transliteration

[Curt]

Originally Posted by David_Loves_Ubonwan

It appears to me that those whom use the 'u' sound in words such as khrub, chun, etc are mainly from the places that speak the American flavour (or should that be flavor) of English.

David

This American has never tasted that flavor. Maybe because I grew up in the States.

The "krub", "chun", ... etc, transliterations totally miss the mark for me.

If someone wants to learn Thai, from a book, they best learn Thai script.

[Pailin]

Originally Posted by Curt

This American has never tasted that flavor. Maybe because I grew up in the States.

The "krub", "chun", ... etc, transliterations totally miss the mark for me.

If someone wants to learn Thai, from a book, they best learn Thai script.

I agree... I had never seen Chun and Krub until coming to these forums. While those sounds don't fit my accent at all, I think it's less about regional accent and more about which book you bought first. The first transliteration system I ever saw had Chan/Krap....

Perhaps yet another reason to vote for learning the Thai alphabet early on!

[alvinkhoo]

in my mother tongue, chun is pronounced as choon.
as in "C" replacing the "S" in spoon.

how could we ever make orange juice using apples..??
orange juice = oranges
thai language = thai script
Period.

[Norb]

[QUOTE=alvinkhoo;213675
thai language = thai script
Period.[/QUOTE]

sure, basically I agree with you and Pailin and others who made similar statements. IMO Thai script is more difficult than the language behind it and requires more effort of advanced learners. In the meantime, what do those of us do who have not yet put in time and effort to learn script. Thai script is more than just consonants and vowels, it's tone markers, consonant class, final consonants, rules in the absence of tone markers, and what have you. So far I have preferred to advance my knowledge by using Karaoke Thai until I finally can keep � and � apart in 9 font. lol I keep ignoring tone markers and consonant class. They are still beyond me.

[nam phyyng]

Yes, you're right Norb,
Written Thai is a lot more difficult for most Farangs to learn than spoken Thai. When I first joined this forum three years ago I was surprised to find no standard form of transliteration in common use and most forumites firmly opposed to the idea of even trying to develop one. My surprise arose from the fact that I learned to speak Thai from the Mary Hass book using only her system of transliteration which I considered to be very effective (it worked for me anyway). And I assume you would have used it too, as I think I remember you saying you were a Peace Corps volunteer about the same time as I was a NZVSA volunteer (in the late 1960s).

In trying to promote the idea of a standardised transliteration I received no support at all from other forumites who maintain that it takes about the same amount of time and effort to learn written Thai as it does to learn transliterated Thai. However that is obviously not correct, as the very complicated and almost incomprehensible written tone rules make writing in Thai hugely more difficult than mastering "Karaoke Thai" (a term I dislike).

I was surprised also that the views opposing transliteration are so strongly held and vehemently expressed by those on this forum - for some reason it just seems to touch a raw nerve. So I caution you Mr Norb, if you are trying to pursuade or convince the others here that there is any merit in using transliterated Thai as a learning mechanism you can forget it!

As time has passed I have come to realise that the karaoke-haters may have a point and I regret now that when I was taught to speak Thai I was not taught to also write it. Had I done so, I think I would have been more advanced in the language than I am now.

However in my view, the real issue is not transliteration at all, but whether there is a simple, graphically-presented way of summarising the written tone rules so that they can be easily and quickly understood and memorised by novices. There have been various attempts to do that in this forum by making charts and coloured diagrams (Pailin actually has a collection of them!), but I don't think anyone has quite got there yet. In my opinion developing such a system is the "holy grail" for those learning Thai and I for one am still searching for it.

[Eric67]

There certainly is merit in transliteration, most won't dispute that.

However, no matter how good your transliteration system is, it's still only 2nd best.
IMO, if you're serious about learning Thai you're better off learning how to read and write as early on as possible. Sure, the initial learning curve is steep, but after that there�s only benefits.

For one, after you reach about a low intermediate level there is hardly any learning material in "karaoke" Thai left, so you'll have to learn how to read Thai anyway if you still want to progress.
By then you'll probably have learned a vocab of several 1000 words which you will have to relearn again, but this time in Thai script. So, it's more efficient to learn it in Thai right from the start.
Don't know about others, but for me it's easier to remember a word and it's tone in Thai script. The more I read in Thai, the more I recognize the tone automatically. Something unlikely to happen if you only read transliterated Thai.

As for the tone rules, if you can�t get them into your head by using the normal charts, then it might help to look at them from a different point of view, like this table I found on the Internet somewhere.
Assuming you already know how to determine the tone then you can sum it up in a couple of lines like this:


Remember for each tone mark which tone it represents (on mid class consonants)

Syllable with tone mark: follow the tone mark
-- exception: low class initial consonant: take the next tone mark
Syllable without tone mark:
-- Dead syllable = low tone
---- exception: low class initial consonant
------ short vowel = high tone
------ long vowel = falling tone
-- Life syllable = mid tone
---- exception: high class initial consonant = rising tone


It might not be the holy grail (and it's far from a fancy colored chart ), but it works for me.

[Pailin]

Remember for each tone mark which tone it represents (on mid class consonants)

Syllable with tone mark: follow the tone mark
-- exception: low class initial consonant: take the next tone mark
Syllable without tone mark:
-- Dead syllable = low tone
---- exception: low class initial consonant
------ short vowel = high tone
------ long vowel = falling tone
-- Life syllable = mid tone
---- exception: high class initial consonant = rising tone

Another one for my collection!!!



I also wanted to point out that just because I use Thai script does NOT mean that I've mastered written tone rules. My gosh, it's such a challenge for me. I have tried multiple charts to see which one works for me best visually and right now the lag time between me seeing the word and knowing the tone is about 8 seconds -- not at all good for normal reading. I'm a learner, though, so I'll keep trying.

[Norb]

[QUOTE=nam phyyng;213798] as I think I remember you saying you were a Peace Corps volunteer about the same time as I was a NZVSA volunteer (in the late 1960s).[QUOTE]
I am glad somebody agrees with me. The Peace Corps does not use transliteration at all. In our 3 hours weekly classes no English was allowed. Along with being placed with a Thai host family in a small village for 3 months, it was total immersion - supposedly -using visual aids and activities only. Although we had to learn script there wasn't much emphasis on it. Last year I posted the chart we used: http://www.thailandqa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=27273 We had an excellent teacher, Jerapa Ananta Schaub. She was an editor of the Thai dictionary published by Paiboon in BKK. What worked against me was being there with my American wife and the 18 year old daughter who spoke some English.

[Curt]

Spoken Thai is the best way to learn. But, if one is to learn from a book, transliterations are, most often, a miss.

[guava]

Originally Posted by Pailin

I also wanted to point out that just because I use Thai script does NOT mean that I've mastered written tone rules. My gosh, it's such a challenge for me. I have tried multiple charts to see which one works for me best visually and right now the lag time between me seeing the word and knowing the tone is about 8 seconds -- not at all good for normal reading. I'm a learner, though, so I'll keep trying.

Maybe too much emphasis is placed on learning "rules" regarding the tones when reading. Sure there are rules that language experts have developed to help(?) in the process but.. see Richards post here and the difficulties with English language (example: Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present), now imagine trying to develop rules surrounding the differing pronunciation of those words (which in English have identical spelling). The ONLY way you could understand how each of the words in those examples should be pronounced is if you already know the vocabulary and if you read the whole sentence and can get clues from the context.

Try asking someone whose first language is Thai in what tone a certain word should be pronounced ... if you expect to be told "rising", "falling", "mid", "high" etc..... you may be surprised when they say "this way" .. and just repeat the word. And if you press for an answer you may find that 3 Thai friends will give 3 different answers.

I recognize that the tone rules help when SPELLING words, but I have found that given understanding of Thai script, then a knowledge of vocabulary and recognising the context have helped me more to quickly understand both spoken and written Thai.

Just seemed to work for me.