I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not really in a position to be writing about the nuance and flourish of the Thai language, but as I continue to slowly force my way through the thick membrane of ภาษาไทย (the Thai language) into its gooey center (sorry for that disturbing metaphor), I keep noticing cool little details and shortcuts that make me appreciate the language even more. Case in point – I was in a meeting at work the other day and happened to look at the tissue box on the table and noticed that the Thai script was a transliteration of the English name of the tissues. And not only that – it was done in such a way that the Thai text looked almost like the English. I thought it was really neat that Thai letters can be stylistically written this way to resemble the look or even shape of the English letters – but the tissue box isn’t the first time I’ve seen it.
First of all, the name of the tissue was Lady Scott. Maybe some Scottish lass had a runny nose and started a tissue company, I dunno. Anyway, this was what the logo looks like in English:
No big deal, some swishy lettering. But now look at the Thai text:
Well, okay the entire string of text doesn’t look the same as the English text, but the first two letters sure look like “La” even though it’s actually a เ followed by ล, which together sound very close to the “la” in lady.
Next I went out and bought a bag of Lay’s potato chips. You know, for research. The name in Thai actually uses the same first two letters as Lady Scott – เล – with an almost silent y-sound on the end that isn’t pronounced in Thai.
Finally we have Coke. It’s actually hard to find a picture of a can of Coke that just says “Coke” and not “Coca Cola” but you can see the flourishes of the Thai text that match the English logo pretty well – the “co” sound followed by the hard “k”, and the little tone mark above – โค้ก.
Anyway, it’s not groundbreaking linguistics work or anything, but I still think it’s still neat. As a foreigner trying to learn Thai, it’s little things like this that help me learn, one small step at a time.
Hey your blog is looking good! Updated the artwork I see..
The title of this post mislead me a bit. I was expecting something like a post about how each symbol in the Thai script is really a picture of an animal or thing, and that was the “hidden art.” Still, twas an interesting little post. I noticed the same for Lays and Coke, but never seen those tissues before.
Hey Ryan,
Thanks man – yeah, I realized it’s probably a bit of a misleading title, although there are plenty of mnemonic learning aids out there that say “This letter looks like a snake! This is a horse!” I guess if you look hard enough you can see hidden art in any script. Except maybe Morse Code. 🙂
I always loved the Lay’s bags! I thought the script mimicry was super-clever. And being able to read it always made me feel like I was in some secret decoder club or something (I guess a ‘secret decoder’ club with about 70 million members, that is). The brand that fails at this? KFC. To make the vowel sounds of the ‘kay,’ the ‘ef,’ and the ‘cee’ they need huge vowel combos on the side of each letter.
Enjoy that gooey center!
Hmm, yeah, the KFC is a bit long – เค เอฟ ชี – but thankfully they usually just stick with the KFC. And of course, the perma-grin of the Colonel. 🙂