Intermission Lesson 2

I was sitting at work and wondered why my customers questioned the way we spell "Pad Thai" to "Phat Thai" on our menu.  If you don't know, "Pad Thai" is a famous stir-fried rice noodle dish in Thailand that is mixed with ground peanuts, bean sprouts, tofu, shrimp, eggs, and sweet sauce. Because there are so many variations of the recipe, some people would substitute chicken or other meat in place of tofu and shrimp. 

So the question came, "Do you pronounce it 'Fat Thai' or 'Pad Thai' (pad rhymes with rad)?"  I would spell it "Pudd Thai" (Pudd pronounces like putt) just so I can get people to say the name right.  Although I personally like "Pad Thai" because it makes the word  seem really cool.

There are infinite ways to write the word out in English.  I've already listed 3 so far and I'm sure any other Thai speaking fellows could probably think of 10 more ways to write it out.  The answer comes down to this: "It doesn't matter how you write it out in English; it's the matter of how you say it correctly in Thai."  In Thai, there is one correct way to write, which is "ผัดไทย."  But in another language, you'll get infinite answers.  You could try asking a bunch of random people to write the word "Pad Thai" in English and you will probably get a bunch of different ones.  I think it would be fun to see how many ways we can come up with. 

So it's not just us Thais that have problems with dialect barriers. Other languages also face the same problem because of the dialects differences.  You just can't get one correct way to spell something out from another language.  I hear people pronounce "pho", "foe" all the time.  In case you don't know, that is a Vietnamese beef noodle soup and it actually pronounces "fur" with an upper tone. 

What I'm trying to say is this: "Focus on the tone of the pronunciation of the words."  As I've mentioned in my earlier lessons, different tones form different words and different meanings.  Just because you see it written out a certain way, that doesn't mean it should sound the way you see it.  The best way to learn, is to actually hear how the natives speak it out.