Pali in Thai Script : Letter .ta

[vinodh]

Which is the Thai Equivalent of the Sanskrit ṭa

ฏ or ฎ

Wikipedia page on Thai Script gives the former as the equivalent & Cambridge Library reference (http://www.ames.cam.ac.uk/faclib/conversion-tables.pdf - Page 22-23) cites the latter as the equivalent.

Any idea which is the actual Thai usage ?

Also,

Is there any online version of the Tripitaka in Thai Script (other than the tipitaka.org version) ?

V

[David N. Snyder]

I found some of the information you are looking for that might be available here:

http://paliinthaiscript.blogspot.com/

[Kare]

I found some of the information you are looking for that might be available here:

http://paliinthaiscript.blogspot.com/

That site is a bit confusing. The Pali in Thai script that is presented there, is really Pali transcribed into Thai script for readers of modern Thai. I do not have the Thai characters for writing here, but for instance one major difference is that at the site the short "a"s are transcribed with the vowel "short a" in Thai language. In proper Pali in Thai script there is no sign for short "a", since this vowel automatically is included in the consonant sign if no other vowel sign is given. Real Pali in Thai script (not transcribed) can be found here: http://www.tipitaka.org/thai/

[appicchato]

She (ShinMeiDokuJoh) has done a great job on her blog and it is very useful to both speakers of English and Thai (especially Thai speakers working with English speakers)...and the format is most helpful for someone (Thai) to learn English (phonetics) as well...just saying that she doesn't present herself as a scholar in English, Pali, nor Thai...she's Indian I think...anyway, this is, more or less, just a plug for her and the work she's doing...

[Kare]

She may be a wonderful person - I do not know her. I am not criticizing her as a person. I just wanted to point out that this way of transcribing Pali into a script based on modern Thai (which also is used in some manuals for lay persons in Thailand) is not very helpful if you wish to read real Pali texts in Thai script, since these use a different system, as shown on the site I linked to.

[mikenz66]

Hi Kare,
Thank you for pointing this out. I had no idea there was a "proper Thai Pali" different from the regular phonetic rules. Presumably the normal English transliterations are therefore also "wrong"? I.e could all short "a"s in principle be eliminated in English too? Hmm, that would be interesting...

I just wanted to point out that this way of transcribing Pali into a script based on modern Thai (which also is used in some manuals for lay persons in Thailand) ...

I guess that's the point. What's in that blog is what one sees in common Thai chanting books (though I think there may also be one or two minor errors). It follows regular Thai phonetic syntax. As you are probably aware, Thai does have implied short a under some circumstances (in the first syllable of a multi-syllabic word, such as in the first syllable of "sawat", as in the greeting "sawat di"), so while there is no short a written into the first syllable of svākkhāto in Thai (as in English) it will be pronounced as sa-wāk-khā-to. I've no idea if that's correct, but it's how a Thai monk or lay person will say it. (no "v" in Thai). However, if you left out all the short "a"s a lot of words would come out quite wrong if normal Thai pronunciation rules were applied, since some would be interpreted as short "o"s.

Metta
Mike

[Kare]

Hi Kare,
Thank you for pointing this out. I had no idea there was a "proper Thai Pali" different from the regular phonetic rules. Presumably the normal English transliterations are therefore also "wrong"? I.e could all short "a"s in principle be eliminated in English too? Hmm, that would be interesting...

No. Maybe I did not explain this clearly enough. Let us compare with European languages. The different languages in Europe use the same latin alphabets (with some added accents and diacritical signs), but each language still follows its own phonetic rules. Therefore a word like for instance "conception" will be pronounced differently in French and English, although the letters and the spelling is the same. Conventional spelling and phonetics are therefore two different things.

All the Indian and Southeast-Asian scripts are developed from the Asokan Brahmi script, and follow the same basic principles. The basic sign - for instance "K" - implies a consonant and a short "a". Therefore "K" really is "Ka". If some other vowel is intended, a small sign is added to the consonant, either to the right, over, below, or to the left (and in some modern scripts even on both sides) of the consonant. The basic unit therefore really is the syllable: consonant + vowel. When transcribing a word into latin script, we have to add the short "a"s, since these are implied in the Brahmi and derivated scripts.

This system is used in standard editions of Pali texts in Thai script, like the one at the link I gave.

When the Thai script is used for Thai language, the basic system has been modified. A short "a" is still implied in a prefixed syllable, which is written with a consonant followed by a full syllable. But in all other cases the short "a" is written with a separate sign (well - two different signs really).

What has happened in chanting books and at the blogspot, is that instead of using the old "Indian" system with implied short "a"s, there is used the modified system from the Thai language, writing every short "a" with a separate vowel sign.

[mikenz66]

Hi Kare,

Thanks for filling out the explanation of how Thai works. As you say, Thai writing is derived from ancient Indian languages. However, the language itself is not (despite having many Pali and Sanskrit "loan words"). It's part of a completely different language group that includes some southern Chinese dialects. [Thai tones are quite similar to, for example, Cantonese, but rather different from "standard" Chinese (Putonghua)].

So Thai has an alphabet that happens to be Indian of origin but has adapted to express the sounds of its language. So it's no wonder that they generally choose to write Pali for general consumption in a way that is reasonably congruent with the phonetics of their language. [Of course, achieving such congruence is a problem for speakers of various languages - Romanized Pali uses a different set of pronunciation rules from any particular European language.]

From your extended explanation I can now better understand now why scholarly Thai-script Pali drops the "modern" Thai language conventions. Presumably it's been like that for hundreds of years and reflects the most direct relationship to the Indian scripts that the Thai script is based on.

I'm now curious about svākkhāto. As I said, the way it's written in Thai chanting books there is an implied short a, which Thai people will, of course, pronounce. From your description of how the ancient Indian languages work (always an "a" unless otherwise specified), it sounds like the "a" should be pronounced. Is that correct?

Metta
Mike

[Kare]

Hi Kare,

Thanks for filling out the explanation of how Thai works. As you say, Thai writing is derived from ancient Indian languages. However, the language itself is not (despite having many Pali and Sanskrit "loan words"). It's part of a completely different language group that includes some southern Chinese dialects. [Thai tones are quite similar to, for example, Cantonese, but rather different from "standard" Chinese (Putonghua)].

So Thai has an alphabet that happens to be Indian of origin but has adapted to express the sounds of its language. So it's no wonder that they generally choose to write Pali for general consumption in a way that is reasonably congruent with the phonetics of their language. [Of course, achieving such congruence is a problem for speakers of various languages - Romanized Pali uses a different set of pronunciation rules from any particular European language.]

From your extended explanation I can now better understand now why scholarly Thai-script Pali drops the "modern" Thai language conventions. Presumably it's been like that for hundreds of years and reflects the most direct relationship to the Indian scripts that the Thai script is based on.

I'm now curious about svākkhāto. As I said, the way it's written in Thai chanting books there is an implied short a, which Thai people will, of course, pronounce. From your description of how the ancient Indian languages work (always an "a" unless otherwise specified), it sounds like the "a" should be pronounced. Is that correct?

Metta
Mike

I found that word in Thai font at the site http://www.tipitaka.org/thai/

That will make it a lot easier to explain.

สฺวากฺขาโต

The general rule is that a consonant sign always implies a short "a", unless otherwise specified. In consonant clusters it will therefore be necessary to remove the implied "a", and that is done by adding a point below the consonant. As you will see, there is a small point below "s", and another one below the "k". Therefore the reading is not savākakhāto, but svākkhāto. In Devanagari the main principles are the same, but in that script an unwanted short "a" is removed by joining the two consonants into a ligature.

The points below the consonants are not so easy to see in this small font. They are a lot clearer in normal book fonts, so it is no problem to read this kind of script.

[mikenz66]

Hi Kare,

Thanks, that's helpful. I had heard that there were specific additions to Thai script for Pali (like Roman script is extened by the dots etc), but hadn't seen any example. It's maybe helpful to look at it a little larger:
สฺวากฺขาโต = svākkhāto

As you say those first two characters would not be interpreted as a consonant cluster in standard Thai, so an "a" is inserted between them, which the dot under the ส("s") suppresses.

Since the average Thai chanting book is not typeset with those symbols, it's no wonder there is always an "sa" in svākkhāto.

Metta
Mike

[vinodh]

Hi,

I have referred to some scanned editions of Thai Tripitaka and found out that ฏ is correct

However, on researching the printed Thai Script editions of the Tripitaka (see: http://hall.worldtipitaka.org/node/240199) ฏ U+0E0F seems to be the character which is used in the various Thai Tripitaka Editions for ṭa.

http://www.virtualvinodh.com/thai

Thanks for the blog link, its great.

V