ศาลาชุมนุม

[m3lani3]

* if there is another topic about this please redirect me*

I'm starting to understand and learn the thai language.
For example, I'm already able to read some thai.

But i have a question about when you write a word in thai.
For example, there are different Thai Consonants
(ธ ฒ ฑ) for the Consonants "th".

How do you know which consonant you have to use?

An example i found in another topic.
Someone asked how you write "pin" in thai letter
and i read พิล as answer.
My question is, why don't you write it like พิน (is more obvious for me)
or like พิฬ or พิณ . These consonats are all low. How do you know which one to use?


kind regards,
Melanie

[jariya76]

I'm going to take this on and hope I don't start over-teaching it. Unfortunately Thai spelling is not as easy as we'd like it to be, so just like English you have to memorize a lot of exceptions to the rules. But you can count on a few things to get you started with the most common ways to spell word endings:

1. In MOST words the final -k sound is spelled with ก (The ones that don't may end with ข,ค, but there aren't many and these you have to memorize. There may be a few that end with ฅ or ฆ though I don't know any.)

2. MOST words with a final -t sound are spelled with ด (less commonly they end with ฅ,ถ,ท,ธ,จ,ฉ,ช,ศ,ษ,ส - again memorize- and almost never with ซฌฎฏฐฑฒ )

3. MOST words with a final -n sound are spelled with น (less so with ร, ล, and ณ though some pretty common words like การ, อาหาร, ผล and คุณ need to be memorized pretty early on. And then there's a rare syllable or word that ends in ญ. I have no idea about ฬ)

4. MOST words that end in final -p sound are spelled with บ (the less common ones are ป,พ, and ภ)

Start with the first four general rules - you'll probably make lots of mistakes. That's okay - the word will still be readable. Try keeping a Thai journal. Have someone check your spelling. Let the words you tend to use a lot and are exceptions be the ones you memorize first. Oh, and make friends with your dictionary.

[m3lani3]

Thank you very much.
This makes everything more clear to me
(and it is definitely not over-teaching )
I actually have another question about the consonants.
But the computer i'm working on right now doesn't support thai language
So i'm respond when i'm back home.

By the way, how do you know all these rules? Did you followed thai lessons? And do also live in thailand?

[m3lani3]

I understand now the 6 main consonants you use in the end of a syllable.

ng=ง
m= ม
n = น (mostly)
t = ด (mostly)
k = ก (mostly)
p = บ (mostly)

But now, which consonant do you use at the beginning of a syllable?

I understand the difference in high, mid and low classes.
So I can minimize the amount of consonants that I can choose from.
Here is the list of the consonants which gives me problems:

ch-: ช ,ฌ (low class)
d-: ฎ ,ด (mid class)
dt-: ต ,ฏ (mid class)
kh-: ค ,ฅ ,ฆ (low class)
kh-: ข ,ฃ (high class)
L-: ฬ ,ล (low class)
n-: น ,ณ (low class)
ph-: พ ,ภ (low class)
s-: ส ,ษ ,ศ (high class)
th-: ถ,ฐ (high class)
th-: ท,ธ,ฑ,ฒ (low class)
y-: ญ,ย (low class)

So I wanna know which consonant do you use. Is it also as by the final sound of a syllable,
that there is one consonant of each tone that is mostly used and the others are the exceptions?

And i have another question.

In thai there are no words which end on a -s sound, right?
But in farang language there is. For example the name Hans.
It is written as ฮันส์ . Is the thai consonant ส mostly used for translating the -s sound?
because you can maybe also write ฮันซ ....

Kind regards, Melanie

[Richard Wordingham]

ch-: ช ,ฌ (low class)
d-: ฎ ,ด (mid class)
dt-: ต ,ฏ (mid class)
kh-: ค ,ฅ ,ฆ (low class)
kh-: ข ,ฃ (high class)
L-: ฬ ,ล (low class)
n-: น ,ณ (low class)
ph-: พ ,ภ (low class)
s-: ส ,ษ ,ศ (high class)
th-: ถ,ฐ (high class)
th-: ท,ธ,ฑ,ฒ (low class)
y-: ญ,ย (low class)

So I wanna know which consonant do you use. Is it also as by the final sound of a syllable,
that there is one consonant of each tone that is mostly used and the others are the exceptions?

Yes. The usual consonants for the sounds you had trouble with are:

ch-: ช (low)
d-: ด (mid class)
dt-: ต (mid class)
kh-: ค (low class)
kh-: ข (high class)
L-: ล (low class)
n-: น (low class)
ph-: พ (low class)
s-: ส (high class)
th-: ถ (high class)
th-: ท (low class)
y-: ย (low class)

Officially, ฃ and ฅ are not used to write words in Thai. I have seen ฅ used for transcribing Northern Thai texts from the tua mueang script.

In thai there are no words which end on a -s sound, right?
But in farang language there is. For example the name Hans.

There are a few English loan words which commonly have a final fricative, though /s/ is the only one I've seen the RID admit to.

The choice of final ส or ซ in transliteration has always seemed arbitrary, though there seems to be a tendency to use ซ for a final English /z/ sound.

[m3lani3]

Thank you for your reply,

little by little, i'm getting to know the thai language. But i noticed that I have a long way to go.

[Josh]

I think the easy answer is, learn how to spell the words. You know to spell telephone with ph and not like "telefone" because that's the way you were taught. If you keep plugging away and studying you will learn to spell words correctly regardless of how many "s" letters there are in Thai.

[mangkorn]

Josh's answer is not only the easy one, it is pretty much the only answer.

There is no choice involved in using beginning consonants to spell words; they are spelled they way they are supposed to be spelled (unless you are of the new illiterate SMS-speak generation, in which case anything goes).

[Rick Bradford]

I've only come across one word ending in ฬ (maybe there are more, but it doesn't seem to be that common), which is กาฬ (dark, black) and I guess is a loanword from Pali/Sanskrit or Khmer.

[jariya76]

Yes, I second Josh's and Mangkorn's attitude toward this as well. I spent a good deal of my six-week language training camp learning all the irregular spellings for the most common words in Thai. Of course after thirty years, I am having to relearn them all but I'm slogging away at it. Unfortunately having Thai-language.com always at my fingertips to cut and paste words I've forgotten how to spell is not helping any!

BTW what is SMS-speak?