Hi June,

> Is there anyone here familiar with the Thai characters for
> writing Pali? I started my Pali studies with roman
> characters, so I was wondering if we can just convert
> character for character (roman for thai character)?

I have never done it that way, but I have converted files from Thai
Pali to romanized Pali. I'm afraid it's not as simple as a character
for character replacement. It would be best to make a search-&-replace
macro using Nisus Writer or MS Word if you plan to convert a lot of
files.

Here are a few hints based on my experience of Thai to roman
conversion:

1) Format all the romanized Pali text in the same font and then set
your wordprocessor's search-&-replace tool to search only for
characters in that font and then replace them with a character in
some Thai font.

2) The most important thing is to do the character-replacement in the
right order, thus:

a. Aspirated consonants (kh, gh, ch etc) followed by a, aa, i, ii, u,
and uu. (Remember that a is not actually written in Thai Pali, but is
just assumed to be present whenever there are two adjacent consonants,
where the first consonant is not followed by any other vowel and not
accompanied by a silencing mark).

b. Non-aspirates (k, g, c etc.) and h followed by a, aa, i,
ii, u, and uu.

c. niggahiitas

3) So far it's been plain-sailing. Now matters get tricky. The
characters that remain to be replaced are e and o and their preceding
consonant(s), along with various consonant clusters.

a. In Thai the vowels e and o are written before the consonant that
they are pronounced after. Theno, for example, is written 'ethon'. You
will need to convert the e's and o's preceded by consonant clusters
before you do those preceded by a single consonant. E.g. first kkhyo,
gghyo ... etc., then khyo, ghyo ... etc., and finally yo. To avoid
error you will first need to draw up a list of all possible consonant
clusters and place them in groups according to their length.

b. The final step is to convert all the remaining consonants, not
forgetting to put a silencing dot under each of them to indicate the
absence of sara a.

> A little off topic from this group, sorry, but does anyone
> know any bookstores in Thailand, in the Bangkok area that
> mainly sells Buddhist books? I found a nice website once a
> long time ago, a Buddhist bookstore selling both English and
> Thai books, supported by the royal family, but I lost it.

There is the Mahamakut Bookshop on Phra Sumen Rd. in Banglampoo (just
opposite Wat Bowornivet); and the Mahachulalongkorn Bookshop at the
side of Wat Mahadhatu, near Tha Phra Chan. The Bhumibalo Bhikkhu
Foundation at Wat Saket publishes high quality editions of Pali texts
(and a few Thai translations), mainly grammar and Abhidhamma texts.
Also there is White Lotus Press, I'm not sure where it is located but
you should be able to find its online catalogue with Google. Finally
there are the bookshops on Khaosan Road, if you can bear to go near
the place.

Best wishes,

Dhammanando

__________________________
Dhammanando Bhikkhu
Ho 2, Wat Benchamabophitr
Rama V Road
Bangkok 10300