Phuket Pronunciation | How do you pronounce Phuket?

Endless schoolboyish giggles surround the pronunciation of Phuket.

Phuket is my home, so I get a bit annoyed sometimes by people saying Fookit or FooKet or anything else with an F sound. A friend of mine knew there was no swear words, so tried pronouncing if "Foo Kay" with maybe a slight French accent. No, sorry - there is no F in Phuket, but the transliteration of Thai words into English is sometimes nearly impossible. You can see signs in Phuket to the same places with slightly different spellings.

So how do you actually pronounce "Phuket" in English? The "Ph" in Phuket is a hard P sound, but not as hard as a normal "P", slightly softer with undertones of "B"... The island was once called Bukit, which is the Malay word for "hill".

No F'ing please!

The correct pronunciation of Phuket is "Poo-ket", though as I say, the P is softened slightly, plus the K can sound more like a G and indeed the final T is not a hard T either. Easy, right?

Oh, and Phi Phi is "Pee Pee", which could be funny if you are 6 years old, like Phuket there is no F in Phi Phi. It's not "Fee Fee".

What of the new Bangkok airport - Suvarnabhumi is how it's written, but Soo-wa-na-poom is how you pronounce it. The V is a W, the R is silent, the BH is a P and you skip the I. With 4 M's and a silent Q.

Best Wishes from Phuket!

Jamie

And here's a little video from Youtube that seems to pronounce Phuket correctly ...