Prison Officer H&S
Dec 31st 2012, 7:35 am
#16
Joined: Feb 2010
Location: Buraydah , Saudi Arabia
Posts: 2,863
Re: Prison Officer H&S
Chinese is not a alphabet (presume we are talking about Mandarin) - it is pictographic (with some elements of phonic alphabet for spelling words without pictograms, like names). Thai does not have 76 letters in its alphabet either. It has 46, of which 3 are obsolete and one is rarely used (and often called obsolete too) - so 42. All of these are consonants and Thais do not count vowels in their alphabet. There are literally hundreds of vowels due to the fact that many are dipthongs and tripthongs and use combinations of up to four vowel (and even consonent) symbols - however around about 20 are generally used. Add to this tone marks (fir the 5 tones: Low, Rising, Medium or Normal, High and Falling), the three tonal classes (High, Medium, Low) and punctuation (spaces are the same as our fullstops/periods - they atso have symbols for "etc" to repeat a syllable, to make a letter (sometimes two) silent and so on - there is no exclamation or question marks though these have been somewhat adopted now from the western punctuation). There are no spaces between words in the same sentance.
The main difficulty with written Thai is learning to write (not read so much) - just to show how hard it could be the first 5 letters of the Thai alphabet (including an obsolete letter) is Gor Gai, Kor Kai, Kor Kwaht, Kor Kwai, Kor Rakung - transliterated they are usually written as: K , K, Kh, Kh, K. So, the first five letters are all K sounds (although really Gor Gai it is a hard G, it is shown as K in most phrase books etc due to the first one being written over a hundred years ago by a Dutchman). There are also no SH sounds, two TH sounds, and many S and T sounds.
Thai has pretty solid phonetic rules though (due to its tonality), with few exceptions, so once the rules are learned, the rest is easy (reading and verbal wise at least).
The main difficulty with written Thai is learning to write (not read so much) - just to show how hard it could be the first 5 letters of the Thai alphabet (including an obsolete letter) is Gor Gai, Kor Kai, Kor Kwaht, Kor Kwai, Kor Rakung - transliterated they are usually written as: K , K, Kh, Kh, K. So, the first five letters are all K sounds (although really Gor Gai it is a hard G, it is shown as K in most phrase books etc due to the first one being written over a hundred years ago by a Dutchman). There are also no SH sounds, two TH sounds, and many S and T sounds.
Thai has pretty solid phonetic rules though (due to its tonality), with few exceptions, so once the rules are learned, the rest is easy (reading and verbal wise at least).
And yes in Thai they put vowels together to make other sounds . That is the same in any language. We have 5 vowels in English but about 20 vowel sounds. In fact ' most ' languages will have around this number of vowel sounds.
Dec 31st 2012, 7:40 am
#17
Joined: Feb 2010
Location: Buraydah , Saudi Arabia
Posts: 2,863
Re: Prison Officer H&S
Dec 31st 2012, 8:03 am
#18
...............
Joined: Feb 2009
Location: Far North Queensland
Posts: 17,625
Re: Prison Officer H&S
Mmmm a bit heavy for New Years Eve me thinks 
Dec 31st 2012, 8:06 am
#19
221b Baker Street
Joined: Jun 2010
Location: Miles from anywhere, Victoria, Australia.
Posts: 14,125
Re: Prison Officer H&S
Dec 31st 2012, 8:14 am
#20
...............
Joined: Feb 2009
Location: Far North Queensland
Posts: 17,625
Re: Prison Officer H&S
Don't tempt me
Dec 31st 2012, 8:27 am
#21
CM, LoS
Joined: Dec 2012
Location: Chiang Mai, Thailand
Posts: 103
Re: Prison Officer H&S
Don't want to split hairs with you here but the last time I bought a poster with the alphabet for my kids the 32 vowels were on there . Yes some consonants aren't used anymore but there are 44 of them. 44+32 does make 76.
And yes in Thai they put vowels together to make other sounds . That is the same in any language. We have 5 vowels in English but about 20 vowel sounds. In fact ' most ' languages will have around this number of vowel sounds.
And yes in Thai they put vowels together to make other sounds . That is the same in any language. We have 5 vowels in English but about 20 vowel sounds. In fact ' most ' languages will have around this number of vowel sounds.
Look in a dictionary - the alphabet is consonant based. The reason for this is that all words begin (phonetically) with a consonant. Ask a thai the alphabet and he will reel off the 44 consonants (they tend to include all but the two earliest obsolete letters that are used only in religious - Pali - derived words and interestingly Ungrit, which means English). Posters often show a selection of the vowels after the alphabet.
There are 5 vowels and 21 phonetic sounds relating to them in Standard British English (or so I was taught) plus about 33 from imported words. There is a difference in Thai semantics with regard to regular dipthong/tripthongs. In English we put two 'e's together and call it a compound, but it is still two vowels. In Thai there are many compounds that are vowels in their own right. Also these vowels change relating to their position in the syllable, such as suffixing a consonant as opposed to open ended. The whole spelling and tone/pronunciation change too.
We could argue semantically all day, but to a Thai there are many vowels, most are covered in a 20 or so (32 from your poster). In reality (academically) there are 15 core vowels - these form 28 major vowels - these then form many more compound vowels.
For example look at the main page for thai-language dot com. You will see the alphabet on the left letter by letter - they show 45 letters (all consonants - including Kor Khun which is completely obsolete).
This is all historic. Thailand never had its own written language, it used Pali and Khmer from religious and historical origins. In what we now term as Sukhothai, HRH King Ramkhamkaeng (the Great, reigned: 1279-1298) ordered a new specific script for his country to be made. It was based on both Khmer and Pali (much argument about this exists). Initially it was a true left-to-right alphabet with consonants and vowels sitting in their pronounced position. This did not catch on though as the wealthy and powerful and scholastic were used to Pali and Khmer and could not get their heads around it. It took several years, but eventually a semi-alphabetic language was created. This is alphabetic in that it has distinct consonants and vowels, and not word pictograms (kanji etc), but positioning of vowels was allowed to be placed in fixed cardinal positions around the consonant not in position of pronunciation. Tones marks were set against three classes of consonant to cover all 5 tomes (this was changed several times and now there are fewer tone sounds and consonants and the rules have relaxed within and between some of the class-tones).
Last edited by wolf5370; Dec 31st 2012 at 8:37 am. Reason: went mad
Dec 31st 2012, 8:32 am
#22
CM, LoS
Joined: Dec 2012
Location: Chiang Mai, Thailand
Posts: 103
Re: Prison Officer H&S
Any way - Happy New Year to all สวัสดีปีใหม่
Dec 31st 2012, 10:03 am
#23
Forum Regular
Thread Starter
Joined: Dec 2012
Posts: 74
Re: Prison Officer H&S
OK. I think your best bet would be as a health and safety inspector working directly for a foreign firm. There are many electrical (almost all the worlds Hard Drives are made in Thailand for example) companies and other manufacturing companies (Coke and Pepsi; car manufactures both Japanese and western; etc). This will not be an easy task, you will probably need some industry experience first.
It is very unlikely that you would get offered a job by a Thai company or the state here - as it is a job a Thai can do, and thus hard to justify to the state why a foreigner is required and hard to justify the hoops and costs (including minimum wage for foreigners being many times than of a Thai) to get a work permit for you.
Having said all that, there is the possibility of doing the H&S training. This would perhaps be a different tack, but easier to do IMO. There is also the possibility (with a cheap 4 week course - couple of hundred quid say - to obtain an in-country TEFL certification) to teach English as part of the H&S course - that being business English with respect to H&S (yada-yada). This sways it towards the requirement. It is most likely then that you could get a job with a good language school and specialise with hotels and industry and run courses on both. Get known in the industry and you may get taken on. (I know of a guy here for example that used to teach English for a language school - he did a set of courses for a national hotel chain to teach staff, basic customer interfacing English, and the management, business English - after a year of courses, he was hired directly by the hotel and ended up a hotel manager for a number of years).
Contacts mean more than anything here. Don't worry too much about the language (Thai) you can take courses once here, but for most roles you would be hired for, you simply wouldn't need it - although useful to speak the local lingo of course! I know people that have been here for 20 or more years and can barely order coffee in Thai (not because it's that hard - but because they are lazy and can get by without it). You will have seen this also in Saudi with expats - the locals you need to understand or talk to speak English well enough or you know someone that will do it for you.
It is very unlikely that you would get offered a job by a Thai company or the state here - as it is a job a Thai can do, and thus hard to justify to the state why a foreigner is required and hard to justify the hoops and costs (including minimum wage for foreigners being many times than of a Thai) to get a work permit for you.
Having said all that, there is the possibility of doing the H&S training. This would perhaps be a different tack, but easier to do IMO. There is also the possibility (with a cheap 4 week course - couple of hundred quid say - to obtain an in-country TEFL certification) to teach English as part of the H&S course - that being business English with respect to H&S (yada-yada). This sways it towards the requirement. It is most likely then that you could get a job with a good language school and specialise with hotels and industry and run courses on both. Get known in the industry and you may get taken on. (I know of a guy here for example that used to teach English for a language school - he did a set of courses for a national hotel chain to teach staff, basic customer interfacing English, and the management, business English - after a year of courses, he was hired directly by the hotel and ended up a hotel manager for a number of years).
Contacts mean more than anything here. Don't worry too much about the language (Thai) you can take courses once here, but for most roles you would be hired for, you simply wouldn't need it - although useful to speak the local lingo of course! I know people that have been here for 20 or more years and can barely order coffee in Thai (not because it's that hard - but because they are lazy and can get by without it). You will have seen this also in Saudi with expats - the locals you need to understand or talk to speak English well enough or you know someone that will do it for you.
