I wrote:
>Does anybody know how Thai is Romanized? I'm especially
>curious about how the vowels are romanized. I have seen
>some romanizations that use syllable final <r> (as in
>"Chulalongkorn"), even though Thai does not allow them
>phonemically. I also remember a former classmate of mine
>from Thailand called "Palm", even though Thai does not allow
>syllable-final consonant clusters. Thai romanization appears
>to me to be based on English orthography making it deviate
>from its actual phonology on a phoneme to grapheme basis.
>Is this so?
>
>I'm asking because I'm once again considering some kind of
>orthographic change for Boreanesian that is more English
>friendly than Boreanesian friendly. I'm curious as to how much
>I'm allowed to deviate from the Boreanesian's phonology. The
>diacritics are a pain in the butt to deal with when I have to
>consider posting samples to this list. What do I for instance
>do with ogoneks?
What a delight! I just found the website for the United
Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN).
The UNGEGN site lists and describes the romanization
systems of the world's languages. Pretty cool! Have a
look at:
http://www.eki.ee/wgrs/
I'm sure this will be of interest to quite a few conlangers.
Enjoy!
-kristian- 8)