Using Thai in Email
Introduction
This guide is aimed at people who want to send and receive email written in the Thai language. Most people reading this guide will be living outside of Thailand and are having difficulties actually viewing the text in Thai, they have probably arrived here frustrated after searching the internet for help. Other people will be Thai people who are sending email to friends and family abroad and Thai people living abroad sending messages to various places.
I have been studying this problem for some time so the first good news is you are not alone! The bad news is, there is no good solution to this problem, yet. Fortunately the second good news is we can fix your problems, however, it will be more laborious than you would ideally want. This is why I say "there is no good solution", a good solution would be simple and easy.
One of the reasons that this problem has endured for so long is that the majority of Thai people are happily sending and receiving email oblivious to the problems of communicating with the outside world. Simply put, the people with the technical and linguistic know-how don't know the problem exists or consider it to be minor. Except for me.
This guide is written for a reader who wants to use Thai in their email, isn't afraid of a few technical words or getting a little up close and personal with their computer set up. The reader is not expected to have a technical background so there should be enough information to help you set things up.
In this guide I have used YAM and Thunderbird as examples of email clients (*) but the information can be applied to any client. I will also be looking at how to send email with webmail like Hotmail and Yahoo.
* An email client is what we call the software you use to send and receive email.First Steps
OK, you're using Thai so I have to make a few basic assumptions:
- You have a font with Thai glyphs. e.g. Tahoma or one of the scalable fonts from the Thai Linux Working Group. If not, go and download them now. If you have a Windows PC, you may as well install these fonts as they are nicely drawn.
- You have a Thai keymap. i.e. you have a means to type Thai text into your
computer. On a Windows PC there is what is called an "input method editor"
that usually sits in the taskbar. If you don't have it you may need to install
Microsoft's Asian languages pack. I don't do Windows so you have to go and find
it yourself. On Linux, the equivalent is SCIM.
Input Method Editor on Windows Vista - You have a Thai Keyboard (optional but so much easier than having to remember the keymap. How much does a keyboard cost these days ? 500 Baht ?)
- You're at least aware of the existence of my Thai Text Editor called Sontana. Really, it's designed to solve many of the problems we're facing, so I'm going to be mentioning it a lot.
OK, now we're ready to start discussing the problems of reading Thai email.