ศาลาชุมนุม

[pensive]

I don't know whether I'm being provocative but this excerpt is from Matichon. My interest is in อุณภูมิ. The people currently around me understand this word. When I asked for a spelling, this is what I got.

But, we *all* know that the word is really อุณหภูมิ, right?

So, is the problem that someone has put something in the water, or is there another reason for อุณภูมิ to have some measure of acceptance?

[Pirin]

The possible answer is that you ought to keep on reading. Then, once in a while, please go back to RID.

Here are some other examples:
1. One writer at an on-line source: ลอนดอน อุณหภูมิจุดน้ำค้าง 3.1 °C
2. One writer at another on-line source:อากาศวันนี้ทั่วทุกภาคอุณภูมิลดลง 4-6 องศา
3. One writer at the third on-line source: บ้านร่องกล้าเกิดแม่คะนิ้งวันที่สอง อุณภูมิยอดหญ้า 0 องศาฯ
4. One writer at the forth on-line source: ร่างกายเรามีกลไกที่จะรักษาอุณหภูมิของร่างกายให้คงที่อยู่เสมอ
5. One writer at the fifth on-line source: การเอียงของแกนโลกจากเส้นตั้งฉากกับระนาบการหมุนของโลกดวงอาทิตย์ เป็นสาเหตุสำคัญที่สุด ในการเปลี่ยนแปลงของอุณหภูมิตามฤดูกาล
.....
ในการคำนวณความผันแปรของพลังงานรังสีดวงอาทิตย์ และอุณภูมิที่ผิวพื้นโลกย้อนหลังไปในอดีต เพื่อหาความสัมพันธ์ระหว่างการเปลี่ยนแปลงของปัจจัยทั้ง 3 กับการผันแปรของภูมิอากาศยุคน้ำแข็ง
6. RID: อุณหภูมิ

[David and Bui]

Khun Pirit,

I believe Pensive was asking whether it is acceptable to use the อุณภูมิ spelling at all. Certainly newspapers have editors and editorial boards and would prevent writers and columnists from using clearly unacceptable spelling conventions.

Yet this usage appears not to be ภาษาวัยรุ่น or other slang and it is not mentioned in the RID. Is there any academic support whatsoever for the aberrant spelling Pensive notes?

[Richard Wordingham]

There are quite a few names containing "อุณห์", even though this form is not recorded in the RID. The widespread form should probably be written "อุณห์ภูมิ". It then has the same justification as the Petburi and Petbun pronunciations of the place names.

Where does the weird pronunciation in the audio clip, with trisyllabic อุณห-, come from?

[Pirin]

I believe that a lot of Thai writers and readers basically keep in mind that each Thai consonant carries with it an inherent vowel. Therefore, they tend to pronounce that inherent vowel even when that consonant is the final consonant of the first syllable of a word. Here are two examples:
คุณภาพ [คุนนะ-] น. ลักษณะที่ดีเด่นของบุคคลหรือสิ่งของ.
อุณหิส [อุนนะหิด] น. กรอบหน้า, มงกุฎ. (ป. อุณฺหีส; ส. อุษฺณีษ).

As for the word “อุณหภูมิ”, it seems that some people didn’t realize that the final consonant “ณ” is not pronounced. Because of this, they usually pronounce it as
[อุนนะพูม] or [อุนนะหะพูม], which is not correct.

This might lead to misspelling in writing.

So far, I have found only one article discussing the origin of the word “อุณหภูมิ”. This might confirm how this word should be spelled.
http://www.simedbull.com/content.php?content_id=2490

[pensive]

There are quite a few names containing "อุณห์", even though this form is not recorded in the RID. The widespread form should probably be written "อุณห์ภูมิ". It then has the same justification as the Petburi and Petbun pronunciations of the place names.

Where does the weird pronunciation in the audio clip, with trisyllabic อุณห-, come from?

Perhaps the speaker was confused by the spelling, thought it was a trick question, and was very careful to pronounce *all* the syllables?

[Richard Wordingham]

As for the word “อุณหภูมิ”, it seems that some people didn’t realize that the final consonant “ณ” is not pronounced. Because of this, they usually pronounce it as
[อุนนะพูม] or [อุนนะหะพูม], which is not correct.

OK, everyone please ignore my suggestion about "อุณห์ภูมิ" - that's not how it's said.

The extra syllable is explained, arguably even justified, by อุณหิส [อุนนะหิด] น. กรอบหน้า, มงกุฎ. (ป. อุณฺหีส; ส. อุษฺณีษ).

It looks to me as if [อุนนะพูม] is a natural substitute for [อุนหะพูม] - /h/ at the start of an unstressed word-internal syllable is inherently weak. The only other words with the same phonetic structure (nasal followed by h before unstressed vowel) that I can find is เลนหะรี, and that's a loan from Javanese rather than an Indic loanword.

[Tgeezer]

I don't know whether I'm being provocative but this excerpt is from Matichon. My interest is in อุณภูมิ. The people currently around me understand this word. When I asked for a spelling, this is what I got.

But, we *all* know that the word is really อุณหภูมิ, right?

So, is the problem that someone has put something in the water, or is there another reason for อุณภูมิ to have some measure of acceptance?

I am not surprised that the people around you don't see what we see.
The word is so unlike any other word that, there is no confusion so they have dropped the หะ, they probably still have ะ the question is do they pronounce it นะ or อะ?
Is it possible that they accept the spelling อุณถูมิ, but they say it; อุนหฺนะพูม ?

[pensive]

It looks to me as if [อุนนะพูม] is a natural substitute for [อุนหะพูม] - /h/ at the start of an unstressed word-internal syllable is inherently weak. The only other words with the same phonetic structure (nasal followed by h before unstressed vowel) that I can find is เลนหะรี, and that's a loan from Javanese rather than an Indic loanword.

Is it similar, I guess not, to the name of the TV host, Prom Porn? Her first name is actually Pa-ra-hom, I guess พรหม, but the 'h' appears to be silent.

[Richard Wordingham]

Is it similar, I guess not, to the name of the TV host, Prom Porn? Her first name is actually Pa-ra-hom, I guess พรหม, but the 'h' appears to be silent.

Actually, her name is พรหมพร ยูวะเวส.

The first element comes from Sanskrit /brahma/, and the br- cluster and its cluster reflexes occur throughout the history of Thai, so one should expect the cluster phr- in Thai. The only surprise is that we didn't end up with *เพราะหม์, cf. เคราะห์. There may have been two losses of syllable-final /h/ in Thai - one when tones came into being (possibly less than 2,000 years ago), and another when it was lost from loan words. (I deduce the second loss from ห์ inducing mai ek on words with long vowels.)