ศาลาชุมนุม

[maggiebori]

I am unable to pronounce ร, my tongue is kind of stiff, so sad.
Any advice for me ?
Thanks for your help.

[lumdam]

I can't give any advice myself, I learned it as a child... Maybe some of the tips here can help? http://www.wikihow.com/Roll-Your-%22R%22s

[Toffeeman]

I have had a similar experience. My Thai friends even get me to say words beginning with 'ร' and then laugh at me. I did an internet search and found loads of websites offering advice and I must say they have helped me. They give you exercises to improve your ability and even though they sound silly they work. I'm sure you know this already but your tongue must touch the roof of the mouth to get a proper 'ร'. In fact it should vibrate on the roof of your mouth but if you can just get it to touch the roof and do an 'r' sound it will be progress.

[Rick Bradford]

And Dutch people apparently have especially serious problems with initial ง ....

[daฟาน]

i dont understand why you guys have a problem with ลอ เลือ

[qwert]

"ร" isn't "R".
Try to pronounce it as "LH".
Correct : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmYwBfNIf5k
Wrong : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZpwrEzYkF0

If you try to pronounce it as R, may be someone will laugh out louder.
ํ

[r2d2]

i dont understand why you guys have a problem with ลอ เลือ

Khun da-Phaan, a serious question:

I do not have a major problem "translating" lau lak long lia(e)n into rao rak rong rian (we love our school).

Or "Lao ro lot" into ro ruea (or ho huean into ho nok huk, or bo bae (goat/phae) into bo bai mai).

But - I often hear (central) Thai lo ling (L) as a (Dutch?) 'R' as in 'de gRachten'

(((actually a Lao lo ling like 'ro ring'))))

Edit: When it comes up with กลอน I would not suppose that the lo ling is pronounced as a 'Dutch R'. In a lot of instances the lo ling-cluster is simply unknown, thus, /กอน/

P.P.S.: Lao So S---aa---ng is of course Thai Cho Chang, important is not the initial consonant but the long vowel, and the tone of the syllable.

P.P.P.S: When it comes up with กลอน ... thus, /กอน/

So, what?

s ກອນ kɔːn 1 noun poem. Pali

Pali? Actually?

[bifftastic]

Try saying an aspirated 'H' sound, like an 'H' with some breath added to it (if that makes any sense?) and then, touch the tip of your tongue to the top of your mouth, just behind your front teeth. That should give you a 'rolling' effect. Then you add the note, similar to the difference between an 'S' and a 'Z' (one has a note, a vocal sound, the other doesn't).

You can start by making the sound very long, so you can train your mouth and tongue, and then shortening it to use in words.

I hope my non-linguistic terms make some sense to you!

[tod-daniels]

While it seems many Thais are too lazy to actually pronounce an "r" in quite a few words; remarkably they can get it right when there is more than one "r" sound in a multi-syllable word or when its used in a consonant cluster . Also when a word has an "L" they never substitute an "R" for it instead. It seems to be a one-way sound substitution only like; an ร can sometimes be said as an ล, but an ล can never be said as an ร . Strange rule really.

In colloquially spoken Thai the "L" for "R" dealy carries abso-tively posi-lutely no loss in comprehension when foreigners are speaking to Thais. In fact, about the only people I ever hear who're "rolling their r's" are; "pretentious Thais" who wanna appear smarter than they are, or foreigners who were taught to over pronounce it that way in Thai language schools. Heck even Thai newscasters (admittedly not the highest caliber of newsreaders in the known universe ) get it wrong when reading the Thai news, so go figure.

A lotta times when I ask a Thai to spell a word which I've heard them pronounce with an "L" but know has an "R", I'll ask 'em in Thai something like; Is that word spelled with รอ-ลิง or ลอ-เรือ? Granted, purposely mixing up the picto-words associated with each consonant can be construed as condescending , but it's also a form of word play. I've only had Thais laugh and joke with me about it, so it must be okay with them too .

I'd hafta disagree about ร being anything other than an "R" in English, no matter what engrish karaoke system you're using to represent the Thai sounds. Now I'm not talking about final consonant ending sounds, or รร, or ร์, just the normal "R" sound ร makes. ..

Personally I wouldn't give it a second thought. FWIW; most Thais think foreigners speak Thai with a ลิ้นแข็ง (hard tongue) or a สำเนียงแปลก ๆ (very unusual accent) anyway. . .

[pensive]

1, Some Thais I've heard speak both L and R with what I'd call an R but it is somewhere between L and R.
2. In all the songs I listen to, the R's are pronounced as R's. Only some singers actually roll the R, though. I find many newsreaders on Ch. 5 (TGN out here) pronounce the R's. Just heard Manat rolling his R's on the Evening News.
3, I understand the "hard tongue" because I would describe Thai speech as "soft" or "liquid" tongue, as if they don't actually close the tongue against the palate. A consequence is that English speakers cannot pronounce "do dek" or "bo baimai".