Scot Barme - Mini Thai Dictionary: Thai-English English-Thai, Fully Romanized with Thai Script for all Thai Words

Mini Thai Dictionary English-Thai
Thai-English Compiled by Scot Barm and Pensi Najaithong
Updated and revised by Jintana Rattanakhemakon
Published by Tuttle Publishing, an imprint of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd. www.tuttlepublishing.com 2018 by Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd All rights reserved. ISBN 978-0-8048-5002-5; ISBN 978-1-4629-2024-2 (ebook) Distributed by: North America, Latin America and Europe Tuttle Publishing 364 Innovation Drive, North Clarendon, VT 05759-9436 USA. Tel: 1(802) 773-8930 Fax: 1(802) 773-6993 Asia Pacific Berkeley Books Pte. Ltd. INTRODUCTION This Mini Thai Dictionary gives entries that are based on everyday colloquial Thai although more polite or formal ones are also included, where appropriate. INTRODUCTION This Mini Thai Dictionary gives entries that are based on everyday colloquial Thai although more polite or formal ones are also included, where appropriate.

To ensure that you are aware of these distinctions both colloquial and formal entries are clearly indicated, as is the case with various idioms and slang terms listed. In compiling this work we have done our best to include the most commonly used Thai words. It should be emphasized, however, that in a book of such limited scope, it has been impossible to provide a totally comprehensive listing of vocabulary items. Even so we believe that this dictionary will meet the needs of users who would like to develop a proficiency in the language and a better understanding of a distinctively different socio-cultural world. To help you get a better sense of how different Thai words function there are also a number of specific examples of usage provided. Merely providing lists of words and their Thai or English equivalents does not really give the user enough to work with if they are interested in moving beyond a rudimentary, and often unsatisfactory, level of communication.

Numerous examples of how the particular meanings of Thai words/expressions are formed are also provided. These examples are given in parentheses and appear as follows: (literally, word A-word B and so on). A case in point is the way the Thai word for river is formed. In English river is a single word. In Thai, however, river meh-nam is a combination of two distinct and completely different words. The first of these is meh , or mother, and the second is nam , or water.

In other words river in Thai is literally mother-water (or mother of water(s)). Similarly, the English word tear(s) (i.e. the tears of someone crying) in Thai is nam-taa (literally, water-eye[s]) , the word taa here meaning eye(s). From examining the examples provided in the English-Thai section of the dictionary you should be able to not only extend your vocabulary and improve your facility with the language, but also develop a better understanding of the type of English typically spoken by many Thai people. Regardless of your language background it is natural to use your mother tongue as a type of template when speaking another language. That is until you begin to make a serious effort to understand the underlying nature of the language you are trying to learn and develop a fuller sense of it in its own terms.

The basics of Thai might be considered simple enough for you to quickly pick up the language, especially when compared to some European languages, for example: Words are not modified or conjugated for tense, person, possession, number (singular/plural), gender, or subject-verb agreement. Determiners such as a, an, or the are not used. Hence many Thai speakers of English speak in what is usually referred to as broken English (or Tinglish as some would have it)this being strongly influenced by their native Thai language template. And, obviously, non-Thais do much the same thing when speaking Thai. Here it should be mentioned that there are a significant, and ever increasing, number of English words in Thai, many concerned with technological advances and innovation. At the same time there is also a growing body of non technical words and expressions that have been incorporated into Thai.

Such instances are clearly indicated by the inclusion of the marker (from English) next to such entries. Inevitably, English borrowings into Thai have been Thai-ified and, at times, are not immediately clear or comprehensible to the native English speaker. In all cases an attempt has been made to provide a usable form of pronunciation for these various English loan words. A final note: In addition to polite, formal, colloquial terms and a smattering of widely used idioms, a number of common crude, vulgar words are included and clearly marked. These particular entries are for the benefit of the curious readera form of FYI, as it were. However, it is strongly advised that you avoid using any such words until you have gained a good level of familiarity with Thai society and the way Thai people interact.

Under no circumstances experiment using such language with strangers as the consequences of doing so could, potentially, be very unpleasant. General overview of some key aspects of Thai In one very basic sense Thai is like Englishit has an alphabet. Thai words, like those in English, are composed of particular combinations of lettersboth consonants and vowels. In the Thai case, however, different vowels are written before, above, below or after consonants, or a combination of these positions. And in a very small number of cases, the vowel sound, while the same as other written forms, is not written at all; rather it is inherent and has to be learned. Thai has its own distinctive script which is similar to the closely related language of neighboring Laos.

Thai, like Lao, is written without spaces between the words. In written Thai, however, spaces do occur between what we might loosely call grouped associated ideas. It should be emphasized that there is no ideal way of writingthat is romanizing or transliteratingThai words in English. There are a number of systems for romanizing Thai and, regrettably, none of them (including that used in this dictionary) is ideal. In fact, at times, some of the systems used to romanize Thai words are rather unhelpful when it comes to getting the pronunciation correct. For example, you may have seen the common, polite everyday greeting for hello swt dii written as sawasdii/dee or sawas dii/dee .

There is no issue with the dii/dee which simply sounds like the English letter d. As for the sawas what has occurred is that the writer has employed one of the romanization systems which adhere strictly to the actual Thai spelling. In written Thai, the final s in sawas is indeed spelled with an s letter, but what needs to be understood is that when s (and in Thai there are a number of different letters representing s) appears at the end of a syllable or word it is pronounced as a t sound (although some consider this to be closer to a dhence you will sometimes see sawad dii/dee , or, for the popular noodle dish, pad/phad thai rather than the more accurate pht thai the word pht actually sounding closer to the English golfing term putt). In a following section all of the syllable-final consonant sounds in Thai are provided. In summary, while Thai and English share many of the same sounds there are a number of instances where there are no comparable sounds between the two languages. Romanized Thai English pronunciation is often very confusing to non-native speakers as individual letters do not correspond to a single unchanging sound. Romanized Thai English pronunciation is often very confusing to non-native speakers as individual letters do not correspond to a single unchanging sound.