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About

This web application allows you to transcribe Thai text to its IPA equivalent. (Strictly speaking, it's not actually IPA, but a variant of Mary Haas's system, as has been widely adopted in leading Thai language teaching organisations. There's a guide to the system here.)

How to Use

Type or paste the Thai text into the text area. If you paste the text it will automatically transcribed, and you'll be switched to the "IPA" tab. (The original text continues to be available on the "Convert" tab. If you type the text, you'll need to click on the "Convert" button to start transcription.)

On the "IPA" tab there are three display options:

Show Syllable Separator
Adds a "ˑ" symbol to the IPA to separate syllables. E.g. displays "rótˑphaˑyaaˑbaan" rather than "rótphayaabaan".
Hide Thai
Hides the original Thai text
Flow Text
Displays all the Thai text (if not hidden) and transcribed text as continues text (rather than splitting into short phrases).

The "Reset" button clear the text and returns you to the "Convert" tab to allow input of more Thai text

How it Works

The application downloads a wordlist of 30,000+ Thai words with their IPA equivalents. It parses the entered Thai text, replacing Thai words with their transcribed version. This means that the transcription will only work where the Thai word is in the wordlist; proper nouns and less common words will be incorrectly transcribed. You may need to resort to the IPA Typing Tool to type the correct transcription.

Notes

  1. As mentioned above, the application's effectiveness depends upon the words in the text being in its wordlist.
  2. This application will only work in browsers which support Javascript and rich text editing.
  3. There may be some minor inconsistencies in the treatment of unstressed a's (unwritten in Thai) which should be midtone.