The
transliteration
Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus '' trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → and → the digraph , Cyrillic → , Armenian → or L ...
system referred to as Cœdès system is a
reversible transliteration for
Thai and
Khmer, developed by
Georges Cœdès and published in table form by his student Uraisi Varasarin.
This system is used in scholarly research.
[Ferlus, Michel. 1999. Sur l’ancienneté des écritures thai d’origine indo-khmère. Paper presented at the conference "Georges Coedès aujourd'hui" ("Georges Coedès Today"). Bangkok. https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00922719/] It tends to be favoured over the
Royal Thai General System of Transcription
The Royal Thai General System of Transcription (RTGS) is the official system for rendering Thai words in the Latin alphabet. It was published by the Royal Institute of Thailand in early 1917, when Thailand was called Siam.
It is used in roa ...
—the official scheme promulgated by the Royal Thai Institute—because the latter is not reversible, as it underrepresents vowel quality and quantity.
G. Cœdès's transliteration system inherits some transliteration habits for
scripts of Indian origin, such as the use of ṅ for the velar nasal, and the use of macron. It also reflects typographical convenience on a typewriter, such as the use of underlining.
Consonants
Vowels
Tones
The Thai script was devised at a stage when the language contrasted three
tones. This required two marks, one of the three tones being left unmarked. These were supplemented by two other tonal marks. G. Cœdès did not propose a standardized way to transliterate all four tone marks. For a transliteration system that aims at exhaustivity, it seemed useful to have a system that covers all five types of tones, including explicit marking for the absence of tone mark. The following proposal was put forward by Krisda Tan Sirijunto and Alexis Michaud in 2015.
See also
*
Romanization of Thai
*
Romanization of Lao
*
Royal Thai General System of Transcription
The Royal Thai General System of Transcription (RTGS) is the official system for rendering Thai words in the Latin alphabet. It was published by the Royal Institute of Thailand in early 1917, when Thailand was called Siam.
It is used in roa ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Coedes transliteration of Thai
Transliteration
Romanization of Thai