Language Overflow

Damkerng T.

23:00

@snailboat They do that both in the headline and in the body of the news.

Anonymous

Oh!

Damkerng T.

I think it's fine as a headline.

Normally, I don't expect the language in my local news to be very good.

Hmm... except for a few newspapers which seem to care more about the language.

Anonymous

What's the difference between ◌ะ and ◌ั◌?

Damkerng T.

Oh, one has no final consonant, and the other has a final consonant.

Anonymous

Oh! I get it

Damkerng T.

23:04

They're the same vowel sound. The difference is only in writing.

Anonymous

So the same is true of เ◌ะ vs เ◌็◌ and so on.

Damkerng T.

Yes!

Anonymous

(I like typing vs and etc and so on without a dot. I like the way they look.)

Anonymous

Stack Exchange is killing me right now, by the way.

Anonymous

I've got a little red number to click on my inbox, but it won't load.

Damkerng T.

23:06

I'd got to click retry a few times.

Anonymous

We are investigating an issue with our Load Balancers

Tweeted by StackStatus on November 6, 2015 at 11:04 PM

Anonymous

By the way, although me and X is perfectly natural and a lot of children (and some adults) say it, I think it's generally considered non-standard. X and I is the standard way to phrase a coordinate subject where one coordinate refers to the speaker.

Anonymous

I think you already knew that, but I felt like it was something I should add to what I typed earlier :-)

Anonymous

I don't have too many examples of ways prescriptive grammar has influenced English.

Anonymous

I mean, there are people out there who try not to end sentences with prepositions and so forth.

Anonymous

23:14

But that rule was never really that successful. Standard English has always been full of counterexamples.

Anonymous

It's hard for a prescriptive rule to really change the language. People are pretty good at ignoring them :-)

Damkerng T.

Yay! The room is back!

Anonymous

Yay!

Damkerng T.

BTW, I just realized that what I said wasn't really correct.

Anonymous

Oh?

Damkerng T.

23:18

13 mins ago, by Damkerng T.

They're the same vowel sound. The difference is only in writing.

They are usually the same vowel sound, but not always!

Anonymous

Oh!

Anonymous

That sounds complicated.

Anonymous

I should get a book.

Damkerng T.

(Perhaps this is why some people think Thai writing system is complex.)

Remember that I mentioned that Thai has "mothers" for final consonant sounds?

Anonymous

Um. I'm afraid not! You may have to explain that part again :-)

Damkerng T.

23:19

Most books would say Thai has either 8 or 9 "mothers", depending on how we count. Let's use the 8-mother system.

It's basically about the limited number of the final consonant sounds in Thai. :-)

The first "mother" is แม่ ก กา (read "mae koh ka"), i.e., if a syllable uses this "mother", it has no final consonant.

The next "mother" is แม่ กก (read "mae kok", note the final /k/), i.e., if a syllable ends with the /k/ sound, it's of "mother kok", แม่ กก.

The list goes on for แม่ กด ("mae kot" for /t/), แม่ กบ ("mae kop" for /p/), etc.

And some vowel letters will change their sounds depending on these "mothers".

(BTW, it's not surprising that some Thais can't spell some syllables correctly. :-)

Anonymous

Hey, กับ is the first syllable you learn to read on thai-language.com :-)

Damkerng T.

Oh, that's quite nice! If I remember correctly, my first word that I learned with its spelling was กะ.

> 1. แม่ ก กา คำที่ไม่มีตัวสะกด
2. แม่ กก (- k) / ก / ได้แก่ ก ข ค ฆ
3. แม่ กด (- t) / ด / ได้แก่ จ ด ต ถ ท ธ ฎ ฏ ฑ ฒ ช ซ ศ ษ ส
4. แม่ กบ (- p) / บ / ได้แก่ บ ป พ ภ ฟ
5. แม่ กน (- n) / น / ได้แก่ น ณ ญ ร ล ฬ
6. แม่ กง (- n) / ง / ได้แก่ ง
7. แม่ กม (- m) / ม / ได้แก่ ม
8. แม่ เกย (- j) / ย / ได้แก่ ย
9. แม่ เกอว (- w) / ว / ได้แก่ ว

> kanjanakwang064.blogspot.com/2013/01/blog-post.html

That's all possible final consonants Thai can have. (The first one, แม่ ก กา, has no final consonant.)

Anonymous

What sound is the final j?

Damkerng T.

Hmm... perhaps try this word on GT, เคย.

In traditional Thai, it has one vowel sound. I think in modern phonetics, we can say that it's a diphthong of /ɤ/ and /j/, i.e., /kʰɤj/.

Anonymous

I'm back at my computer now!

Anonymous

23:29

ไทย

Damkerng T.

The thing is, all เกX read /kʰeX/, except for เกย, which reads /kʰɤj/

Anonymous

I know that word! :-)

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Ah, in that one, ย sound is absent. :D

So, ไท, ไทย, ทัย are pronounced exactly the same, i.e., /tʰai/.

Anonymous

Oh, and I was so proud of myself, too!

Anonymous

Haha!

Damkerng T.

23:33

See, ทัย reads /tʰai/, but ทัน reads /tʰan/, and ทัว reads like /tʰʊə/.

Anonymous

If you type ไทย ไท ทัย into Google Translate, it says "Thailand's Titusville".

Damkerng T.

Haha!

Anonymous

I don't know what transcription Google uses for romanizing Thai.

Anonymous

It doesn't look anything like IPA.

Anonymous

The Handbook of the IPA has four pages on Thai.

Damkerng T.

23:34

nods -- It doesn't look like anything I'm familiar with.

Maybe I should've written, ทัย reads /tʰaɪ/.

Anonymous

For ɤ, the handbook gives the example ŋɤ̄n 'silver'

Damkerng T.

Yes, เงิน.

Anonymous

A-ha!

Damkerng T.

Hmm... I wonder... Oh, I see. It's the tonal mark. เงิน has the first tone (เสียงกลาง, lit. "middle tone").

Anonymous

Yes

Anonymous

23:37

"Mid" is the name of that diacritic.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

From high to low: a̋ á ā à ȁ

Anonymous

I don't know which of those are used in Thai. Let's see.

Damkerng T.

In school, we usually start with กา ก่า ก้า ก๊า ก๋า for the five tones: middle (เสียงกลาง), first (เสียงเอก), second (เสียงโท), third (เสียงตรี), and fourth (เสียงจัตวา).

Anonymous

The IPA handbook shows:
　á　high
　ā　mid
　à　low
　ǎ　rising
　â　falling

Anonymous

23:40

There's a recording that goes with it. There's one for each language, and it has both Thai writing and an IPA transcription to go along with it.

Damkerng T.

I think we can map the systems like this: กา ก่า ก้า ก๊า ก๋า for the five tones: middle (เสียงกลาง, kā　mid ), first (เสียงเอก, kà　low), second (เสียงโท, â　falling), third (เสียงตรี, á　high), and fourth (เสียงจัตวา, ǎ　rising).

Anonymous

Let me write this down

Anonymous

Is the middle tone considered "toneless" or a "neutral tone"?

Anonymous

Or do you have one of those too? :-)

Damkerng T.

Note that the spelling doesn't always tell you right away what tone it is. The spelling tone and the pronouncing tone are different, depending on which set of the onset consonant it is.

Anonymous

23:42

Oh!

Anonymous

Due to sound change over time?

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Yes, I think you can say that it's a neutral tone.

@snailboat I think it's due to we mark our spelling to hint at the origin of the word.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Ah, most etymological spelling systems start out as some sort of sound-based transcription, then gradually become etymological systems as sound changes, leaving the spelling more and more out-of-date as time goes by.

Damkerng T.

But that was a long time ago, and now we have fixed three character sets for that.

Anonymous

Oh!

Damkerng T.

23:45

Another theory is that we was trying to be economic with our spelling, by saving time not having to writing down the tones.

So we basically have three sets for three basic tones. กา คา ขา read "ka kha kha" each with a different tone.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. quarplet.com/narrative.zip ← These are the audio files that come with the transcription in the handbook.

Anonymous

(I don't know why it's broken up into 12 files!)

Damkerng T.

กา (ก is อักษรกลาง "middle letter", so กา has the middle tone or neutral tone)

คา (ค is อักษรต่ำ "low letter", so คา has the low tone, i.e., the first tone (เสียงเอก), à)

ขา (ข is อักษรสูง "high letter", so ขา has the high tone, i.e., the high tone (เสียงตรี), á)

@snailboat Oh, it's that story!

The Wind and the Sun

Anonymous

> The consonant /r/ is realized most frequently as [ɾ] but also as [r]. Perceptual experiments (Abramson 1962: 6-9) have shown that the distinction between /r/ and /l/ is not very robust; nevertheless, the normative attitude among speakers of Standard Thai is that they are separate phonemes, as given in Thai script.

Anonymous

> This distinction is rather well maintained by some cultivated speakers, especially in formal speech; however, many show much vacillation, with a tendency to favour the lateral phone [l] in the position of a single initial consonant. As the second element of initial consonant clusters, but /l/ and /r/ tend to be deleted altogether.

Anonymous

23:53

Complicated!

Damkerng T.

Hehe! "cultivated speakers". That's interesting! :-)

Anonymous

I think this blurb was written sometime in the 90s.

Damkerng T.

We seem to always keep reminding ourselves that we should pronounce our /r/ properly. :D

The real cue we use to distinguish /r/ from /l/ in Thai is the trill.

Anonymous

Oh wow, you distinguish syllable final unreleased [t̚] from syllable final [ʔ].

Damkerng T.

Yes!

Anonymous

23:58

I'm not sure I can do that!

Anonymous

My syllable-final /t/s in English tend to be [ʔ] . . .

Damkerng T.

In fact, I speculate that the short-long contrast in vowels isn't really as important as [ʔ].

Anonymous

Even if I articulate the [t] sound with my tongue, I end up cutting the sound off in the glottis, and it ends up sounding the same to me.

Damkerng T.

For example, if we say "phraaaaaʔ", we still hear it as a short vowel.

Transcript for