ศาลาชุมนุม

[Gwindor]

Writing ก as "g" is very helpful to distinguish it from "k". But I have a growing awareness that what Thai people are saying isn't English "g", but an unaspirated "k", just like ป is unaspirated "p" and ต and ฏ are unaspirated "t".

All of these differences are really hard to get the hang of!!! What usually happens is that I wind up pronouncing EVERYTHING unaspirated, whether it is ก or ค or ข. As usual, any conversation with my will be ตลกๆ because my pronunciation is very odd.

My question is: is this also true for จ ? Is จunaspirated "ch"? If so, this will increase the comedy factor in my Thai even more.

I will finally be there again in December. I am literally counting the days!!!

Gwindor

[goody]

Hi


I think when you are learning it, it is a case of getting the sound in your head and relating it to the way you spell the sound (if this makes sense) in your own langauge.
It is difficult from Thai to English because there are so many different phonemes in the two languages.
But it is slightly easier for German people who have the j/ch (จ) sound in their language, and the Irish people who have the bp (ป) and the dt (ต) sounds in their language.
So if it is any consolation you should find it easier to learn Irish and German after you learn Thai

[Bryan.the.Scorpio]

My question is: is this also true for จ? Is จ unaspirated "ch"?

Welcome back, Gwindor. It's been a while, hasn't it?

To me, no, /จ/ is not the unaspirated /ch/. I regard /จ/ as /j/ always, though many other poeple prefer the unaspirated /ch/. They transcribe:

- สมจิต as Somchit (I prefer Somjit)
- ประจวบ as Prachuab (I prefer Prajuab)
- จรูญ as Charoon (I prefer Jaroon)
- จรัญ as Charun (I prefer Jarun)
- จัตวา as Chattawaa (I prefer Jattawaa), etc.

/J/ is the direct and closest match (although the Thai /จ/ is not as prominently stressed or enunciated as the English /j/). Why the confusing /ch/?! I reserve /ch/ for /ช/, /ฉ/ and /ฌ/. For example:

- ชลบุรี --> Chon Buree (or Chon Buri)
- ชัยนาท --> Chai Naat (or Chai Nat)
- ชัยภูมิ --> Chai-ya-poom (or Chaiyaphum)
- ชุมพร --> Chumpawn (or Chumphon)
- เชียงราย --> Chiang Rai (or Chieng Rai)
- เชียงใหม่ --> Chiang Mai (or Chieng Mai)
- ฉบับ --> Chabub
- ฉลอง --> Chalong
- ฌาน --> Chaan (or Chan)
- ฌาปนสถาน --> Chapana Sathaan (or Chapana Satharn, Chapana Sadharn)

Consider this:

ชาวเชียงใหม่จัดงานกินเจเป็นประจำทุกปี. ปีจอนี้ก็เช่นกัน.
(Chiang Mai people organize their "Vegetarian Festival" every year; this year--Year of the Dog--they will, too.)

Transcribed using the confusing /ch/
Chaow Chiang Mai chud ngaan gin chay pen pra-chum took pii. Pii chaw nii gor chen gun.

Transcribed using the forgotten /j/
Chaow Chiang Mai jud ngaan gin jay pen pra-jum took pii. Pii jaw nii gor chen gun.

[Richard Wordingham]

My question is: is this also true for จ ? Is จ unaspirated "ch"?

I hope it's obvious that the answer is 'yes'.

The 'ch' problem arises because:

(a) 'c' is too ambiguous (though Sanskritists use it quite happily.)

(b) 'chh' for the others is too strange to catch on. However, I have seen it in Indian names in England.

The strange thing for me is that word-initial English <j> becomes ย in Thai. I can see the rationale - their sounds alternate freely in some languages, such as Indonesian and Mexican Spanish (some dialects, at least).

Richard.

[LOKi]

though many other poeple prefer the unaspirated /ch/.

Some people use a "c", such as ศ.ดร.กาญจนา นาคสกุล, a former head of Thai department, Chulalongkorn University, writes her name "Kancana".

อิอิ
[ ]

[Khun Andy]

The lady called "Kanjana" from Chulalongkorn University probably spells her name "Kancana" because she is using International phonetics where j becomes c. (perhaps she is a linguist?) I learned to speak Thai using the old AUA system based on International Phonetics where some of the symbols are unknown in English. However, IP wouldn't work on a website because some of the IP symbols don't appear on standard keyboards. It is a good system though and gets around the problem of how to write the uniquely Thai sounds in a way that Farangs can understand.
Cheers
Khun Andy

[pp401]

/c/: This sound is very problematic to foreigners and non-linguists. It is essentially an unaspirated alveo-palatal affricate (sorry for using the phonetic term) That is, it is the unaspirated counterpart of /ch/ = ช. The transliteration is confusing because there're two candidates. First, the English sound for 'j' is unaspirated like the Thai /c/ but it's also voiced. On the other hand, the English sound for 'ch' is not voiced but it's aspirated. So, to paractice, try to pronounce /ch/ without aspiaration. As for the transliteration, both 'ch' or 'j' has their own advantages even though the Royal Academy prefer 'ch'.

[montrii]

I'm on a little bit of shaky ground here, because I'm not fully schooled in the phonetic terms, though I pretty well understand a lot of terms, such as voiced, unvoiced, aspirated, unaspirated, palatal, labial, velar, fricative, etc. I couldn't without looking it up tell you what an affricate is, but I can say that I think the sound /c/ is a lot less like an unaspirated "ch" than an unvoiced "j." To me the sound is very close to a j, but there is no voicing, that is to say, when it's spoken the vocal chords are silent, as with a "k" as compared to a "g" (English). Some people hear it, some don't: that's what makes the difference between people with good accents and those who sound terribly foreign. The /c/ sound reminds me of the German "Tj," as in "Tja!," but there's no exact equivalent there, though maybe a little closer than the difference between, say, the "sh" in English and the "x" sound in Chinese (pinyin). But you just have to hear it. To me these different sounds are like the spices in food, really bringing out the differences in cultures. Hey, we should have a topic here on Thai food! And I don't mean the kind you get in the US!

[001]

To pronounce an affricate, the air in the vocal tract will be stop before released. So it's stop+fricative. จ /tc/ and ช /tch/ are both affricates. You'll see it very clearly in waveform. If you pronounce these consonants between the vowels, /atca/ and /atcha/, there'll be a small gap in the waveform of whole word. That is the stop which no air is released for about ... not more than 30 milliseconds in connected speech.

[montrii]

Wow, I love it. So, double-oh-one, what would you call a the "j" sound that so many times you see as jai when the correct IPA is cai? Is it a voiced affricate, or what? (I doubt it, just throwing that out). And if you were writing a "For Dummies" book, how would you explain the sound difference between that j and the /c/ and the /ch/?
คอบคุณมากๆ นะ
P.S. In my other post today I wrote ผู้ชาง instead of ผู้ชาย, just a typo. There may be others.