Re: A BrSc a? & Nyuu Romaji

Roger Mills sikayal:

> Somewhat OT, but a related problem with Indic scripts:  one sees the name of
> the King of Thailand variously as Phumipon, Phumipol, or Bhumibol etc.
> Since the first part is undoubtedly Sanskrit _bhumi_ 'world, earth' I assume
> it's written with a character derived from "bh", even though nowadays it
> pronounced [p_h].
I can explain that one with my first-year knowledge of Thai.  The initial
consonant is doubtlessly written with one of the letters for /ph/ (there
are three), and the writing "bh" probably results from Indian
contamination, as you said.  The final consonant is written with the
letter normally romanized as {l}, but is in this case pronounced as /n/.
This is because Thai only allows six consonants at the end of
syllables--/p t k m n N/, but it has a wide variety of ways to spell those
syllables, and one of the ways to represent final /n/ is with {l}, as in
the king's name.

>  Similarly, my Thai-made hot sauce is romanized "sriracha"
> brand, presumably equiv. to Indic 'Sri Raja' or "(honorif.) king'.   A
> glance at various Thai menus will also reveal inconsistences in
> transliteration-- mee krop, mi krob etc. etc.
Sriracha hot-sauce is wonderful.  And the inconsistency in the final
consonant of "krop/b" comes from the same thing that I said above--the
"standard" spelling of final [p] is {b}, and there is evidently confusion
about how to romanize it.  Mi/mee is of course a reflection of the English
confusion about how to spell [i].

Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu

"If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are
perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in
frightful danger of seeing it for the first time."
--G.K. Chesterton