Thai Language thread

[Marc26]

2 hours ago, Bluesofa said:

I’m sure we all find it funny that some countries in the orient appear to struggle with pronouncing R’s and L’s.
It’s been a source of fun for comedians for years. I remember a Japanese guy trying to say British Leyland and it came out as Blitis Reyrand.

If you watch the Thai news, the presenters all have no problem rolling their R’s (so to speak), they annunciate clearly.

Out in the sticks it’s rather different, with the R sound (ร) being replaced by the L sound (ล) a lot of the time.

So we can have ร้อน (rorn) hot, but often pronounce with an L - lorn

Then there’s ร้าน (ran) shop, often pronounced as ‘lan’
While we’re on shops: They’re sometimes referred to as ร้านขายของ (ran-kai-kong) meaning ‘shop that sells things’.
There's also ร้านอาหาร (ran-ah-han) restaurant – meaning a 'food shop'

Just to throw a spanner in the works regarding R & L: so ร้าน (ran or lan with an R) is shop , while ล้าน (lan with an L) is a million.
Both these words have a high tone, so saying them both as a word with no context, a Thai couldn’t be sure if you were speaking lazy Thai (re: R&Ls) whether you meant a shop or a million.

Some Thai tongue-twisters that are dead easy for ferangs, because we have no problem with R’s & L’s:

ระนองระยองยะลา (ranong, rayong, yala) - it's those three place names.
Get a Thai to say them, and say them quickly five or six times. I guarantee they will trip up, whereas us ferangs can keep saying it until the cows come home.

Finally, there's  http://engrish.com  which has been going for over twenty years.

Funny enough I am from the only place that doesn't pronounce their R's at all!

 

So my wife and I make a good match  555

[Bluesofa]

5 hours ago, Marc26 said:

Funny enough I am from the only place that doesn't pronounce their R's at all!

So my wife and I make a good match  555

Where in the US/Canada do they not pronounce R's?
You mean they don't swap them for L's - can you give us a couple of examples?

[Bluesofa]

 

A bit about vegetables.

You wouldn’t have thought that the vegetable called squash could so entertaining when listening to Thais talking about it, specifically the green squash:

ฟักทองเขียว (fak-tong-keow) comes from: fak = squash, tong = gold, keow = green.

So far, so good. Until...quite often the middle part of the word - ทอง (tong) ‘gold’ is missed out. So it’s often known as ฟักเขียว (fak-keow).

Any sniggering yet?
No word of a lie: Back in the UK in the vegetable section at Tesco, a Thai with me saw some green squash and yelled out in delight “fak-keow!”
I thought we were going to be arrested, and was thinking of saying she had Tourette’s Syndrome.

 

[Faraday]

I've always known Squash as fak-tong.

But always young man, thank you for your informative & interesting posts.

 

[Bluesofa]

6 minutes ago, Faraday said:

I've always known Squash as fak-tong.

But always young man, thank you for your informative & interesting posts.

 

Yes, we could be splitting hairs here. That's a squash (pumpkin) without specifying the colour obviously.
So that's yet another way of saying it. Perhaps that's used more by the colour-blind?

[Marc26]

2 hours ago, Bluesofa said:

Where in the US/Canada do they not pronounce R's?
You mean they don't swap them for L's - can you give us a couple of examples?

Boston

 

Bar would be pronounced "bah"

Car as "cah"

 

My wife didn't know I spoke different than most Americans/Canadians until being in Canada for a couple years

 

But Iike most accents

Depends where you lived

More affluent areas had less of a strong accent

 

Let's just say I'm not from an affluent area.   

[Faraday]

44 minutes ago, Bluesofa said:

Yes, we could be splitting hairs here. That's a squash (pumpkin) without specifying the colour obviously.
So that's yet another way of saying it. Perhaps that's used more by the colour-blind?

Or those wishing to introduce Gold into the conversation perhaps....

Next question:

Is the word 'squash' as in to flatten, also fak?

If it isn't then please, Kh Kruu, tell me.

[Bluesofa]

24 minutes ago, Faraday said:

Or those wishing to introduce Gold into the conversation perhaps....

Next question:

Is the word 'squash' as in to flatten, also fak?

If it isn't then please, Kh Kruu, tell me.

I had to look that one up as I didn't know.

Turns out  เรียบ (re-ab) is to flatten/squash - to make smooth. Although there a a few other words very similar according to my dictionary.
ฟักทองเรียบ (fak-tong-re-ab) would be a squashed squash.

[Bluesofa]

 

Sticking with food.
When talking about eating food, there are a couple of different words used.

กืน (gin*) is the often-used informal word to eat. Then there's a more polite formal word ทาน (tarn), and a “long form” of the same word  รับประทาน (rab-bra-tarn)      (gin*) as in goose, not as in gin & tonic.

ข้าว (cow) is the word for rice and is also used as a general term for food: so กินข้าว (gin-cow) is to eat food generally.  ทานข้าว (tarn-cow) is the more polite way of saying the same thing.

 

กินกับอะไร? (gin-gab-alai?)  This means asking what you are eating , or maybe what do you want to eat. 

Literally it means 'eat-with-what?' As in - what do you want to eat as your main course with rice, the rice being 'what'. I hope that makes sense?

Btw, the question mark is one of the few punctuations used in Thai script.

 

My attempt at humour:
When I was first getting to know my mother-in-law, one day I was eating some food - rice with something-or-other.
My mother-in-law asked me  what I was eating, by saying, กินกับอะไร? (gin-gab-alai?) As she had used the words in Thai 'eat-with-what', I replied 'กินกับช้อน' (gin-gab-shorn) - meaning I'm eating with a spoon.
It was completely lost on her. She stared at me as if I was crazy.

I have done the same joke on other Thais, some understand it and laugh, others don't. For me it's a way of testing their sense of humour.

 

[DwizzleyMatthews]

6 minutes ago, Bluesofa said:

Sticking with food.
When talking about eating food, there are a couple of different words used.

กืน (gin*) is the often-used informal word to eat. Then there's to more polite formal word ทาน (tarn), and a

“long form” of the same word  รับประทาน (rab-bra-tarn)      (gin*) as in goose, not as in gin & tonic.

ข้าว (cow) is the word for rice and is also used as a general term for food: so กินข้าว (gin-cow) is to eat food generally.  ทานข้าว (tarn-cow) is the more polite way of saying the same thing.

กินกลับอะไร? (gin-gab-alai?)  This means asking what you are eating , or maybe what do you want to eat. 

Literally it means 'eat-with-what?' As in - what do you want to eat as your main course with rice, the rice being 'what'. I hope that makes sense?

Btw, the question mark is one of the few punctuations used in Thai script.

My attempt at humour:
When I was first getting to know my mother-in-law, one day I was eating some food - rice with something-or-other.
My mother-in-law asked me  what I was eating, by saying, กินกลับอะไร? (gin-gab-alai?) As she had used the words in Thai 'eat-with-what', I replied 'กินกลับช้อน' (gin-gab-shorn) - meaning I'm eating with a spoon.
It was completely lost on her. She stared at me as if I was crazy.

I have done the same joke on other Thais, some understand it and laugh, others don't. For me it's a way of testing their sense of humour.

Firstly, congratulations on a very informative thread, I have learned plenty already.

Slightly off topic but a small distraction:

On the subject of attempting a joke in a foreign language: When I moved to Brazil in the mid nineties I was very keen to learn the language ( the object of my affections couldn’t speak any English ) so I used books and cassette tapes to achieve a basis of the language.

One day , visiting my gf’s family members for the first time , i was given the golden opportunity for a funny comment and ran with it. The house was full of people with plenty of kids running around being very loud. My future mother in law looked at me and asked if I liked children ?, not letting this opportunity go by I replied “ yes, but I couldn’t eat a whole one!! “

Normally this old chestnut would get a polite round of laughter but fell upon stony ground with the Brazilian crowd !!

What I had forgotten was that the verb “ comer “ is to eat but also used frequently to fornicate !!

Took some explanation but eventually they realised it was a misunderstanding.

For years after though my bil’s would sometimes call me “ gringo child f#cker “ as a joke !!

 

Back on top :

My love interest here speaks good English so I have been lazy and let the learning slide, I initially had good intentions but got disheartened with the pure complications of the language.

I frequently said, to myself, I would return to studying after being here a few years , that time has come. !!

Keep up the good work BS, your simplified explanations are very helpful, my gf usually over complicates her explanations and I end up none the wiser .

[Bluesofa]

33 minutes ago, DwizzleyMatthews said:

What I had forgotten was that the verb “ comer “ is to eat but also used frequently to fornicate !!

Took some explanation but eventually they realised it was a misunderstanding.

For years after though my bil’s would sometimes call me “ gringo child f#cker “ as a joke !!

{snipped}

Keep up the good work BS, your simplified explanations are very helpful, my gf usually over complicates her explanations and I end up none the wiser .

Thanks for your kind comments. I'm pleased my posts are having some effect. I'll try and stick with it.

Regarding jokes in another language. I never in my life imagined I'd be doing this. But when you work out how the Thai words are put together, the possibilities are endless.

Here are two posts I made earlier in this thread about jokes in Thai:

https://thethaiger.com/talk/topic/4428-thai-language-thread/?do=findComment&comment=58743

https://thethaiger.com/talk/topic/4428-thai-language-thread/?do=findComment&comment=126724

Your comment 'I end up none the wiser' reminded me about a courtroom drama where the prosecuting counsel was explaining a complicated point in law to the judge:
At the end, the judge said, "Thank you for your explanation, but I am none the wiser."
The prosecuting counsel replied, "Yes, but you are better informed my lord."

[Bluesofa]

 

Sounds that Thai language doesn’t doesn’t have. There are plenty of sounds (often vowels) that Thai has, requiring a ferang to learn them to pronounce words correctly.

What about the sounds we ferangs use that aren’t naturally present in Thai?

Ever wondered why people go to Centran and not Central? It’s because there are no natural ‘L’ endings to Thai words.

Even in Thai script a word (or a syllable) with a final ล (L) sound will be pronounced as a น (N)
The best example I can think of is ชลบุรี (Chonburi) The syllable chon is ชล which is two consonants ‘CH’ and ‘L’. You’d expect it to sound something like Chol, yes? Not so, the L is sounded as an N, so Chon.

If the last consonant is ร (R) that too pronounced as an ‘N’. Hence the name Porn is spelt as พร (P+R), the R is sounded as an N as well.

Other missing Thai sounds:

TH is a sound Thais really struggle to make. They don’t naturally put their tongue ‘out’ between their teeth and blow. You won’t be walking on the footpath, it will be the footpat.

As for SH, that’s another non-Thai sound. CH is a Thai sound (chang) When your wife is angry with you she will tell you that you’re chit.

Centran is easy to hear, but you’ll need to listen more carefully for footpat and chit.

The exception is going to be if a Thai has learnt English really well, including pronouncing those not natural Thai sounds.

 

 

[Naanlaew]

My experiences attempting to joke in Thai using  double entendre or sarcasm usually fail since the idea usually  gets lost in translation.

Also, the Thai person is not cognizant that you are trying to be humorous and then wonders WTH you are talking about. Pood len sanuk, chai mai krap?  

[Bluesofa]

7 hours ago, Naanlaew said:

My experiences attempting to joke in Thai using  double entendre or sarcasm usually fail since the idea usually  gets lost in translation.

Also, the Thai person is not cognizant that you are trying to be humorous and then wonders WTH you are talking about. Pood len sanuk, chai mai krap?  

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

I think I'd agree on those points about the idea getting lost in translation. I'm trying to think of a double entendre in Thai, do you have one as an example?

The closest I can think of at the moment is my post: "As a joke I’ve always referred to a bra as ถุงนม (toong nom) as made up of ถุง (bag) นม (breasts)."
I'm not sure if that counts as a double entendre, or just a play on words?
 

Regarding sarcasm: From my experience Thais don't seem to do sarcasm very well.

Having said that, something that's just sprung to mind is a recent news report about a much delayed bridge/underpass in Bangkok, which has been delayed by many years.
The contractor claimed it was definitely due to finally open on August 1st, to which the Bangkok governor replied by asking what time on August 1st.

So I suppose really it's just the same as us ferangs - some Thais can see the humour,  while with others it can go right over their head.

[Bluesofa]

I did manage a sarcastic comment in just now.
My wife was going out to her friend's house - yet again. More eating and talking.

I asked her if she was taking a duvet with her? (we only ever speak Thai)
What for my wife asked?
To sleep there I replied. Where upon she pretended to hit me!
So there is some room for sarcasm, but obviously only as long as the intended recipient understands it.

[Faraday]

Do you know of many Thai proverbs or sayings?

I only know of two:

“To play the violin for the buffalo to listen to.”

Which I believe the falang equivalent is:

"Pearls before swine"

And

"A rabbit can look at the moon"

But I am unable to recall (i.e forgotten) the feringi saying.

 

 

[brian60221]

On 7/16/2022 at 7:56 PM, Bluesofa said:

Sounds that Thai language doesn’t doesn’t have.

The other one that comes to mind besides the ones you mentioned is V. I'm not sure why ว sometimes gets transliterated as V, like in Suvarnabhumi.

[Bluesofa]

3 hours ago, brian60221 said:

The other one that comes to mind besides the ones you mentioned is V. I'm not sure why ว sometimes gets transliterated as V, like in Suvarnabhumi.

Yes, thanks for the comment. I forgot to mention that one.
With 'V' not being a Thai sound, Thais will usually sound it as a 'W', so they'll often say in English that's 'it's wery hot.'

'Suvarnabhumi' is (I think) a transcription using the RTGS - an official way of transliterating (rather than translating) from Thai to Engrish.

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Thai_General_System_of_Transcription

I know 'Suvarnabhumi' is a Sanskrit word. Rama IX IIRC was attributed as coming up with the word to use as the airport name.  Wasn't it said it's supposed to mean 'golden land'?

Suvarnabhumi is in written in Thai as สุวรรณภูมิ

Whenever I see it written in Thai script, it always reminds me of Chaiyapum (ชัยภูมิ), as both both words end with 'um. 'In Thai, that part is ภูมิ, which logically should sound as 'pumi', but it's not.
So I wonder if the name Chaiyapum has a Sanskrit origin too? I don't know.

It must be why Suvarnabhumi has the 'i' on the end, as a result of using the RTGS, which a lot of us native English speakers see as flawed.

As an aside, back in the UK, I remember a friend who worked in a motor accessory shop.
He said that non-English born Indians who had moved to the UK and learnt English, would get their Vs and Ws mixed up. The most common occurrence was them asking for a Vindscreen Viper for Wauxhall Wiva.

Back to the RTGS, that's why Phuket is spelt with a 'PH' and not an 'P'
Air Asia made the most of this anomaly in Australia with this billboard:

 

[Bluesofa]

17 hours ago, Faraday said:

Do you know of many Thai proverbs or sayings?

I only know of two:

“To play the violin for the buffalo to listen to.”

Which I believe the falang equivalent is:

"Pearls before swine"

And

"A rabbit can look at the moon"

But I am unable to recall (i.e forgotten) the feringi saying.

Thanks for your post.
I'm afraid I don't know any Thai proverbs, very remiss of me I know.

However, I did look up "A rabbit can look at the moon"
Apparently it means to keep your feet on the ground, don't get lofty ideas.
 

[brian60221]

17 hours ago, Bluesofa said:

RTGS - an official way of transliterating

This was thought-provoking. There seem to be a lot of considerations in a transliteration system.

The ones I'm familiar with are romaji for Japanese and pinyin for Mandarin. Romaji seems pretty much trouble-free because the Japanese sound system is, I think, completely contained in the English one.

But Mandarin has a vowel sound not used in English, and differentiates between sounds that English doesn't. If you know how to read it, then it's unambiguous. But if you don't, then you can't look at it and pronounce it.

In RTGS, they seemed to try to make it possible to tell from the Latin characters what Thai character was meant, at least sometimes. Like, they write ph and f depending on which Thai character it is. But they write the same Thai character as just p if it occurs at the end of a word. I don't think this was very useful.

Using ph for a p sound was dangerous because ph usually sounds like f in English. That's the unfortunate Phuket situation. But English doesn't use "bp", but English speakers might get the idea and do it right. But it was chosen to write Thai bp as just "p", so we have a bad situation where "forest" is written "pa" instead of "bpa".

Basically, I ended up thinking that it might be pretty hard to do a decent Thai-English transliteration system. Whatever it was, it would take some education to use, because Thai just has some sounds that aren't found in English, so people need to learn what to do when they encounter the Latin symbols standing in for those. But I think RTGS was not a very good try.

I'm not sure how big of a missed opportunity this is. In case people don't know, Chinese people type pinyin on English/Latin keyboards and then software input systems look at the stuff they've entered like "xinwen" and figure out what Chinese characters are most likely intended, and offers it to the user. It's very convenient. It seems possible that the same kind of thing could happen in Thai. This would be convenient for people like me who can type English and recognize Thai, but are very slow at typing Thai, ... but this user base may be too small. Thai is at least small enough to fit within two keyboards, which is very doable, unlike Mandarin.

[Bluesofa]

Thanks for another interesting reply Brian60221.

I can remember back in Pattaya seeing road-signs with three different English spellings:
Pattaya, Phattaya, Pataya.

I just had to assume that the signwriters didn't use the RTGS, otherwise surely(?) it would give the same spelling.

There does seem to be a lot of assumptions as to how the resulting RTGS should be read/pronounced, as it can also depend on which country you come from, as some letters, dipthongs, etc are not sounded the same. Like you say, the ph/f can be dangerous ground.

I have no idea about Mandarin, except I seem to remember reading somewhere that there are about 5,000 characters in use? It must be hard work typing in pinyin then still needing to lookup the word you want.

I don't know if you saw an earlier post I  wrote about the The typewriter:
https://thethaiger.com/talk/topic/4428-thai-language-thread/?do=findComment&comment=140256

Even here in Udon, the road signwriters are still struggling with English:

 

 

[Bluesofa]

 

As much as I find it interesting, I don’t want to worry people with too much about the Thai alphabet. However, I’ll throw a few snippets in sometimes:

OK - snippet ahead: There’s a sign that’s used to let Thais know a particular consonant is not sounded (pronounced) First of all let’s see it: Quite often อ is used to highlight the use of, say, a vowel, or this sign, called a garan.
Here’s (hopefully) a large image of the garan: อ์ You can see it’s written above, It looks a bit like a digit six laying on it’s side.

Pure Thai words don’t need the use of a garan. There are a lot of words in Thai that you’d assume were ‘pure Thai’ words, but not so.

It's probably easiest to use an example. วันศุกร์ (wan-suk) Friday. Remember Thai has the opposite word-order to English, so wan is day and suk is Fri.
The ศุกร์ (suk) part of of Friday in Thai comes from Sanskrit ‘sukra’ (meaning bright, or white).

When it entered the Thai language, the spelling sort-of-followed the way it was in Sanskrit, only in Thai it was pronounced suk, so sukra became ‘suk’, but the ร (r) at the end was still used, with the garan written above it, to signal it was silent.

 

If you write the English name John in Thai script, it looks like this: จอห์น
So it follows like this: J=จ  o=อ  h=ห์  n=น.
You can see (I hope) that as the ‘h’ is silent in English, so the Thai equivalent is also silent with the use of the garan above the h sound – ห์.

 

[Bluesofa]

 

More garan stuff, plus some Thai vowels. This one’s magic, all about Harry Potter in Thai.

I came across this (don’t ask how) and saw how Harry Potter is translated into Thai. First let’s see the evidence:

Harry Potter: แฮร์รี่ พอตเตอร์     Hogwarts: ฮอกวอตส์

ฮอกวอตส์ (Hogwarts) is another example of how Thai words don’t naturally end with an ‘s’ sound.

If you ask a Thai with little experience of speaking English to say ‘yes’, it often comes out as something like ‘yed’. Also the word ‘girls’ will often result as ‘girl’.

 

So back to the word in hand - ฮอกวอตส์ (Hogwarts).
Remember in a recent post I made about the use of the garan?
We can see it here written above the last letter ส์. Completely due to the lack of ‘s’ at the end of Thai words, informing Thais that the ส (s) is not to be sounded.
(Even though the Thai follows the English spelling with an 's' at the end)
 

Now the name. I’ll do the surname first: พอตเตอร์ (Potter) The Thai is pronounced as pod-der.

This is the fun part, Why is it fun? It’s because of whoever translated Harry into Thai, ends up not with ‘harry’, but ‘hairy’.
I’d better explain first that Thai vowels can be positioned before, after, above, or below the consonant they are linked to. It’s just the way it is - sorry!

So in this case แฮร์รี่ can be separated out into the two syllables แฮร์ (hair) and รี่ (ree).

แฮร์ The two little ‘b’ type things at the beginning (แ) are a vowel, pronounced as ‘air’. The first letter is ฮ (h)  then ร์ (r) with a garan – so it’s ignored, and we have the first syllable ‘hair’

The second syllable รี่ (‘r’ + the vowel above ‘ee’) making ‘ree’. (I’ll ignore the tone of this, to avoid even more hair-pulling)

So, altogether now! Hair-ree.

It would – to my way of thinking - be possible to write Harry: ฮัรรี่ (harree)
I think the way it's been spelt as 'hair-ree' makes it easy for Thais to read it.

A real Hairy Potter

You have to listen carefully, as with all the examples I’ve given so far with the ‘Thai tongue’ struggling to say non-Thai sounds. We can often miss them, as when living here, we tend to accept incorrect pronunciation as normal. The same way Thais realise ferangs often don’t pronounce Thai as clearly as they should.

I’m waiting for someone to find a word that doesn’t follow what I’ve written so far. I bet someone will find something.

 

[Marble-eye]

22 minutes ago, Bluesofa said:

More garan stuff, plus some Thai vowels. This one’s magic, all about Harry Potter in Thai.

I came across this (don’t ask how) and saw how Harry Potter is translated into Thai. First let’s see the evidence:

Harry Potter: แฮร์รี่ พอตเตอร์     Hogwarts: ฮอกวอตส์

ฮอกวอตส์ (Hogwarts) is another example of how Thai words don’t naturally end with an ‘s’ sound.

If you ask a Thai with little experience of speaking English to say ‘yes’, it often comes out as something like ‘yed’. Also the word ‘girls’ will often result as ‘girl’.

So back to the word in hand - ฮอกวอตส์ (Hogwarts).
Remember in a recent post I made about the use of the garan?
We can see it here written above the last letter ส์. Completely due to the lack of ‘s’ at the end of Thai words, informing Thais that the ส (s) is not to be sounded.
(Even though the Thai follows the English spelling with an 's' at the end)
 

Now the name. I’ll do the surname first: พอตเตอร์ (Potter) The Thai is pronounced as pod-der.

This is the fun part, Why is it fun? It’s because of whoever translated Harry into Thai, ends up not with ‘harry’, but ‘hairy’.
I’d better explain first that Thai vowels can be positioned before, after, above, or below the consonant they are linked to. It’s just the way it is - sorry!

So in this case แฮร์รี่ can be separated out into the two syllables แฮร์ (hair) and รี่ (ree).

แฮร์ The two little ‘b’ type things at the beginning (แ) are a vowel, pronounced as ‘air’. The first letter is ฮ (h)  then ร์ (r) with a garan – so it’s ignored, and we have the first syllable ‘hair’

The second syllable รี่ (‘r’ + the vowel above ‘ee’) making ‘ree’. (I’ll ignore the tone of this, to avoid even more hair-pulling)

So, altogether now! Hair-ree.

It would – to my way of thinking - be possible to write Harry: ฮัรรี่ (harree)
I think the way it's been spelt as 'hair-ree' makes it easy for Thais to read it.

A real Hairy Potter

You have to listen carefully, as with all the examples I’ve given so far with the ‘Thai tongue’ struggling to say non-Thai sounds. We can often miss them, as when living here, we tend to accept incorrect pronunciation as normal. The same way Thais realise ferangs often don’t pronounce Thai as clearly as they should.

I’m waiting for someone to find a word that doesn’t follow what I’ve written so far. I bet someone will find something.

Do Thais struggle to put a 'S' before another consonant because I once went into a mom and pop shop and asked for some Spy wine for my wife, saying "Khun mee Spy khuat" and the the shop owner didn't have a clue what I was asking for until the penny dropped, then she said "ah Sur pie". And similar on the golf course and my caddie was dating someone from Sur pain (Spain).

[Bluesofa]

1 hour ago, Marble-eye said:

Do Thais struggle to put a 'S' before another consonant because I once went into a mom and pop shop and asked for some Spy wine for my wife, saying "Khun mee Spy khuat" and the the shop owner didn't have a clue what I was asking for until the penny dropped, then she said "ah Sur pie". And similar on the golf course and my caddie was dating someone from Sur pain (Spain).

That's a good question, thanks.

This is yet another example of Thais using Thai pronunciation with non-Thai words. It's just because they are often not aware of another language having different ways to pronounce words.

It comes down to Thai words beginning with 's'.
If it's an 's' followed by a vowel, then it's straightforward (ha ha!)
Look at the word soup - Thai often uses the same word: ซุป   Another one is สับ (sab) to chop (food). 

If the 's' word has consonant after it, then it's usually pronounced as sa-whatever,  not running the two as  a 'consonant-blend' as in English.
(There are some Thai words that don't always do this)

So Siam สยาม has two initial consonants - ส and ย, so in Thai it's sa-yam.

airport สนามบิน (sa-nam-bin) is the same.

An account book (for a bank account for example)  สมุดบัญชี (sa-mud-ban-chee)

Therefore Thais will follow the Thai pronunciation for English words - Sa-pain and Sa-py, sa-pot, sa-wim.

Off the top of my head I can think of four Thai 's' consonants: ษ ส ศ ซ but don't worry about that right now!

I hope this explains it?