Street Signs, Part 1

Welcome to another reading lesson! This time, we've got a sign that uses two different fonts. This will be a good chance for you to test your skills and see how well you can recognise the various characters written in two separate styles. Before looking below, read the sign above and see what you can understand.

Let's start with the red text. Written with spaces between the words, we get the following:

เปิด สอน ภาษา จีน กลาง

When transliterated into English characters, the sentence looks like this (with tones in the brackets):

bpeert (low) sawn (rising) phaa-saa (mid-rising) jiin (mid) glaang (mid)

The meanings of these words in English are below:

เปิด (bpeert): to open
สอน (sawn): to teach
ภาษา (paa-saa): language
จีน (jiin): China/Chinese
กลาง (glaang): middle/central
ภาษาจีนกลาง (phaa-saa-jiin-glang): Mandarin

So, the red text means "Open to Teach Mandarin" in English. As you can see, the Thai characters have been written in a Chinese style, so the font choice makes some sense (although it makes it a little difficult to read!)

Moving onto the green and blue text, I'll write out each Thai word with accompanying spaces to make it a bit easier. Slashes have been included to break the lines up as they're written on the sign.

เลือก เวลา เรียน ได้ / ตัว ต่อ ตัว หรือ กลุ่ม / สอน อ่าน เขียน / พุด คล่อง ภายใน 60 ชั่วโมง / ติดต่อ

Again, I'll include the English transliteration for anyone having trouble reading Thai. The tones are in the brackets following each word:

leeuak (falling) wee-laa (mid-mid) riian (mid) dai (falling) / dtuua (mid) dtaw (low) dtuua (mid) reeu (rising) glum (low) / sawn (rising) aan (low) kiian (rising) / phuut (falling) klawng (falling) phai-nai (mid-mid) 60 chuua-mong (falling-mid) / dtit-dtaw (low-low)

This has a fair few new words, so I'll go over each below:

เลือก (leeuak): to choose
เวลา (wee-laa): time
เรียน (riian): to study
ได้ (dai): to be able to
ตัว (dtuua): body
ต่อ (dtaw): towards
ตัวต่อตัว (dtuua-dtaw-dtuua): one-on-one
หรือ (reeu): or
กลุ่ม (glum): group
อ่าน (aan): to read
เขียน (kiian): to write
พูด (puut): to speak
คล่อง (klawng): fluent
ภายใน (pai-nai): within
ชั่วโมง (chua-mong): hour(s)
ติดต่อ (dtit-dtaw): to contact

So, the entire sign should read as follows (with some tweaking to make it sound better in English):

Open to Teach Mandarin

Negotiable study times. Individual or group classes

Read, write and speak fluently within 60 hours

Please contact...

If you'd like to see how I've transliterated between the two languages, please click here. If there are any questions or comments, please leave them in the box below. I'll try and answer anything that comes up in future posts so please keep that feedback coming in.