The Royal Thai General System of Transcription (RTGS) is the official system for rendering Thai in the Latin alphabet. It is used in road signs and government publications, and is the closest thing to a standard of transcription for Thai, though its use by even the government is inconsistent. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation devised by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) used in spoken human language. ... Phonetic (pho-NET-ic) is a nationwide voicemail-to-text messaging service available for most digital mobile phones in which a subscriber is provided a custom voice mailbox for the purpose of receiving all incoming voice messages as actual transcribed text for reading via short messaging (also known as SMS... Because of technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... This is a concise version of the International Phonetic Alphabet for English sounds. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... Transcription is the conversion into written, typewritten or printed form, of a spoken language source, such as the proceedings of a court hearing. ...

Features and Limitations

The Royal Thai General System (RTGS) uses only plain Latin letters without diacritics.

Consonants are in accordance with the similar symbols used in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), except for the use of "ng" for [ŋ], "ch" for both [tɕ] and [tɕʰ], and "y" for [j]. Normal "h" following a consonant is used to indicate aspiration, similarly to the raised IPA [ʰ].

Vowels are in accordance with the similar symbols used in the IPA, except for the use of "ae" for [æ], "oe" for [œ], and "ue" for [?]. Ordinary vowels and not semivowels are used in diphthong and triphthong combinations.

The RTGS is phonetic to the degree that it represents, roughly, the actual pronunciation of Thai words -- in contrast to Thai writing, where the same Thai letter can represent different sounds depending on its position in a word.

But in attempting to be a fairly simple transcription system, without diacritics, the RTGS does fail to represent some important elements of Thai pronunciation: the melodic tone system, the distinction between short and long vowels, the distinction between the close and open O vowels (IPA [o] vs. [ɔ]), and the distinction between the non-aspirated and aspirated post-aveolar affricatives (IPA [tɕ] vs. [tɕʰ]).

The system is therefore useful for general transcription into English and other Latin-alphabet languages, but is not well suited for Thai language instruction for foreign learners and other technical purposes.

Transcription table

For consonants, the transciption is different depending on the location in the syllable. In the section on vowels a dash ("–") indicates the relative position of the initial consonant belonging to the vowel.

Reference

• PDF file setting out the system (Thai language)

External links

• Discussion of romanisation
• Downloadable Windows-based transcription tool