ศาลาชุมนุม

[biacowry]

I love the Romanization used by this website! It’s very intuitive to English speakers. The only part I find tricky is memorizing letters like M, F, etc. for tones.

I’ve found it more intuitive to show tones using lines that go up or down. I simply raise, lower or level my intonation by following the lines.

tone t-l.com IPA ASCII
mid M ˧ -
low L ˩ _
high H ˥ '
falling F ˥˩ \
rising R ˩˥ /

Above are the tone symbols used by the International Phonetic Association, which I really love! And after that is an ASCII (keyboard friendly) version I came up with.

Example:

ผมเข้าใจว่า ในเมืองไทย ปลาดุกเป็นปลาที่มีเนื้อกินอร่อยที่สุด
phohmR khaoF jaiM waaF naiM meuuangM thaiM bplaaM dookL bpenM bplaaM theeF meeM neuuaH ginM aL raawyL theeF sootL
phohm˩˥ khao˥˩ jai˧ waa˥˩ nai˧ meuuang˧ thai˧ bplaa˧ dook˩ bpen˧ bplaa˧ thee˥˩ mee˧ neuua˥ gin˧ a˩ raawy˩ thee˥˩ soot˩
phohm/ khao\ jai- waa\ nai- meuuang- thai- bplaa- dook_ bpen- bplaa- thee\ mee- neuua' gin- a_ raawy_ thee\ soot_

I’m curious to hear your opinions.

[pensive]

I think you should learn the Thai alphabet and the tones rules and forget all about transliteration.

[John]

I agree with Pensive about learning the Thai alphabet. Romanization is confusing and a waste of time.

[David and Bui]

I agree with Pensive and John. Since we are talking about written representations of oral media, the student gets a double benefit from learning to read Thai orthography and skipping Romanization entirely: Thai (or phonetic Thai) is highly accurate as to sound and it can be used to communicate with real Thai people.

[biacowry]

Wow, I had no idea the Thai writing system fully documents the tones! That’s brilliant.

It’s the first tonal language I’ve encountered that does this in the indigenous writing system! (Compare with Mandarin, Cantonese, Hausa, Japanese, etc.)

It looks like Vietnamese is also like Thai in this regard.

[John]

Wow, I had no idea the Thai writing system fully documents the tones! That’s brilliant.

That doesn't mean it is easy - due to the three consonant classes, vowel length, the final sound of the syllable as well as a few broken rules.

[r2d2]

Wow, I had no idea the Thai writing system fully documents the tones! That’s brilliant.

Not sure whether Thai, as spelled (= writing system?), fully documents the tone. This happened to the Lao script due to a spelling reform. Time will show whether this was a brilliant idea. In the sense of "to document" I feel that Thai writing system is rather conservative, conserving the roots of the terms by special letters needed only to write Sanskrit, Pali, or Khmer derived Thai terms ... Brilliant? At least I like it.

[bifftastic]

Whilst I think that your idea has some merit, I must agree with the others.

Learning the Thai script is the best way to learn.

I struggle with the tone rules, but I have learned many words now, and I am finding it easier all the time. Now, when I read, instead of having to sound out most of the words in a sentence, I can read many of them as whole words and I know what the tone is.

It's a fairly steep learning curve, (as any Thai child in school will be able to tell you!) but it's worth it.

[Rick Bradford]

It looks like Vietnamese is also like Thai in this regard.

To some extent. Vietnamese does mark the tones in the script, with a one-to-one correspondence between tone mark and tone. That is, you can look at the tone mark on any Vietnamese syllable and immediately know its spoken tone.

In the 6-tone system of Hanoi speech, these are: ma, mạ, mả, mã,mà, má (approximately M, L, R, H, L, F).

The Thai system is more complex -- you can create non-mid tones without tone marks, and tone marks mean different things in different situations. Hence the need for tone rules.

As all the previous posters have noted, learning to read Thai is undoubtedly the best way to go.

[pensive]

In the 6-tone system of Hanoi speech, these are: ma, mạ, mả, mã,mà, má (approximately M, L, R, H, L, F).

So, in Vietnamese we have ma, mạ, mả, mã,mà, má and in Thai we have mai mai mai mai mai ... mai..... mai!