Transliteration peeves
Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2013 9:40 am
Thai isn't an easy language to transliterate into the Roman alphabet. But I find some systems better than others, and I understadn that some spelling is based on Thai pronunciation, others on Thai orthography, and still others incorporate Sanskrit romanizaiton conventions. But one of my complaints as a learner of Thai is that just about every textbook, self-instruction book or phrasebook seems to use its own romanization system. (Thank heaven for CDs and .mp3s!)
My personal preference is for systems that use d/t/th over d/dt/t and b/p/ph over b/bp/p. I also like แ represented as "ae" (not the confusing "aa" used in Lonely Planet, or worse, "air" used in Teach Yourself). And Teach Yourself transcribes แถว as "tair-o", which makes me think of "taro". (I would spell it "thaew".)
The last example brings me to my biggest peeve: the use of the letter "r" in syllables like ขอ ("khor"). Why? Because I'm American, and like most Americans I speak a rhotic dialect. When I see "khor", I want to say "core" with a good old American arrrrrr in it.
Another peeve is seeing "krub" instead of "khrap" for the male polite particle: "krub" makes me think it could be pronounced "kroob" (like someone from Northern England eating "groob" at the local "poob"). It's the same reason why Punjab is all too frequently mispronounced as "poonjab": it was romanized with a "u" representing a short "a".
Grrr.
OK, rant over!
My personal preference is for systems that use d/t/th over d/dt/t and b/p/ph over b/bp/p. I also like แ represented as "ae" (not the confusing "aa" used in Lonely Planet, or worse, "air" used in Teach Yourself). And Teach Yourself transcribes แถว as "tair-o", which makes me think of "taro". (I would spell it "thaew".)
The last example brings me to my biggest peeve: the use of the letter "r" in syllables like ขอ ("khor"). Why? Because I'm American, and like most Americans I speak a rhotic dialect. When I see "khor", I want to say "core" with a good old American arrrrrr in it.
Another peeve is seeing "krub" instead of "khrap" for the male polite particle: "krub" makes me think it could be pronounced "kroob" (like someone from Northern England eating "groob" at the local "poob"). It's the same reason why Punjab is all too frequently mispronounced as "poonjab": it was romanized with a "u" representing a short "a".
Grrr.
OK, rant over!