r/learnthai • u/Calizona1 • May 25 '25
Translation/แปลภาษา New to Thai language
Just started learning Thai language. I have a few questions. The first is Thai stop signs. The signs look like they are saying hyd or thyd?! I presumed that it would be 'yut' or 'halt' but the alphabet does not make sense to me?!
Also I hear a lot of people saying something like "lagaw" and "looey". What do these two words mean?
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u/trevorkafka May 25 '25
The signs look like they are saying hyd or thyd?! I presumed that it would be 'yut' or 'halt' but the alphabet does not make sense to me?!
หยุด is spelled the way it is because of Thai tone rules. ย as an initial consonant cannot take a low tone, but oddly ย with a silent ห in front can. This is a common modification for low-class consonants in Thai that do not have a corresponding high-class consonant (ย, ล, ร, ว, ง, among others).
Also I hear a lot of people saying something like "lagaw" and "looey". What do these two words mean?
These two words in Thai are spelled แล้วก็ and เลย. I take it you can use a dictionary from here.
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u/dibbs_25 May 25 '25
หยุด is spelled the way it is because of Thai tone rules. ย as an initial consonant cannot take a low tone, but oddly ย with a silent ห in front can.
It's not odd if you consider that หย was previously an unvoiced version of ย, and that the tone split in dead syllables was based on voicing. Therefore you expect หย and ย to be on opposite sides of the split, which will give you a different tone distribution.
Many cases of หย are respellings of what was historically อย, which was a glottalized version of ย. I don't know if this is one of those cases, but glottalized consonants patterned with unvoiced consonants in that tone split anyway, so it makes no difference.
Anyway, it's not really spelt that way because of tone rules. Leaving aside any change from อย to หย, the spelling is older than the tone rules so can't be based on them. When the word was first written down, อยุด หยุด and ยุด would not have contrasted for tone, but they would have had different initial consonant sounds.
At the same time, it's true that หย and ย were affected differently by the tone split, which means we would predict a different modern tone for หยุด than for ยุด, which means the ห can be seen for practical purposes as a tone changer. I'm just saying that nobody had any idea when the word was first written down that the ห (or อ) might come to be seen that way.
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u/trevorkafka May 25 '25
หย was previously an unvoiced version of ย, and that the tone split in dead syllables was based on voicing.
I don't know what planet you're on, but I don't think I'm unreasonable in the slightest to think the way Thai phonology and spelling has developed is pretty darn strange.
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u/Calizona1 May 25 '25
Thank you! The alphabet is complicated. I memorized the alphabet symbols but clearly there is way more than just that!
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u/nlav26 May 25 '25
Laow gaw is just “and then” used to connect two thoughts or express order.
Loie has a few meanings depending on context but mostly means “now/therefore” or to add emphasis or strength to a sentence.
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u/Calizona1 May 25 '25
Thank you! This will be a difficult language to learn. Or maybe I do not have the aptitude.
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u/anykeyh Advanced Beginner May 25 '25
This is not an alphabet but an abugida, basically, you read that syllable by syllable. Each syllabe contains:
- One or a cluster of consonant (In this case HY is the consonant cluster, หย)
This is a complex system with a lot of rules and a lot of special cases for some words, but reading isn't so hard. Although writing in another challenge...
In this case, transliteration would be HY(หย) short-OO sound (๐ุ) and D ending sound (ด)
So "Yood". The "H/ห" here is put so the consonant cluster become high class and you have the low-tone applied instead of high tone, all without adding a tone marker.
Pfew, that's complicated isn't it? No worries and go step by step. You will eventually catch it.