Wiktionary:Northern Thai transliteration

	This is a Wiktionary policy, guideline or common practices page. This is a draft proposal. It is unofficial, and it is unknown whether it is widely accepted by Wiktionary editors.
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We have not yet established a standard Northern Thai romanisation. See discussion page for ideas.

English Wikipedia has an article on:

Thai alphabet

Wikipedia

These are the rules concerning transliteration in Northern Thai entries.

There are three major writing systems:

1. Writing in the Thai alphabet, basically using the orthographic conventions of Siamese, including the sound values of the stop consonants. This system may be called 'thap sap' (ทับศัพท์), at least in Siamese. It is used in the recent translation of the New Testament.
2. Writing in the Thai alphabet, basically using the vowel and tone conventions of Siamese, but with the consonant values from the Lanna script (script code Lana). This is close to being a transliteration of the Lanna script consonant system. This system may be called rup pariwat (รูปปริวรรต).
3. Writing in the Lanna script. It is used in the recent translation of the New Testament.

Because of grave deficiencies in Tai Tham rendering, the Lanna script vowels are shown on ᨠ or, where more appropriate, ᨣ or ᨠᩖ. For greater clarity, implicit vowels are shown by the dotted circle for both scripts.

This does not list predictable combinations, such as ◌าย/ᨠᩣ᩠ᨿ/aai.

No. 32 generalises to the combination of mai sat with vowels above or below.

Although the presence of six tones across Northern Thai is widespread, there are differences in realisation across the region. To establish the diatonemes of the language, it is helpful to go back to the Gedney Box and give concrete examples. The standard four-fold division of initials is more than adequate to encompass Northern Thai, Thai and Lao. Examples are given in the tables in the form (Chiang Mai) thap sap / Lanna script / (Siamese cognate).

Northern Thai has six tones on live syllables (tone classes A, B and C) and four tones on dead syllables (tone class D).

For the Thai script, the Thai lexical ordering should be used.

For the Lanna script, we need evidence. The following principles appear to be widely agreed:

1. Ordering is done syllable by syllable (this can be hard to implement), and there might be some difference between phonetic and alphabetical syllables.
2. Differences of tone mark have the lowest priority.
3. Consonants and vowels count equally.
4. Short vowels precede long vowels.

There is not necessarily agreement on the positional of the additional consonants, i.e. those not used for Pali. Additionally, do the vowel letters come first or (almost) last? Are consonants split according to sound (as in the MFL)?