Prominence, Mora and Rhythm in Thai

Abstract

In spite of being a monosyllabic word, but in pronunciation, Thai was not pronounced with emphasis on particular word with the same syllable. Thai, therefore, has a prominence, a mora and a rhythm while being spoken or conversed. Prominence means syllable loudness as compared to neighboring syllables in each syllable group. Mora means a unit of measure for long or short timing of syllables with prominence and without prominence. The syllables without prominence will be shorter and accounted for one timing. The syllable with prominence one will be longer and accounted for two timings, depending on the structure of the syllable. Rhythm means the division of syllables into periodic stress according to the length of syllable groups that varied from 1-4 syllables according to the meaning or sound groups that occurred in intuition of a native speaker. The correct pronunciation of Thai words must take into account the prominence, mora and rhythms. In addition, the so-called syllable group must have complete meaning to make a correct pronunciation. Pronunciation with rhythm regardless of the meaning of the word group, can be considered as a word with incomplete meaning. Each word or unit of word must have meaning and be a complete phoneme.