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:

lady scott 1

No big deal, some swishy lettering. But now look at the Thai text:

lady scott 2

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.

lays

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.

coke

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.