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Originally Posted by JayBee
To my way of thinking, that message seems highly unlikely to have been written by a Thai. Writing Thai words in Roman letters is a practice only used by farangs attempting to learn Thai or by Thais ( or farangs) attempting to teach Thai to farangs. When I have written Thai words in Roman letters and asked TGs about them, they were quite baffled by what I was doing. To their way of thinking if it is written in Roman letters, it is a farang language, not Thai. If a Thai knew how to write Thai words in Roman letters, it would indicate to me that they already know how to speak English(or German or whatever), therefore why write it in Thai, why not just use English. Even if they didn't know English well, it would be easier for them to get a dictionary and attempt to write words in English than to bastardize their own language by trying to write it with foreign symbols.
If you were trying to write something in English to a Thai person, would you use Thai letters to phonetically sound it out? Not likely.
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You make some sense but: how could a Thai send a Thai SMS to a farang? Can't be done can it?
I remember vividly getting a text message from my brother in the UK when I had just got married in Bangkok. He sent some sort of 'welcome to the family' message and I had no idea what it meant, I showed it to the Mrs and she had no idea either because, as you rightly say, the Roman characters were unfamiliar. When I read it out to her phonetically though, she understood it straight off.