New Thai spellings for 176 loan words - The Nation
New Thai spellings for 176 loan words
PAKAMARD JAICHALARD,
SUPINDA NA MAHACHAI
THE NATION October 2, 2012 1:00 am
The Royal Institute has come up with new spellings of 176 words borrowed from English in order to better reflect how they are pronounced in Thai.
Tone marks - wanayuk in Thai - will be added to those words when they appear in the new edition of the institute's official dictionary.
They include words such as computer, quota, calorie and radar - all spelt without tone marks.
The 176 words were identified by the institute's recent survey of 300 experts, including board members, organisations and language scholars. There were both negative and positive views on the changes.
Kanchana Naksakul, a board member and Thai-language teacher, said yesterday the idea was to make the written words correspond with the way they are pronounced.
"Words should be written as pronounced," said Kanchana, who is also president of the Thai Language Teachers' Association. "Those who disagree with the new spellings can ignore them. Many words these days are not written the way suggested by the institute anyway."
Most of the Royal Institute board agreed to the changes but another survey will determine whether they agree to change the spelling of all the words, Kanchana said. If the majority of the respondents agree to all the changes, the new spellings will appear in the dictionary's next edition.
Chinnapat Bhumirat, chief of the Office of the Basic Education Commission, said the Royal Institute's plan was a good start. He suggested that the change shouldn't only ensure that written words are closer to the English pronunciation - it should also cover the syllable stress and the emphasis on long or short sounds in a word.
This would help Thai students pronounce English words correctly.
Chinnapat also proposed a "brainstorming" session for those involved to thoroughly review and correct words.
Wattana Boonjob, a language expert at the Fine Arts Department's Literature and History Office, urged that the changes reflect not just the words borrowed from English, but the entire language.