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The Thai language is the official language of Thailand. The Thai name for the language is ภาษาไทย (phasa thai, meaning "the language of Thais"). Thai is part of the Tai languages group of the Tai-Kadai language family. The Tai-Kadai languages are thought to have originated in southern China, and some linguists have proposed links to the Austroasiatic, Austronesian, or Sino-Tibetan language families. It is a tonal and analytic language. The combination of tonality, complex orthography, relational markers and a different phonology can make Thai a difficult language for Westerners to learn.
| Thai (ภาษาไทย [phasa thai]) | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Thailand |
| Region: | -- |
| Total speakers: | 46–50 Million |
| Ranking: | 24 |
| Genetic classification: | Tai-Kadai Kam-Tai |
| Regulated by: | -- |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | th |
| ISO 639-2 | tai |
| SIL | TTS |
Standard Thai, also known as Central Thai or Siamese, is the official language of Thailand, spoken by about 25 million people (1990) including speakers of Bangkok Thai (although the latter is sometimes considered as a separate dialect). Khorat Thai is spoken by about 400,000 (1984) in Nakhon Ratchasima; it occupies a linguistic position somewhere between Central Thai and Isan, and may be considered a dialect of either.
In addition to Standard Thai, Thailand is home to several other related Tai languages, including:
Statistics are from . Many of these languages are spoken by larger numbers outside Thailand. Most speakers of dialects and minority languages speak Central Thai in addition.
Within Standard Thai, there are different forms for different social contexts:
Less educated Thais can speak only at the first level. Few can speak the Sacred or Royal versions.
Main article: Thai alphabet
The Thai alphabet probably derives from the Old Khmer (อักขระเขมร) script, which is a southern Brahmic script of the Indic family. Notable features include:
The latter in particular causes problems for computer encoding and text rendering.
There is no universal standard for transliterating Thai into English. For example, the name of King Rama IX, the present monarch, is transliterated variously as Bhumibol, Phumiphon, or many other versions. Guide books, text books and dictionaries may each follow different systems. For this reason, most language courses recommend that learners master the Thai alphabet. In scholarly usage, French scholars tend to romanize Thai with a letter-for-letter transcription according to the original Sanskrit value of the characters. Anglophone scholars generally prefer either a simplified phonetic rendering or some variation on the International Phonetic Alphabet. This article uses a simplified IPA system which does not indicate tone or vowel quantity.
The Thai Royal Institute publishes a set of rules for transliterating English words into the Thai alphabet, but these rules are not intended to be used in reverse.
From the perspective of linguistic typology, Thai can be considered to be an analytic language. The word order is Subject-Verb-Object, although the subject is often omitted. As in many Asian languages, the Thai pronominal system varies according to the sex and relative status of speaker and audience.
Adjectives follow the noun. A duplicated adjective is used to identify a person, e.g. คนอ้วนๆ (kon uan uan)- "The fat person."
Comparatives take the form "A X กว่า (gwa) B" (A is more X than B). The superlative is expressed as A X ที่สุด (teesut).
Verbs do not inflect (i.e. do not change with person, tense or number). Duplication conveys the idea of doing the verb a lot. The passive voice is indicated by the insertion of โดน (dohn) or ถูก (tuuk) before the verb. Tense is conveyed by present; จะ (ja) before the verb for the future; ได้ (dai) before the verb (or a time expression) for the past.
Many adverbs are expressed by a duplicated adjective. Adverbs usually follow the verb.
Nouns are uninflected, and there are no plural forms or articles. Plurals are expressed by adding "nouns of multitude" (ลักษณนาม) or classifiers in the form of noun-number-classifier, e.g. "teacher five person" for "five teachers".
While in English, such classifiers are usually absent ("four chairs") or optional ("two bottles of beer" or "two beers"), a classifier is almost always used in Thai (hence "chair four item" and "beer two bottle").
Subject pronouns are often omitted, while nicknames are often used where English would use a pronoun. There are specialised pronouns in the royal and sacred Thai languages. The following are appropriate for conversational use:
The particles are often untranslatable words added to the end of a sentence to indicate respect, a request, encouragement or other moods (similar to the use of intonation in English). They are not used in written Thai. The most common particles indicating respect are ครับ (pronounced "khrap", with a high tone, the "r" sound is usually omitted) for a man, and ค่ะ (pronounced "kha" with a falling tone) for a woman; these can also be used to indicate an affirmative.
Other common particles are:
There are five phonemic tones: middle, low, high, rising and falling. They are indicated in the written script by a combination of the class of the initial consonant (high, mid or low), vowel length (long or short), closing consonant (unvoiced/stop or voiced/sonorant) and sometimes one of four phonemes forming unrelated words in Thai, but usually transliterated the same: เขา (khao) means he or she, while ขาว (khao) means white.
The short-long pairs are as follows:
| Short | Sound | Long | Sound |
|---|---|---|---|
| กะ | a in "fan" | กา | a in "father" |
| กิ | i in "it" | กี | ee in "see" |
| กุ | oo in "look" | กู | ue in "blue" |
| เก็ | e in "set" | เก | a in "lame" |
| แกะ | eh in "eh!" | แก | e in "fell" (long) |
| กึ | u in French "du" (short) | กื | u in French "dur" (long) |
| เกิ | ur in "burn" | เกอ | eu in "eugh!" |
| โกะ | o in "poke" | โก | o in "go" |
| เกาะ | o in "for" | กอ | aw in "aw!" |
The basic vowels can be combined into diphthongs as follows:
| ไก or ใก | I in "I" | กาย | I in "I" (stressed) |
| เกา | ow in "cow" | กาว | ao in "Lao" |
| เกียะ | ea in "ear" | เกีย | ea in "ear" (long) |
| กิว | ew in "new" (short) | -- | -- |
| กัวะ | ure in "pure" (short) | กัว | ewe in "newer" |
| กุย | uey in "bluey" | กูย | ooee in "cooee!" |
| เก็ว | e in "set" + o in "poke" | เกว | a in "lame" + o in "poke" |
| -- | -- | แกว | e in "fell" (long) + o in "poke" |
| -- | -- | เกือ | u in French "dur" + a in "father" |
| -- | -- | เกย | eu in "eugh!" + a in "lame" |
| -- | -- | กอย | oy in "boy" (long) |
| -- | -- | โกย | ue in "Chloe" |
Additionally, there are three triphthongs, all of which are long:
| เกียว | ee + aow |
| กวย | oo + I in "I" |
| เกือย | u in French "dur" + I in "I" |
For a a guide to written vowels, see the Thai alphabet page.
Other than compound words and words of foreign origin, most words are monosyllabic. Historically, words have most often been imported from Sanskrit and Pali; Buddhist terminology was a particularly fruitful source of these. Since the beginning of the 20th century, however, the English language has been the greatest influence.
Thailand also uses a distinctive six hour clock in addition to the 24 hour clock.
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