Rocking Bangkok

The full name of Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, is sometimes said to be the longest place name in the world. (Apparently there’s a competitor in Wales.)

A good way to hear the full name is to check out this video.

It’s a 1989 rock song by the Thai group Asanee-Wasan in which the full name of Bangkok is repeated several times. There’s great footage of Bangkok through the decades.
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“Phai Thai,” chai mai? (“ไผ่ไทย” ใช่ไหม?)

Transcribing one language into the writing system of another is notoriously hard. Getting Thai into the Roman alphabet is a bear.

I made up an unlikely phrase to show some of the problems. “Phai Thai,” chai mai? would mean something like “You said ‘Thai bamboo,’ right?” It might conceivably come up in a conversation in which one person didn’t quite hear the other, or couldn’t quite make out a foreigner’s pronunciation. (Also, unless the people were good friends in an informal setting, the speaker would add some sort of courtesy word at the end.)
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Phitsa, Kof, Khomphiotoe, and Other Thai Words You Already Know

OK, maybe the loan words for pizza, golf, and computer are too easy. (To get the last one, dividing the syllables may help: khom-phio-toe.)

Many of us these days know some other Thai words. Travelers may have mastered mai pen rai (“never mind,” “don’t worry about it”), always a handy phrase to have around.

Then there’s the Thai restaurant staple phat thai (which sometimes turns up on menus in nonstandard forms like pad thai, presumably out of fear that Americans will pronounce phat like “fat” rather than “pot.”)
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