Criticism
The Royal Thai General System does not transcribe all features of Thai phonology. Particularly it has the following shortcomings:
- it does not record tones
- it does not differentiate between short and long vowels
- the notation ⟨ch⟩ does not differentiate between IPA /tɕ/ and IPA /tɕʰ/ (see table below); using ⟨c⟩ for /tɕ/ would have been more consistent with the other stops
- the notation ⟨o⟩ does not differentiate between IPA /ɔ/ and IPA /o/ (see table below)
| Phoneme 1 | Phoneme 2 | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RTGS | Thai | IPA | Description | English | Thai | IPA | Description | English |
| ch | จ | tɕ | alveo-palatal affricate |
as ⟨ty⟩ in "let you" |
ฉ, ช, ฌ | tɕʰ | aspirated alveo- palatal affricate |
as ⟨ch⟩ in "check" |
| o | โ–ะ, – | o | close-mid back short rounded |
Not a separate phoneme; like the first vowel in "note" (American pronunciation) |
เ–าะ | ɔ | open-mid back short rounded |
like ⟨o⟩ in "boy" |
| โ– | oː | close-mid back long rounded |
like ⟨oa⟩ in "moan" |
–อ | ɔː | open-mid back long rounded |
like ⟨aw⟩ in "raw" | |
The original design envisioned that the general system would give broad details of pronunciation, while the precise system would supplement this with information as to vowel lengths, tones, and Thai characters used. The ambiguity of ⟨ch⟩ and ⟨o⟩ was introduced in the 1968 version.
Read more about this topic: Royal Thai General System Of Transcription
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism.... Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“A friend of mine spoke of books that are dedicated like this: “To my wife, by whose helpful criticism ...” and so on. He said the dedication should really read: “To my wife. If it had not been for her continual criticism and persistent nagging doubt as to my ability, this book would have appeared in Harper’s instead of The Hardware Age.””
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)
“Good criticism is very rare and always precious.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)