A COMPARISON OF THE TAI YA AND STANDARD THAI PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEMS IN WORDS RELATED TO NATURE

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to compare the phonological system in words related to nature of Tai Ya language used at Hua Kat Village, Mo Sha Sub-district, Xin Ping District, Yu Xi, Yun Nan Province, China with that of the standard Thai language. Analysis of sounds was conducted with transcriptions of words given by informants using international phonetic symbols obtained from the Speech Analyzer Program. Correspondents of initial consonant phonemes and tonal phonemes were found between the two languages. For instance, the initial consonant phoneme /l/ in Tai Ya was found to be the correspondent of the initial consonant phoneme /d/ in standard Thai because there was no initial consonant phoneme /d/ in Tai Ya while the tonal phoneme /53/ (high-falling) in Tai Ya was found to correspond to the tonal phoneme /33/ (mid) in standard Thai. In addition, differences were found in the usage of consonant phonemes, vowel phonemes, tonal phoneme, and words as well as alternating syllables and transliteration of some words.