สำนักราชบัณฑิตยสภา

46 The Journal of the Royal Institute of Thailand Volume III - 2011 46 Thai-ization into Latin sounds ( e.g. Geber for Jabir ), by translating a name with a specific meaning into Latin (e.g. Venator for Cacciatore ), or by choosing a new name based on some attribute of the person (e.g. Noviomagus for Daniel Santbech , possibly from the Latin name for the town of Nijmegen). (Dan H. Nicolson 1974) Thai-ization in the cultural context, however, may be discomfiting in certain cases, particularly as it impacts negatively upon relationships between the Thai state and its ethnic minorities or neighboring countries. Laos is a good example. The Laotian government is somewhat uncomfortable with the flood of Thai culture pouring into Laos through the media. Yet if çThai-izationé is seen as cultural expansion, northern Thailand seems to even more greatly affected. ( www.imamreza.net) (Niti Pawakapan: 2002) Current undercurrents in Thai society reflect the same attitudes of conservative groups that are not happy with Americanization, Japanization, or Koreanization of their culture. The narrow definition of çThai-izationé refers to the use of Thai characters in writing words, including those from both foreign and ethnic languages, either having or lacking their own writing systems. This paper deals with çThai-izationé in this narrow sense. Romanization and Thai-ization In linguistics, Romanization, or Latinization, is the representation of words or sounds with Roman (or Latin) characters. The original language may or may not have its own character set. The representation of words is the process of transliteration, whereas the representation of sounds is the process of transcription. There are two kinds of transcription: phonemic transcription and phonetic transcription. Phonemic transcription is the process of representing the distinctive sound units of a language, whereas phonetic transcription is the process of representing the sounds of an actual spoken utterance. For example, the phonemic sound of /r/ in Thai may be uttered differently in various regions and social groups in Thailand. If a phonetic transcription is used there must be various representations of [r] sounds to distinguish all the specific features. Roman characters were used in the development of the writing systems of most languages in Europe and North America. Later, for a variety of reasons, the use of Roman characters to represent the sounds of each language spread 45-53_mac9 5/3/12, 10:08 PM 46