bar closeure s

[sglad]

The bars are almost certain to be closed on 6th October for Awk Wan Phansa - the end of Buddhist Lent. New rules were imposed in 2015 and bars were closed last year too. 13th Oct is actually the anniversary of the passing of HM King Bhumipol Adulyadej and things are sure to be very subdued on that day, even though the funeral is two weeks later.

MiniMee, do you speak Thai? You actually transliterated Wan Ok (Awk) Phansa correctly. I've seen it (wrongly) transliterated as "Ow or Aw Phansa" just as "kok" (island) is often wrongly transliterated as "ko". So we often see "Ko Samet", "Ko Samui", "Ko Phi Phi" when it should be Kok Samet, Kok Samui, etc.

[christianpfc]

MiniMee, do you speak Thai? You actually transliterated Wan Ok (Awk) Phansa correctly. I've seen it (wrongly) transliterated as "Ow or Aw Phansa" just as "kok" (island) is often wrongly transliterated as "ko". So we often see "Ko Samet", "Ko Samui", "Ko Phi Phi" when it should be Kok Samet, Kok Samui, etc.

sglad, do you speak Thai?
island เกาะ can be transliterated as Ko or Koh, but not kok; there is no sound after the o.

[sglad]

sglad, do you speak Thai?
island เกาะ can be transliterated as Ko or Koh, but not kok; there is no sound after the o.

Of course there is a sound after the 'o' - it's an unaspirated 'k' sound so the correct utterance for the Thai word for island is kok (low tone). It's what you get when you combine the middle class consonant ก with the short vowel เ–าะ. So เกาะ is pronounced kok (low tone) or kɔ̀ʔ (IPA). I think what you meant to say is that there is no final or ending consonant and not that there is no sound.

To pronounce it as ko, koh or kho (as in co-ed, co-op) would be inaccurate but I have heard farangs say Co-Phuket, Co-Samui, etc and Thais are able to understand them from context.

The problem with the romanization of the Thai script is that there is often inconsistency between how words are spelled in Thai and how they are to be pronounced (in English). This is especially true of words of Pali-Sanskrit origin and rachasap (royal language). A classic example is Suwannaphumi (romanised Thai script) where the correct utterance is actually suwan-na-phum. Another familiar example is Shinawatra (romanised Thai script) for which the correct utterance is chin-na-wat. You can also see the Chinese lineage from the surname Chin.

The problem is further compounded by the RTGS mixing up transliteration with transcription and vice versa and and in seeking to to romanise the Thai script, we are sometimes guilty of the same. The old system of letter-by-letter transliteration is actually quite useless and confusing for students of Thai as a foreign language as well as non-Thai speakers generally. But the trend now, especially among the progressive lecturers that I have studied with, is to transcribe rather than simply transliterate so that the romanised spelling would actually reflect how a word is supposed to be pronounced. As anyone would agree, this makes complete sense but official change is slow and the last major attempt at revising the RTGS was in 1999 I believe. In addition to the Thai language being a highly political and sensitive issue, these matters come under the purview of the Royal Institute of Thailand and that's all I can say about it.

[christianpfc]

Of course there is a sound after the 'o' - it's an unaspirated 'k' sound so the correct utterance for the Thai word for island is kok (low tone). It's what you get when you combine the middle class consonant ก with the short vowel เ–าะ. So เกาะ is pronounced kok (low tone) or kɔ̀ʔ (IPA). I think what you meant to say is that there is no final or ending consonant and not that there is no sound.

To pronounce it as ko, koh or kho (as in co-ed, co-op) would be inaccurate but I have heard farangs say Co-Phuket, Co-Samui, etc and Thais are able to understand them from context.

There is a glottal stop (IPA ʔ) at the end, but no k sound.

None of the various books on Thai language that I read write "kok", google says "Showing results for koh samui Search instead for kok samui", and I have never heard it pronounced "kok".

Koh is misleading (in German, the h shows that the preceding vowel is pronounced long, but in Koh the o is short). There is no way to represent the short low tone o.