ศาลาชุมนุม

[nakriian]

When reading the dictionary, I ran up on the word ลากข้าง which is the name of the vowel า

I have always referred to it as สระ า (sara aa) and didn't know it also had a name.

When thai people are spelling things for me, sometimes I have a hard time telling if mean อะ อา ออ etc.. I mean I hear an "aa" sound, but sometimes just have difficulty knowing exactly which thai vowel they are saying.

My question is this, if someone spells something to me in thai language, and I can not understand which vowel they are referring to, can I ask if it is ลากข้าง instead of asking if it is a สระ า

Also, how can we find out the alternative name of vowels. Since I found this one, maybe there are others. The "sara blah blah blah" method is difficult because it good listening and speaking skills, which I do not have at this time.

[David and Bui]

One of my Thai language books lists the Thai vowels into two categories: “รูปปสระ” (vowel forms) and “เสียงระ” (vowel sounds). There are 21 vowel forms as follows:

ะ วิสรรชนีย์ า ลากข้าง อิ พินทุอิ อี พินทุอิ + ฝนทอง อุ ตีนเหยียด อู ตีนคู้
เ ไม้หน้า โ ไม้โอ ฤ รึ ใ ไม้ม้วน ไ ไม้มลาย อ่ ฝนทอง “ ฟันหนู อฺ หยาดน้ำค้าง
อ็ ไม้ไต่คู้ อั ไม้ผัด หรือ นฤคหิต ฤา รือ ฦ ลือ อ ตัวออ ย ตัวยอ ว ตัวยอ

However, I have never heard any Thai using some of these terms in spelling. Good luck.

[Rikker]

To put it another way, ลากข้าง is the name of the symbol, and สระอา is the name of the vowel. People are taught to spell by the vowel, not by symbol names.

Folks will recognize some of the names, for instance, my wife says she's heard วิสรรชนีย์ for the symbol ะ้, but she gave me a weird look when I started talking about ลากข้าง and ไม้โอ. People also know ไม้มลาย and ไม้ม้วน because those names are used to distinguish the two different สระไอ's.

By way of further illustration of the difference, in the intro to the Royal Institute Dictionary, they use the term วิสรรชนีย์ in laying down rules of when or when not to explicitly write the ะ symbol. However, the words สะกด and สบาย both have the vowel สระอะ, even if only one of them has the symbol วิสรรชนีย์.

So, you could say that สระอำ is made up of the symbols ลากข้าง and นิคหิต, but we might compare that to spelling the letter Q aloud as "O with a squiggly"--it'll sound weird to people.

[nakriian]

Okay, so if a คุณไทย is spelling something for me and they say สระอา and I have a hard time deciphering the tone and/or the length of the vowel. Can I say ลากข้าง ใช่ไหมครับ to mean "you mean the า symbol right?".

Do you think the average คนไทย will know ลากข้าง means the symbol for the vowel สระอา.

This would help me so much, because there are only a few vowels that I have difficulty deciphering. The consonants are easy, because when they spell them, they have something associated with them which allows me to easily identify them. Example, ข.ไข่ ค.ควาย, there is no getting them confused because they have strong words to differentiate them. I am basically looking to use ลากข้าง to relate to สระอา in the same fashion that ควาย relates to ค.

I would also like to add that I know I need to improve my listening skills so this won't be such a problem. However, for the stage I am at now, having this alternative way to verbally confirm the vowel someone is spelling to me, would be of much use to me. This way, the next time I ask someone to spell something, like มาก for example, when they say ม.ม้า สระอา ก.ไก่, I can say ลากข้างใช่ไหม and they can say ใช่ค่ะ or ใช่ครับ.

[mangkorn]

Okay, so if a คุณไทย is spelling something for me and they say สระอา and I have a hard time deciphering the tone and/or the length of the vowel. Can I say ลากข้าง ใช่ไหมครับ to mean "you mean the า symbol right?".

Do you think the average คุณไทย will know ลากข้าง means the symbol for the vowel สระอา.

As Rikker says, the easiest way for all concerned is to simply ask about the สระ because everyone knows them. Some people may not know all of the esoteric symbol names, but English speakers don't know a fraction of grammatical terms in their language.

And you should surely be able to distinguish between the long and short forms of each vowel. There is a very big difference between สระอะ and สระอา when said aloud.

Also, vowels don't have any tones, so that will not be a problem when spellling out words orally.

Cheers.

[Rikker]

I think you're not going to have much success with ลากข้าง, frankly. Too rarely known. But you'll never know until you try.

You may have better luck with a "อา as in X, right?" approach--try to compare it to a word you can confidently say and ask them if it's the same vowel.