ศาลาชุมนุม

[DanGrayson]

Hi,

I'll be visiting Bangkok February 27 to March 2, so I've hired a student as a tutor and have just memorized the alphabet and figured out the tone rules.

Here are some possibly simplifying remarks about the tone rules for unmarked syllables, hopefully correct.

1. Record the IPA pronunciation of the short vowels with an implicit glottal stop ( see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottal_stop%20glottal%20stop ), and explain that the glottal stop is naturally regarded as a plosive consonant, as in the Wikipedia article cited, since you can't sing it and it's not a vowel. Examples: อ็อ- is pronounced ɔʔ , เอือะ is pronounced ɯaʔ, and ใ- is pronounced aj .

2. Define a dead syllable to be one that ends with a plosive consonant.

3. Define an live syllable to be one that isn't dead.

Then give the table of possibilities. This allows you to forget about all those footnotes (3.) on the page with all the vowels ( see http://www.thai-language.com/ref/vowels ) since the diphthongs with those footnotes will not display a glottal stop in the IPA form.

You can also dramatically simplify the Tone Rule Summary table ( see http://www.thai-language.com/ref/tone-rules ) by having many fewer divisions into columns at the top for the unmarked syllables, namely, just these: dead short, dead long, and live.

Is it correct and workable?

[David and Bui]

Dan,

I recommend the discussion at viewtopic.php?f=13&t=3990&hilit=glottal+stops from 2009 and 2010 in which the glottal stop indicator is discussed at some length.

Let us know what you think. Thanks.

[DanGrayson]

Thanks, David. The post you referred me to discusses the use of glottal stops in an automatic Thai->IPA transcription engine (which I haven't seen here yet). I think it reinforces but doesn't address my suggestion for your tone rule summary table.

[Tgeezer]

Thanks, David. The post you referred me to discusses the use of glottal stops in an automatic Thai->IPA transcription engine (which I haven't seen here yet). I think it reinforces but doesn't address my suggestion for your tone rule summary table.

Of course it is workable but the problem is that people don't know the alphabet and vowels. All those tables are to cover ten rules; three rules governing tone of live words without tone marks, three with tone marks and four to cover dead words; one each for อักษรสูง and กลาง and two for อักษรต่ำ- short or long vowel.
By the time you have learnt the alphabet properly you have it cracked and can ignore the tables.

[Glenn Slayden]

Another consideration is that the ascriptions 'dead syllable,' 'live syllable', etc. are not our conceptions but rather standard pedagogical or traditional treatments. Your simplifications may help, but we would have to be careful not to present them as canonical.

Glenn

[Glenn Slayden]

The post you referred me to discusses the use of glottal stops in an automatic Thai->IPA transcription engine (which I haven't seen here yet).

IPA transcription can be configured at the site control panel.

[DanGrayson]

IPA transcription can be configured at the site control panel.

Thanks, it works great!

[Richard Wordingham]

Of course it is workable but the problem is that people don't know the alphabet and vowels.

I endore this statement, but there are some subtleties.

• In normal speech, the final glottal stop disappears from unstressed syllables, but unless the vowel is /a/, the tone tends to remain.
• The rimes in เอียะ, เอือะ and อัวะ count as having short vowels for the tone rules.

Note 3 is necessary to dispel confusion. One might consider rephrasing it from:

"3. For the purposes of the tone rules, most short/open vowels generate a dead syllable, however the short/open vowels marked (3.) are treated as a live consonant ending."

to:

"3. for the purpose of the tone rules, most short/open vowels generate a dead syllable, however the short/open vowels marked (3.) must be treated, as the spelling often indicates, as having in a live consonant ending."

There's a slight problem with this suggested change in that this does not quite match the site's definition of a 'live consonant ending' at http://www.thai-language.com/ref/glossa ... nantending, which includes the nasals but not /w/and /j/.

[Richard Wordingham]

Another consideration is that the ascriptions 'dead syllable,' 'live syllable', etc. are not our conceptions but rather standard pedagogical or traditional treatments. Your simplifications may help, but we would have to be careful not to present them as canonical.

Don't native speakers have this division intuitively? Remember that live and dead syllables have different sets of tones. The traditional identification of the tones of dead syllables with a subset of the tones of live syllables generally involves some degree of approximation.