Thai script to English

The Transliteration's list from the Royal Institution and PhD. Wit Thiengburanathurm, Thai-English Dictionary

 

 

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Alphabets for Transliteration from the Royal Institution. 

Alphabets for Transliteration from PhD. Wit Thiengburanathurm, Thai-English Dictionary

End of word structure

Alphabets for spoken Thai 

Vowels for spoken Thai

Tones for spoken Thai

References

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The home page is to show you how to write and read Thai Language using Romanization or English scripts.  It is useful for Thai people who want to transliterate Thai script to English such as personal names and place names, all foreigners who want to learn and read Thai, as well as, Thai teachers who wish to teach Thai language to foreigners. You can use this guideline for writing, reading and teaching Thai reading successfully.

The modern Thai alphabet has 44 consonants and 32 signs for vowels. The Thai language is very orderly and consistent in regard to pronunciation. Thai vowels and consonants are normally standardized in their pronunciation and rarely vary from word to word as frequently happens in English.

Therefore, Thai people always have a problem with the list of Thai transliteration especially to English because English letters are not consistent in regard to pronunciation. All vowels in English can be pronounced differently. For instance,

A :   hat, path, face

E :   bed, queen

I   :   stick, side

O :   hot, hole, book

U :   run, tune

As well as, Thai has more vowels than English. Thai also have mixed vowels which are very hard to transliterate to English. Thai transliteration books have their own transliteration list.

For example, Thai vowelอือย 

    - Dr.Wit Thiengburanathurm, Thai-English Dictionary transliterate to "eni" 

    - The Royal Institution transliterate to "uai". 

There are also more word that haven't found the conclusion yet. 

 

Some Linguists said we should rely on the Royal Institution 'ราชบัญฑิตยสถาน'. However the Dr.Wit Thiengburanathurm is used more worldwide and I found that the Royal Institution one has confused my students about and ค. Both are pronunciation different but the Royal Institution used same English letter (K). So my student pronounced with K instead of G.

Anyway, in this homepage I have shown the two versions which can be selected by your own decision. 

 

Alphabets for transliteration from the Royal Institution. 

Alphabets for transliteration from Dr.Wit Thiengburanathurm, Thai-English Dictionary

However as a Thai language teacher, teaching Foreigner for more than 5 years, I have found that the way to translate Thai script to English script in writing, such as the name of people or place, and in reading such as when you have to write the word 'สวัสดี' for Foreigners to read after you correctly, are somehow different.

Thai language has one grammar rule about the end of word which linguists should consider. Since both transliteration's chart from Royal Institution and PhD. Wit transformed English script with Thai for the beginning of syllables and the ending of syllables, are not followed the end of word rule. 

Every Thai people learns the end of word rule which is called ตัวสะกดแม่ (tuw-sa-god-mae) but most of them tend to forget it because native people use their language by instinct. My friend who started teaching Thai for Foreigner used to ask me, "My students ask  why the letter T () beginning of syllable read T () but ending of syllable read D () and I don't know neither why?"  So after that I have send her the chart rule which her students need to remember.  

End of word structure

There are many rules for learning to read Thai such as long sound and short sound, ligature, and so on. Some of them I have shown you as following but many of them I still cannot show you because it takes time to explain. 

So, if you have any problem please feel free to  personally.

I am glad to answer as much as I can. 

 

Alphabets for spoken Thai 

Vowels for spoken Thai

Tones for spoken Thai

 

                     

 

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This page was last updated on 20-01-2001 12:05.