Fried crap: A cheat sheet to reading and pronouncing Thai

Ever tried to order your favorite dish in a Thai restaurant and been completely misunderstood? Or carefully recited your destination to a taxi driver only to be met with a blank stare?  
These situations can usually be traced back to some sort of linguistic misunderstanding.  

The Thai language is a finicky one. A misdirected tone, a shortened vowel or improperly articulated consonant can mean the difference between a dish being “spicy” or including “duck” -- a situation not helped by the fact that Thais also have wildly different ways of writing their language in English. 

In fact, there is an official system of transliteration from Thai to English, but few Thais are aware of it, and most follow an informal or improvised way of spelling.

But there are some rough ground rules. To help you navigate ambiguous Thai menus, street names and neighborhoods, we’ve prepared a cheat sheet to reading, pronouncing and understanding Thai words. 

Phat thai 

If you’re not already familiar with how Thai is pronounced, the abundance of the letter "h" on Thai menus and street signs can be confusing.

To understand what’s going on, we’ll have to get just a tiny bit linguistic. The term "aspiration" refers to the puff of air that accompanies a consonant, an important sound in Thai.

When Thais write their language in English, aspiration is usually, though not always, indicated by an "h". For example, the "h" in phat, meaning “fried”, implies that the word is pronounced like the name “Pat”, i.e. accompanied by a puff of air (and never like an "f" sound).

The same goes for "th", which like the word "Thai," is aspirated (and never pronounced as in the English words “thin” or “this).

Likewise, if a consonant is not followed by an "h", it is most likely referring to the un-aspirated sound, i.e. not accompanied by a puff of air -- a sound quite similar to the "p" in the English word “spot” or the "t" in “steak”.

Thus, the Thai word "poo" (meaning “crab”) shouldn’t elicit giggles at all -- the initial consonant is actually pronounced somewhere between p and b.  

With 44 consonants and 32 vowels, the Thai language can be tricky to transliterate into English.

Larb versus laap versus lahb

There are alternating long and short vowel sounds in Thai, and to convey the long sound some people add an "r" (or sometimes an "h") when writing words in English.

This is somewhat misleading, as the Thai long vowel sound is not exactly the same as the English "r" sound (a closer equivalent might be the English word “all” pronounced with less "l" and more "a").

Regardless, if you’re trying to pronounce any of these variants, simply ignore the "r" and hold the vowel sound a bit longer. 

Fried crap

In Thai, here’s no difference between a final "p" or "b" sound, which leads to puzzling menu items such as the above.

The thing to remember here is that divergent spellings such as "phat thai" and "phad thai" are pronounced the same way, and refer to the same thing. 

BTS Latchadamli 

The written Thai language distinguishes between "r" and "l", but in everyday speech, "l" wins out. This is why Ratchadamri, when said by a Bangkok taxi driver, might sound more like "latchadamli". 

BTS Thong Lo

A particularly ambiguous letter is "o". Much of the time it’s pronounced like the "o" in “boat”, but it can also refer to the vowel sound found in the English word “law”, as in both vowels sounds in the word Thong Lo.

There’s no way of telling, except when the latter sound is made explicit, such as in the spelling of Bangkok’s Or Tor Kor Market. 

Sukhumvit

Adding to the confusion is the fact that, when written in English, Thai words sometimes include letters and sounds that don’t even exist in Thai.

For example, despite it being part of the accepted spelling of the famous Bangkok street above, there is actually no "v" sound in Thai (in this case the "v" should be pronounced like a "w").

This phenomenon stems from the fact that many Thai words were borrowed from other languages, but Thais chose to maintain their original spellings, even when writing them in English.

This seems odd until you realize that we do more or less the same thing in English -- think “psychology” or “knife."

Other common examples of this in Thai include unpronounced vowels (the last syllable of Suvarnabhumi -- actually pronounced suwannaphoom) and the impotent "r" (in Thai names such as Mitr -- actually pronounced mit). 

Enwit Presley

The Thai desire to hold on to the original spellings of loan words has led to some nearly unrecognizable pronunciations of Western words as well. For example, there is no "tr" nor final "l" sound in Thai, leading to the word “Central” being pronounced more like "senthan".

Likewise, there’s no final "s sound in Thai, so “Elvis” comes out sounding something like enwit. 

Some Thai sounds simply don’t exist in English 

Obviously writing Thai words in English has its limits, particularly when it comes to representing the various sounds that have no equivalent in our alphabet.

A common example of this is the "eu" sound (sometimes spelled "ue"), found in the word for “one” (neung), which, if you’re wondering how to say it, is made by smiling, not rounding, the lips.

Another example is the "ng" sound, which we actually have in English, but only in the middle or at the end of a word, but which in Thai can begin a word. If you live on Soi Ngam Duphli or Thanon Ngam Wong Wan, you can prepare for your daily taxi ordeal by saying “sing it”, holding the "ng" as long as possible.