>>I saw this for the first time at Trader Joe's yesterday. The word sounds nauseous, and for those who know no better a beer to leave on the shelf! Yuck!
>
>As you probably know, Phuket is a city (town?) in Thailand, and I recently learned that the "P" and "h" are pronounced independently, not as a blend.
>
>Tamar

Hi Tamar,

Actually it refers to Phuket Island off the coast of Thailand. In this case I speak Thai and the english pronunciation of the transliteration would be "pooket", the "oo" being slightly drawn out as it is a "long" vowel and the "p" pronounced like the english normal aspirated "P". Thai has both aspirated and unaspirated "P". The aspirated "P" is usually transliterated as "Ph" into english and is pronounced like our normal "P". The unaspirated "P" is usually transliterated as "P" and is pronouned without producing the puff of air from a normal english "P" so it sounds "hard" or "cut off". There are also tones associated with "Phuket" ( Thai is a tonal language ) but I won't go into that. :-)

Bill