ศาลาชุมนุม

[Gaetan]

Good Morning my name is Gaetan
1


i would like to ask something about a thai word

it's Prasnii (=post office) i would like to know why the last syllabe is a middle tone and not a rising tone beceause as you know it is written we should use the rising tone rule for the last syllabe

thank you for help

have a good day

[simonbournemouth]

ไปรษณีย์ bpraiM saL neeM - post office

ไปรษณีย์ is a loanword from the Indic language, Sanskrit. Tone rules for Indic loanwords in Thai take on different characteristics.

In the consonant cluster ษณี, ษ isn't considered to be a leading consonant, because there is a vowel between ษ and ณี in Sanskrit. It can be shown as ษะ ณี in Thai. Therefore the last syllable is a mid tone, not a rising tone.

EDIT; ไปรษณี์ is written as (preSaNiiya) in Sanskrit.

Source; Spoken Sanskrit

[Gaetan]

Hello thank you for replying

but i still not understand

as in the word ถนน (road) thaL nohnR

this time the second syllabe follow the hight class consonant rule ถ


why it is not the same for ไปรษณี์ ?

sorry if it's too complicate for you to make me understand i would understand you give up

[David and Bui]

Gaetan,

Simon provided you the correct linguistic explanation. I will give you the simple excuse.

Many languages have strict pronunciation rules. What you see and read tells you exactly how to pronounce the word. Spanish and German are like this; probably French is also.

On the other hand, some languages give no clue as to how the word should be pronounced. Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are of this category.

Thai and English are in between. For most Thai words, perhaps well over 90%, the pronunciation of the word exactly follows the rules and you can figure out how to say a word without even knowing its meaning. However, the the last 10%, the pronunciation does not strictly follow the rules. These are the "exceptions". As Simon notes, these exceptions arise mostly for historical reasons, that it, the spelling follows the spelling in the source language and not how the word would be pronounced were the rules followed. The Thais believe that a certain elegance is maintained this way.

Note that English also has pronunciation rules, but that there is a wide gap between how a word is spelled and how it is pronounced. Phonics as a way to learn English is a very difficult process, especially with vowels. We should be happy that Thai is much more "regular" and has much fewer "exceptions" than does English.

The good news is that after a while you should be able to recognize which words are likely to be exceptions and do not follow the rules. I can't explain these to you but after a while it does become intuitive.

I wish you luck.

[Gaetan]

All right

now evry thing is clear

thank you sir

[Oevna]

ไปรษณีย์ bpraiM saL neeM - post office

ไปรษณีย์ is a loanword from the Indic language, Sanskrit. Tone rules for Indic loanwords in Thai take on different characteristics.

In the consonant cluster ษณี, ษ isn't considered to be a leading consonant, because there is a vowel between ษ and ณี in Sanskrit. It can be shown as ษะ ณี in Thai. Therefore the last syllable is a mid tone, not a rising tone.

EDIT; ไปรษณี์ is written as (preSaNiiya) in Sanskrit.

Source; Spoken Sanskrit

So, if I understand you correctly Simon, are you saying that if the Sanskrit root of ไปรษณีย์ preSaNiiya were actually preSNiiya (i.e. a consonant cluster with no assumed 'a' vowel sound between 'S' and 'N'), then the Thai word ไปรษณีย์ would be pronounced [ไปร-สะ-หนี] instead of [ไปร-สะ-นี]?

In other words, are you saying that whether or not a Thai word follows the non-conforming initial clusters rule depends on whether or not the consonant cluster in question is also a consonant cluster in its Sanskrit (or Pali) etymological root?

I ask because I have never heard this, and if it were true, then it would be a very interesting fact, and would make determining the Sanskrit or Pali spelling of loan words somewhat easier.

[simonbournemouth]

So, if I understand you correctly Simon, are you saying that if the Sanskrit root of ไปรษณีย์ preSaNiiya were actually preSNiiya (i.e. a consonant cluster with no assumed 'a' vowel sound between 'S' and 'N'), then the Thai word ไปรษณีย์ would be pronounced [ไปร-สะ-หนี] instead of [ไปร-สะ-นี]?

In other words, are you saying that whether or not a Thai word follows the non-conforming initial clusters rule depends on whether or not the consonant cluster in question is also a consonant cluster in its Sanskrit (or Pali) etymological root?

I am far from any expert, but what I have come to understand is that all Sanskrit consonants are followed by an "อะ" sound, therefore you don't need to include it (but it's still pronounced) when writing Sanskrit in Thai script... I seem to remember David likening this sound to a Schwa.

When a vowel is not to be pronounced, ie. in a consonant cluster, the mark พินทุ phinthu (อฺ) is placed under the first consonant of the cluster. พินทุ can found on the "B" key of most keyboards.

preSaNiiya is written as เปฺรษณีย in Thai. You can see the พินทุ under the ป in the consonant cluster ปฺร, this indicates that the อะ sound shouldn't be pronounced.

As for your example spelling "preSNiiya", I'm afraid all I know is Sanskrit/pali loanwords don't use the อักษรนำ leading consonant rule because there's an อะ after each consonant. Therefore in this case ณี can't have a raising tone. I would think that there is a different way to render the Sanskrit s+n consonant cluster in Thai script. Anyone?

[simonbournemouth]

I found an example of the s+n consonant cluster.

tuuSNiim - silent.


Here's the entry found in the RID:

ดุษณี, ดุษณีภาพ [ดุดสะนี-] น. อาการนิ่งซึ่งแสดงถึงการยอมรับ. (ส. ตุษฺณีมฺ; ป. ตุณฺหี).

According to this entry, Oevna's example "preSNiiya" would be rendered as เปฺรษฺณีย in Thai, therefore still pronounced ไปร-สะ-นี. If I am not mistaken.

[Oevna]

Hi Simon,

Thanks for the reply. Not quite what I was asking, but I didn't really phrase my question well. I will work on it.

As for Sanskrit consonant clusters, they do have them (I think that's what you meant), but when written using the Devanagari script, they do not require the พินทุ to indicate the lack of a vowel sound. Instead, a conjunct form of the consonants is written, similar to a ligature in English:



And in Sanskrit they can be quite complex, having five or more consonants in rare cases (yes, I'm stealing images from Wikipedia for all my examples today). For example, the d + dh + r + y ligature would look like this:



And you are right, single consonants and the final consonants of clusters have an assumed (unwritten) a vowel, if no written vowel exists, much like in Thai (except, of course, Thai also has an assumed o for medial unwritten vowels).

[David and Bui]

"หลักภาษาไทย" by กำชัย ทองหล่อ on page 510 provides a list of words in the following categories:

๒๒. ก. ตัว "ษ" ในคำต่อไปนี้ อ่านเรียงพยางค์ ไม่ใช่อักษรนำ

The following words using the letter "ษ" in the initial position are read as if "ษ" is not the leading consonant in a consonant cluster (which affects the tone of the entire syllable):

กฤษณะ - กฺริด-สะ-นะ
โฆษณา - โคด-สะ-นา
ลักษณา - ลัก-สะ-นา
วิษณุ - วิ-สะ-นุ

ค. ตัว "ษ" ในคำต่อไปนี้อ่านเป็นอักษรนำ

In the following words, the letter "ษ" is read as the leading consonant in the consonant cluster (and does affect the tone of the entire cluster):

กฤษณะ - กะ-สะ-นะ (a different meaning from the word above which is spelled identically)
กฤษณา - กฺริด-สะ-หนา
ลักษณะ - ลัก-สะ-หนะ