San Lak Muang, Bangkok City Pillar Shrine

[maik]

You find Bangkok City Pillar Shrine – San Lak Muang – next to Grand Palace, north-eastern corner.

[Jon77]

Thanks for posting pics.

[edwhy]

Thank you very much for this posting. I really enjoyed the pictures. Does the BTS Skytrain go by this area?

[maik]

12 hours ago, edwhy said:

Thank you very much for this posting. I really enjoyed the pictures. Does the BTS Skytrain go by this area?

Lak Muang is next to Grand Palace and you have to wait some years before SkyTrain goes there.

But you can take BTS SkyTrain Silom Line to Saphan Taksin station and from there take the River Express Boat to Grand palace Pier. From there you walk the short distance to and along Grand Palace to Lak Muang.

 Or else take a taxi. But don’t use tuktuk in Bangkok.

[LocalYokul]

 

Good luck getting a taxi there if you recite the name from that horrible transliteration.

No, I am not blaming the O.P., but this is a prime example of why I have a big problem with the nationwide system of transliteration.

This is the name in Thai: ศาลหลักเมือง

The first word is Sahn (shrine), pronounced with a long Ah sound, like open up & say Ah

http://thai-language.com/id/133501#def2

second word: Luck, pronounced the same way we would say Good Luck

thai-language.com - หลัก

Meuang is the easy one, to finish out the National Pillar Shrine

So, why would they use the same letter A, for San & Lak, when they sound completely different?!

 

[Bruce Mangosteen]

12 hours ago, LocalYokul said:

So, why would they use the same letter A, for San & Lak, when they sound completely different?!

With all due respect, and we've had this conversation before:  Have you considered that these two vowels sound completely different to you, whereas to nearly everybody else, including the source you linked, the shorter vowel sounds more similar to "a" than to "u"?  

This is the same vowel used to spell "love", รัก.  Very few people spell that transliteration so it sounds like a backpack, "chun ruck tur".  That word doesn't sound like "ruck" to me when spoken either.  Maybe my ears are full of "mack", don't know.  

If I recall our previous conversation correctly, the explanation given by the author of "Thai For Beginners" is that the vowel sound is similar to an "a" sound in an unaccented syllable in English, e.g. the "a" in "accost".  That sound is usually represented phonetically with a character that looks like an upside-down "e", but few of us would recognize that word if spelled "əˈkäst".  Muddling along spelling it "accost" seems the better bet.  

Seems to me that if the purpose of writing is to communicate, spelling things the same way as the majority of people spell them makes communication easier, especially in the case of Thai where we're using a different alphabet to approximate the sounds.  Just sayin' like.  

Edited September 12, 2025 by Bruce Mangosteen

[LocalYokul]

 

I ran, I run

not the same sound

The my-hun-aghaht sound is very different from the Ah sound

This is Thai transliterations of the U sound, & you can clearly see the My-Hun-Agaht vowel being used.

 

[LocalYokul]

39 minutes ago, Bruce Mangosteen said:

spelling things the same way as the majority of people spell them makes communication easier, especially in the case of Thai where we're using a different alphabet to approximate the sounds.

It is all wrong though, which is why people around the world are pronounce Putt-Thai like notepad. The U is the same my-hun-agaht.

It is not an A sound.

 

[Bruce Mangosteen]

3 hours ago, LocalYokul said:

It is all wrong though, which is why people around the world are pronounce Putt-Thai like notepad.

True, but the intent of the transliteration is not to teach the entire world how to correctly pronounce the words.  If it was, then we'd also have to add symbols for the tones, as well as for the lengths of vowels (เกาะ, เกา, แก้ว).  And, people would still pronounce them in ways that are unintelligible to a Thai taxi driver, unless they had also been taught to speak the language properly.

I note that you nearly always know from the transliterations in the post which Thai words are being rendered, and I'm guessing that in this case you didn't inspect the photos to figure out what was being referred to.  That's because the transliterations are usually spelled the same way, regardless of how the actual Thai words are pronounced.

ghoti = fish (the "gh" from "rough", the "o" from "women", and the "ti" from "motion"). 

Spelling makes things legible, even when the sound of multiple different spellings can sound correct when pronounced.  Or incorrect.  

Edited September 12, 2025 by Bruce Mangosteen

[LocalYokul]

 

Another example of the same:

Panthip Plaza

It is not pronounced like the pan in frying pan, but almost everyone who reads Panthip will pronounce it that way.

 

[Bruce Mangosteen]

11 minutes ago, LocalYokul said:

 

Another example of the same:

Panthip Plaza

It is not pronounced like the pan in frying pan, but almost everyone who reads Panthip will pronounce it that way.

 

Agree, and "thip" is usually pronounced more like "teep" than "tip", at least if I know which word is being transliterated.  However, if you transliterate that as "bunteep" nobody will know what you're referring to.  Including Thai taxi drivers.  

Edited September 12, 2025 by Bruce Mangosteen

[LocalYokul]

 

If the point is communication, to me anyway, spelling two completely different vowel sounds with the same letter is a fail.

พันธุ์ทิพย์

to me that is just Tip, the same tip in the fish sauce name, TipaRot

ทิพรส

The only difference being the ย์ at the end, most likely denoting it is a borrowed word from another language, which probably used to end in Y

 

[LocalYokul]

 

some Thai vowels sounds like French, but try to get anyone to say Gyro correctly outside of the Meditteranean