Transliteration
There are many different systems for writing Thai in Roman script to represent the words in phonetic English. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages and all can only give approximate indicators as to how the word should be pronounced.
We believe that the transliteration system used in this book is the best available. It is easy to read and accurately represents the correct pronunciation of words. We use large, clear tone marks above our transliterated phonetic words to indicate at a glance the tone of the word. The audio will help reinforce correct pronunciation.
Note that the Romanized phonetic system we use to show Thai vowels sounds in this book indicate a short vowel with a single letter (E.g. - a -) and a long vowel with more than one letter (E.g. - ah -). The one exception is the ‘-eu’ vowels where the short vowel sound is differentiated by the use of a ' symbol after the word the vowel appears in (- eu'). E.g. Keung' ขึง.
