Royal Thai General System of Transcription

The General Royal Thai Umschriftsystem (English Royal Thai General System of Transcription, RTGS) is the official system to transcribe the Thai writing in the Latin alphabet. It is used for example for road signs or publications of the Thai government. It is the system that is most likely a standard transcription of Thai equivalent, although even the use by government agencies is uneven. It is maintained by the Royal Institute of Thailand.

Properties

The salient features of the RTGS are:

  • The RTGS used only unchanged letters of the Latin alphabet; no diacritics
  • Vowels and diphthongs are expressed only by the letters a, e, i, o and u the simple letter " a", " e", " i", " o ", "u " are simple vowels, they have the same value as in the International Phonetic Alphabet, IPA
  • Combinations with "e" as the second vowel as in " ae ", " oe", "ue " are simple vowels similar to the ligatures [ æ, œ, ɯ ] in IPA
  • Combinations with a continuation " a", " i" or " o" (even multiple times ) correspond to the diphthongs [a, j, w] in IPA
  • Combinations with "h " as in " ph", "th" or "kh " stand for aspirated p, t, k, in IPA as [ p ʰ, t ʰ, k ʰ ] presented to them, " t of the unaspirated " p " to distinguish " and" k "
  • It uses " ng " as in English, IPA [ ŋ ]
  • It uses "ch" for IPA [ tɕ ʰ ] and [ tɕ ]
  • It uses " y" for IPA [j ]
  • Note: the transcription of the consonant at the end of a syllable corresponds to the pronunciation, not the actual spelling.

Criticism

The Royal Thai romanization system is inadequate for learners of the Thai language because of the following disadvantages:

  • No display of pitches and Tonverläufen,
  • It does not distinguish between short and long vowels,
  • "ch " does not distinguish between IPA / tɕ / and IPA / tɕ ʰ / ( see table below)
  • The "o" does not distinguish between IPA / ɔ / and IPA / o / ( see table below)

Transcription Table

The transliteration of the consonants depends on its position in the syllable. In the vowel table of the hyphen ("-" ) indicates the position of the letter relative to the beginning vowel.

Swell

  • Official announcement of the rules: ประกาศ สำนัก นายกรัฐมนตรี เรื่อง หลักเกณฑ์การถอดอักษรไทยเป็นอักษรโรมันแบบถ่ายเสียง. In: Royal Gazette. 116, No. 37 ง, May 11, 1999, p 11
  • Romanisierungsregeln the Royal Institute ( Thai, PDF, 162 kB)
Transcription (linguistics) Typographic ligature Aspirated consonant ALA-LC romanization
766999
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