,sun!texsun}!ti-csl!mmeyer
Texas Instruments, Inc. CSNET : mmeyer@TI-CSL
Every day, Jerry Junkins is grateful that I don't speak for TI.
"Drop your weapons, or I'll kill him with this deadly jelly baby."
Mark Meyer
> I don't see any way of knowing what SO SO should be pronounced.
It's really strange to me, seeing the names of the letters
spelled with O instead of AW. In English one doesn't usually think of
that sound when one sees an O. I would have written the full name of
the letter SAW SO or SAW SOH.
But, it seems that romanizing SARA AW with O is not unusual.
My wife's nickname, for example, is spelled BPAW-BPLA AW-AHNG NAW-NOO,
pronounced BPAWN, but in English letters it's PON.
Anucha Pitak
> In article <1991Jul31.1...@infonode.ingr.com> pit...@infonode.ingr.com (Anucha Pitak) writes:
> > I don't see any way of knowing what SO SO should be pronounced.
>
> It's really strange to me, seeing the names of the letters
> spelled with O instead of AW. In English one doesn't usually think of
> that sound when one sees an O. I would have written the full name of
> the letter SAW SO or SAW SOH.
> But, it seems that romanizing SARA AW with O is not unusual.
> My wife's nickname, for example, is spelled BPAW-BPLA AW-AHNG NAW-NOO,
> pronounced BPAWN, but in English letters it's PON.
I agree that SO SO could be pronounced as SO ^SOO or SAW ^SOO (using Khun
Reed's table).
I think if we can agree to stick with one pattern then it will be easier to
learn. Furthermore, it is quite possible to translate this romanized Thai
into Thai ASCII code.
anucha
Pratit Santiprabhob
In article <MMEYER.91...@m2.csc.ti.com>, Khun Mark Meyer writes:
> Okay, I can understand that. However, it is my opinion that
>the primary purpose of romanizing a language is so that we ignorant
^^^^^^^
>farangs :-) know how to pronounce words. I realize my opinion has a
^^^^^^^^^
>Western bias, and I think Kun Pratit is probably right in his guess as
>to why Thai romanization is the way it is.
May I add to the above paragraph. In my view, there are/should be two
types of romanization: a romanization of written Thai and a
romanization of Thai sounds. For the latter romanization, its primary
purpose is mainly as Khun Mark Meyer suggests above. It is also to be
used when one wants to learn how to correctly read/pronounce the former
romanization. IMHO, the main purpose of the former romanization is to
map the written words especially names in the original language into
an internationally accepted set of alphabets. Well, the point is the
romanized Thai is after all another foreign language. It is not
actually a part of English, and by no means should be assumed to be
pronounced as English.
I strongly agree that there should be some sort of standard
romanization of both types. But, even in a standard romanization such
as Japanese's romanji, one needs to learn its rules. For example,
there is a train station in the suburbs of Tokyo whose name is written
in romanji as "One". For a westerner who doesn't know romanji, he/she
most probably call it the "one" station (one as in English number one).
However, it should be pronounced in two syllables o-ne.
Regards,
--Pratit
P.S. How can one pronounce the word "rendezvous" correctly by looking at
its written form, if one hasn't learned how to pronounce it?