Hi! I'm currently staying in Thailand and trying to learn Thai, but it's not that easy, so I often rely on Google Translate. Thank you very much for hosting this great service and if I just enter single English words, the translation is mostly perfect, but as you may know, Thai has it's own writing which is not that easy. So I often use the "read phonetically" feature to know how to pronounce the words you've translated for me, but now it is really just crap. A few days or weeks ago it seemed to have worked, but in the past few days something changed and now I can forget using it.
Easy example: ??????????????!! (I don't like lizards) If I split the words: ?? ??? ??? ?????? (literally: I not like lizard) ?? will be pronounced as "phom", although the letters just read "ph" and "m", but there is the rule that if you just have 2 consonants you connect them with an "o". Google Translate doesn't seem to know this rule and just writes "phm" when I want to read it phonetically. ??? should be "mai" since ? is "ai", but Translate gives me "mi". ??? is "chob", but there is the next problem. ? (or ang) is a difficult letter that can have many different pronunciations, so Translate doesn't seem to know which one to use and just puts "x", so I get "chxb" which doesn't help... Last but not least, ?????? is similar to "jing-jog" or "ching-chog". For jing/ching, all the letters are there (????, jor jaan, i, ngo ngu), but for ?? the same rule as in my first word applies: put an "o" between 2 consonants. Reading phonetically doesn't seem to manage that and just gives me "ck". It would be great if you could add the basic rules of Thai reading so the feature can actually be used. Now it's just crap!!!! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "General" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-translate-general?hl=en.
