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
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