Talk:Ekkamai BTS station

Ekkamai Station
Hello. I've noticed your edition of a Bangkok skytrain station page, Ekkamai. I'd like to tell you that name Ekkamai, with 'tt', is spelt officially by the BTS. The pronunciation in Thai is also 'ek-ka-mai', not 'e-ka-mai'.

Please check here: BTS Station Map

If you don't mind, I will help you edit back. Thanks for your attention about Bangkok and Thailand. We need more your help here. Nomsen (talk) 14:15, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

BTS inconsistencies
You are right, the official BTS boards have "Ekkamai" on the station. I noticed it yesterday when I checked. Please forgive my mistake. I was confused.

The pronunciation of เอกมัย in Thai, however, is not 'ek-ka-mai', for in Thai language the sound "k" is never doubled. The correct pronunciation in Thai is 'ē-kamāi. Notice that there are no two ko-kai (ก) on the word, a feature absent in the Thai language. The word เอกมัย according to the Royal Thai General System of Transcription should be correctly transliterated as "Ekamai" and is increasingly used as such (it gets 215,000 hits in Google). Examples: Ekamai International School, Ekamai appartments, Ekamai Shopping Mall, etc.

The spelling "Ekkamai" (51,900 hits in Google) is a freak remnant of the now obsolete English-based transliteration system of Thai. I don't know wy BTS uses it. For the next station, "Thong Lo" (ทองหล่อ), BTS used the name based on the Royal Thai General System of Transcription, instead of the obsolete "Thong Lor" or "Tonglor".

That is what made me confused. I am used just to hear the word spoken in Thai, so I had to actually go to the skytrain station and see it for myself to realize how oddly the name is spelt by BTS in the Latin script. Xufanc (talk) 00:38, 3 May 2009 (UTC)


 * The name is pronounced เอก-กะ-มัย, not เอ-กะ-มัย, and it transcribed as Ekkamai by the RTGS. Your confusion may be caused by the way Thai words (especially those with Pali/Sanskrit roots) sometimes have an implied ending consonant which is not spelled-out. --118.173.238.228 (talk) 09:18, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I find this still very confusing and not satisfactory... So if the extra "ก" is not spelled out and if it does not appear in the Thai writing, why does it have to appear in the English spelling? So that foreigners may spell the name wrongly? Xufanc (talk) 15:26, 5 May 2009 (UTC)


 * It's to aid pronunciation rather than spelling. RTGS is a method of transcription, not transliteration. --115.67.18.83 (talk) 19:22, 5 May 2009 (UTC) (same user as above, different connection)
 * Well, that explains something. Thank you so much. I appreciate that you took the trouble to explain things. Xufanc (talk) 08:29, 6 May 2009 (UTC)