Dear Sir,
Whilst Mr. Blount’s letter (2 April) is generally helpful, he is
not quite right about Pattaya. And whilst the letter (9 April) from PCB Mitchell
(hereinafter referred to as ‘PCBM’ to avoid tiresome repetition of
‘he/she’ etc.) sheds further light on the matter, it also simultaneously manages
to sow further confusion.
That the first syllable of ‘Pattaya’ is short, not long, is,
as PCBM says, indisputable. There are indeed some monosyllabic Thai words which, although
written with a short vowel are pronounced long, and vice versa. Some always and others
sometimes, depending on context - of which PCBM gives some examples. But
‘Pattaya’, or rather its first syllable, is not one of them. Indeed I am aware
of no instance of this particular vowel sign (‘mai hanakart’) being pronounced
long.
The correct syllabification of ‘Pattaya’ is not
‘pa-ta-yah’ (let alone ‘pah-ta-yah’), but ‘pat-ta-yah’.
Although the Thai ‘t’ consonant is written only once, phonetically it serves two
functions: first as the final consonant of the first syllable (this is indisputable since
no syllable can end in ‘mai hanakart’) and then as the initial consonant of the
second syllable.
As PCBM more or less says, ‘emphasis’ is not really a concept
in the Thai language, except for forced pronunciations in exclamatory utterances. Whilst
one appreciates Mr. Blount’s attempts at simplification, it simply will not do to
brush aside the whole question of tones. PCBM’s rather throwaway ‘while the
formal length of a vowel is crucial for the tone’, whilst not incorrect, is scarcely
more helpful, particularly since he omits to tell us which syllables of
‘Pattaya’ have which tones.
What makes it sound as though the ‘emphasis’ is on the first
syllable is precisely the combination of the high tone with the initial plosive
‘p’ sound and the clipped final ‘t’. There is no need to exaggerate
the difficulty of tones: high tone simply means that the syllable is uttered at a pitch
that is ‘high’ (in the musical sense, nothing to do with volume) relative to the
speaker’s normal speaking pitch, regardless of whether the speaker is a soprano, bass
or whatever.
At the risk of seeming pedantic and/or spoilsport, or possibly even
obtuse (see hereunder), it does seem a pity that PCBM, having had a very respectable stab
at elucidating the subject in hand, throws it all away by saying, ‘As far as
pronunciation goes, all my local Thai friends put the accent on "tai" (south)
(sorry!).’ Well might PCBM be sorry. I presume this is a reference to the
concentration of ‘nighteries’, as your Bangkok Post colleague (see hereunder)
would have it, in Pattaya Tai, but it risks adding to the confusion, which, as if it were
not already enough, is further compounded by PCBM’s statement that ‘the second
vowel is invisible’. Now I know that ‘invisible’ is not synonymous with
‘inaudible’, but I shudder to think what someone who neither reads Thai nor
understands the joke about Pattaya Tai would make of this. Indeed the second vowel is
invisible, i.e. it is not written: but that does not mean it is not there from a phonetic
point of view. Some scholars refer to it as an ‘implicit’ vowel. In this case it
has the same short ‘a’ sound as the ‘mai hanakart’ of the first
syllable.
So, to summarise: The first syllable is pronounced ‘pat’ -
not as an American, Australian or Londoner would say it, but as someone from the North of
England would say it, with a very short ‘a’. For Americans, etc., one could
almost say it’s nearer to ‘put’ than ‘pat’. It is pronounced with
a high tone - as if a Yorkshireman were asking the question "Pat?"
The second syllable is a short, high-tone ‘ta’, often
virtually swallowed in practice, especially when speaking fast; most certainly not
‘tie’ or ‘tea’ or anything remotely like that, and most certainly not
emphasised.
The third syllable as per Mr. Blount, is a long, mid-tone
‘yah’, which, as PCBM says, can sound ‘emphasised’ because it is the
only long syllable in the word.
Incidentally when Mr. Blount applies the word ‘obtuse’ to the
Thai language, one assumes he means ‘abstruse’ ( = complex, difficult, hard to
understand), or perhaps ‘obscure’ ( = unclear, dark). ‘Obtuse’ means
‘blunt’ (as in an ‘obtuse angle’, in geometry, the opposite of an
‘acute angle’), or, in metaphorical usage, ‘dull-witted’.
PCBM’s ‘a college of yours on the Bangkok Post’ should
of course read ‘a colleague of yours....’ Obviously I can not tell whether this
error is attributable to PCBM or to a servant of that illustrious organ, but either way,
if we are to presume to debate the intricacies of the Thai language, we should at least
use our own correctly.
Yours faithfully,
Neil Spensley
