ศาลาชุมนุม

[bifftastic]

Where can I get the book from? Do I have to go to AUA? (bit of a jaunt from London, although I will be in Bangkok in May)

[Toffeeman]

The two ผ, พ are differentiated by the way the letter is written; the ผ definitely looks more like two "u's" in english, and พ is more angled almost like writing two "v's" together. Also there is a clear height difference in the center "peak" between the two (this is apparently the delineator thais look for first). For the ถ, ภ again it's the way the letter slants or curves when written although there are sometimes "vestigial heads" too.

I would be interested in a native Thai's comment on this. From reading hand written Thai and from talking to my Thai teacher who is very lazy about the height of the centre peak, my understanding was that Thais look for the circle 1st. Is it inside or outside? The same goes for ฝ and ฟ.

[tod-daniels]

Hey, don't shoot the messenger. .. I'm only relating what I read.

I don't have a flatbed scanner, but I did walk to my Soi's internet shop and scanned all the pages. I tried, but couldn't upload them here because the file sizes of the pages were too big.
It appears each scanned page is between 800K to 1MB, and there are 11 pages in total.

Sadly, I don't know how to 'resize' the files Sorry about that. . .

The only pages I didn't scan were ones which showed 20 samples of Thai handwriting from 10 Thai women and 10 Thai men.

If anyone wants copies of them, send me a P/M or an email toddaniels AT gmail dot com, I'll send 'em to you.

[Tgeezer]

The two ผ, พ are differentiated by the way the letter is written; the ผ definitely looks more like two "u's" in english, and พ is more angled almost like writing two "v's" together. Also there is a clear height difference in the center "peak" between the two (this is apparently the delineator thais look for first). For the ถ, ภ again it's the way the letter slants or curves when written although there are sometimes "vestigial heads" too.

I would be interested in a native Thai's comment on this. From reading hand written Thai and from talking to my Thai teacher who is very lazy about the height of the centre peak, my understanding was that Thais look for the circle 1st. Is it inside or outside? The same goes for ฝ and ฟ.

Sorry, I am not a Thai but while we wait for a Thai's comment;
I was a little disappointed when I got my new keyboard and the ผ looked like พ with the loop on the inside, but I got used to it. vv for พ or uu for ผ is what I look for if there is no loop, but a loop is foolproof.
I think if you learn to write with precision (presumably why teachers insist on it)and can spell, handwriting isn't too difficult to read. When I practise the alphabet which is quite often, I write all of it as beautifully as I can, calligraphy was one of the things which attracted me to Thai.

[tod-daniels]

Before I undertook the "morph my handwritten Thai" into something more like a Thai would write; I sat in on a "Thai dictation" test at a school. Now I can definitely write Thai, but I'd term it that overdrawn "kiddy thai writing".

In this test, the teacher said a sentence in Thai (at pretty darned close to normal speaking speed), and then the students are given X amount of time to write it out. Now these weren't long sentences by any wild stretch of the imagination. Sort of like; " I take the sky train to work everyday." or "Mali lives in a small village". I can't remember the exact amount of time we were given between the sentences. Going slowly, writing each character as they were taught to me just didn't cut it. Most of the time I couldn't get even half the sentence written before the time ran out (not because I couldn't remember them or couldn't spell the words but because I didn't have time to write it out all nice and neat). Now it could be I'm exceptionally slow writer of Thai, but. ...

That's why I started in on this AUA book and literally filled page after page of the consonants, the vowels, the tone marks, consonant clusters, commonly written words, etc.

The AUA book breaks Thai handwriting down into three styles;
First is the term; เขียนตัวบรรจง (writing in an elaborate or precise style).
The second one they call; เขียนหวัดแกมบรรจง (I can only translate this as; writing in a manner which is both precise and scribbled but mixed or a "scribblingly-precise" style)
Last on the list is the term; เขียนหวัด (which is just plain scribbling).

The examples they give in the book they say range from "scribblingly-precise" to "scribbling". They just show the logical progression (Thais use) in trying to speed up your handwriting (which develops your own style too), while retaining the components in characters to recognize them.

Now I'll be the first to admit, I ain't gonna win any calligraphy contests, then again I ain't tryin' to either. I also don't think Thai is any more beautiful than Burmese, Cambodian or Lao for that matter, so that's a total non-issue for me.

What has happened is my speed in writing Thai clear enough so that almost any "Somchai the Thai" can read without a hitch has gone up dramatically. Once I get more comfortable with the changes I incorporated into my writing, I'm gonna try that dictation test again. (That is; if I can remember what school I took it at). ..

[tod-daniels]

Okay, let's see if even an "all thingz computer related challenged" person can post these scans after a re-sizing attempt.
I am sorry but there appears to be a three file limit per post (and this section is 11 pages).

If anyone is interested in me putting the rest of the scans on here, let me know, and I'll do it

Anyway, here're the first 3 pages.

Note to the MODS, if there is a better way to display these, feel free to edit this. . .

[David and Bui]

Tod,

If someone is interested in the entire document, they can send you a private message, and you can decide whether you wish to send it to them by e-mail.

[tod-daniels]

Thanx David,

At least these 3 pages will give people an idea of what that section in the book covers.

Sorry,

Todd