CRCL, Bangkok: Reference Cards

SOUTHEAST ASIAN
COMPUTING AND LINGUISTICS

Produced by Doug Cooper / Center for Research in Computational Linguistics,
Bangkok. Presented in cooperation with . . . ( 0.2 -- comment only )

REFERENCE CARDS
NOT AVAILABLE IN STORES!

The Thai Reader's Helper is a student's reading reference to Thai consonants. It groups letters by their sounds as initial consonants, and includes information about their class and sound as finals. This card includes a tone mark/letter class reference as well.

Available as 100 DPI gif (10K), 300 DPI gif (43K), and zipped EPS file (88K).

This Thai Reader's Helper card covers vowels. It includes a guide to pronunciation of the more confusing IPA transcriptions, as well as complete lists (in alphabetical order) of the vowels and consonants.

Available as 100 DPI gif (13K), 300 DPI gif (62K), and zipped EPS file (108K).

As far as the Thai alphabet is concerned, what you learn is very different from what you get. Although each letter's circular head is the main focus in instruction, many alphabets do away with heads entirely, and can be quite difficult to read. This card has a 'standard' alphabet, along with examples of modern (2), craft/Sanskrit, handwritten (2) and newspaper headline fonts. See also "How Do Thais Tell Letters Apart?" (jump to the papers page).

Available as 100 DPI gif (8K), 300 DPI gif (?K), and zipped EPS file (?K).

The Pattichooti keyboard was designed in 1966 by Sarit Pattajoti of the Royal Irrigation Department. It is based on his analysis of character distributions in fifty 1,000 character samples, and is a vast improvement on the standard Ketmanee layout. Although Pattichooti is, in fact, the government standard, it is nowhere to be found on mechanical typewriters. Somewhat paradoxically, while the Ketmanee layout is the standard for data processing (TIS820-2531), Pattichooti is implemented as an option on all Thai system software. If you are learning to type in Thai, I recomment Pattichooti -- it is not only much faster once you learn it, but the layout is rational and easy-to-learn as well.

Available as 100 DPI gif (13K), 300 DPI gif (58K), and zipped EPS file (76K).

This DuangJan layout is a slightly enhanced version of the standard keyboard (it includes the high-class ligatures). As such, it is best used with any LaoScript for Windows font, such as the Alice 1 through 5 series. The layout, which appears to be based on the Thai Ketmanee keyboard and presumably was introduced by French colonists, is exceptionally inconvenient, and puts many common characters along the top row.

Available as 100 DPI gif (13K), 300 DPI gif (27K), and zipped EPS file (83K).

All original work © 1995 Doug Cooper. Please see this disclaimer, which takes responsibility for content, and the release notice, which gives you the right to copy it. We believe that all files referenced by these pages may be distributed for research / educational purposes. If any file should not be distributed, please let us know and we will remove it.