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Thai language
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
Be-Tai
Tai-Sek
Tai
Southwestern
East
Central
Chiang
Saeng
Thai

Official status

Official language of:

Thailand

Regulated by:

--

Language codes

ISO
639-1

th

ISO 639-2

tai

SIL

TTS

Table of contents

1
Languages and Dialects
2
Script
3
Grammar

3.1
Adjectives
3.2
Verbs
3.3
Adverbs
3.4
Nouns
3.5
Pronouns
3.6
Particles

4
Phonology

4.7
Tones
4.8
Consonants
4.9
Vowels

5
Vocabulary
6
References
7
External links

Languages and Dialects
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:

Isan
(Northeastern Thai), the language of the Isan
region of Thailand, is considered by some to be a dialect of the Lao
language, which it closely resembles. It is spoken by about 15 million
people (1983).

LÃÂ¼ (Tai Lue, Dai),
spoken by about 78,000 (1993) in northern Thailand.

Northern
Thai (Lanna, Kam Mueang, or Tai Yuan), spoken by about 6 million (1983).

Phuan, spoken by an unknown number of people in central Thailand and Isan.

Phu Thai, spoken by about 156,000 around Nakhon
Phanom province (1993).

Shan (Thai Luang, Tai Long), spoken by about 56,000 in north-west Thailand
(1993).

Song, spoken by about 20,000 to 30,000 in central and northern
Thailand(1982).

Southern Thai (Pak Dtai or Dambro), spoken about 5 million (1990).

Tai Dam, spoken by about 20,000 (1991) in Isan and Saraburi
province.

Statistics are from Ethnologue
2003-10-4. 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:

Street Thai: informal, without polite terms of address, as used between
close relatives and friends.

Elegant Thai: official and written version, includes respectful terms of
address; used in simplified form in newspapers.

Rhetorical Thai: used for public speaking.

Sacred Thai.

Royal Thai.

Less educated Thais can speak only at the first level. Few can
speak the Sacred or Royal versions.

Script

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:

It is an abugida
script, in which the implicit vowel is a long open o (the aw
sound in English) for consonants
standing alone and a short closed o if the initial consonant is
followed by another consonant.

Tone markers are placed above the initial consonant of a syllable or on
the last consonant of an initial consonant
cluster.

Vowels
associated with consonants are nonsequential: they can be located before,
after, above or below their associated consonant, or in a combination of these
positions.

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 [1]
publishes a set of rules for transliterating English words into the Thai
alphabet, but these rules are not intended to be used in reverse.

Grammar
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
Adjectives follow the noun. A duplicated adjective
is used to indentify 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
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 tense markers before or after the verb: กำลัง (gamlang)
before the verb or อยู่ (yuu) after the verb for the present;
จะ (ja) before the verb for the future;
ได้ (dai) before the verb (or a time expression) for the past.

Adverbs
Many adverbs are expressed by a duplicated adjective. Adverbs
usually follow the verb.

Nouns
Nouns are uninflected, and there are no plural
forms or articless.
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").

Pronouns

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:

ผม (phom) = I/me (masculine)

ดิฉัน (di-chan) = I/me (feminine)

ฉัน (chan) = I/me (masculine or feminine; informal)

คุณ (khun) = you (polite)

เธอ (thœ) = you (informal)

เรา (rao) = we

เขา (kao) = he/she

มัน (man) = it

พวกเขา (phuak-kao) = they

พี่ (phi) = older brother or sister (often used loosely for older
non-relatives)

น้อง (nᴐng) = younger brother or sister (often used loosely for
younger non-relatives)

Particles
The particless
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) 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:

จ๊ะ (ja) indicating a request;

จ้ะ, จ้า or จ๋า (ja) indicating emphasis;

ละ or ล่ะ (la) indicating emphasis;

สิ (si) indicating emphasis or an imperative; and

นะ (na) indicating a request.

Phonology

Tones
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 tone marks. The tonal rules are shown in the following
chart:

Thai Tones

Long vowel, or vowel plus voiced
consonant

Long vowel plus unvoiced consonant

Short vowel, or short vowel plus unvoiced
consonant

Mai ek (อ่)

Mai tho (อ้้้)

High class consonant

rising

low

low

low

falling

Mid class consonant

mid

low

low

low

falling

Low class consonant

mid

falling

high

falling

high

There are a further two, relatively rare tone marks: mai tri (อ๊)
and mai chattawa (อ๋); these always indicate a high and a rising tone
respectively.

The letters ห (high class) and อ (mid class) are often used as silent letters
to produce the correct tone. In polysyllabic words, an initial high class
consonant with an implicit vowel renders the following syllable also high class.

There are a few exceptions to this system, notably the pronouns chan
and kao, which are both pronounced with a high tone rather than the
rising tone indicated by the script.

Consonants
Thai distinguishes among three voice/aspiration patterns for
consonants: unvoiced, unaspirated; unvoiced, aspirated; and voiced, unaspirated.
Where English has only unvoiced, aspirated [p] and voiced, unaspirated [b], Thai
distinguishes a third sound which is neither voiced nor aspirated, approximately
the sound of the p in "spliced." There is similarly a [d],
[th],[t] triplet. In the pharyngeal series there is a [k],
[kh] pair and in the palatal a [c], [ch] pair.

Voiced

Unvoiced

Aspirated

kh, ch, th,
ph

Unaspirated

d, b

k, c, t, p

Vowels
The vowels of the Thai language, from back to front and high to
low, are:

back

front

high

u (อุ, อู)

ɨ (อึ, อื)

i (อิ, อี)

o (โอ)

e (เอ)

ᴐ (ออ)

æ (แอ)

low

a (อะ, อา)

œ (เอิอ)

The vowels each exist in long-short pairs: these are distinct phonemes
forming unrelated words in Thai, but usually transliterated the same: เขา
(khaw) means he or she, while ขาว (khaw) means white.

Vowels can also be combined in diphthongs
or triphthongs. For a full list of vowels and combinations, see the Thai
alphabet page.

Vocabulary

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.

References

Segaller, Denis: Thai Without Tears, BMD Book Mags, ISBN
9748711528

External links

Thai
learning resources (kisa.ca)

Websters
Thai-English Dictionary

LEXiTRON
Thai-English, English-Thai Dictionary

Parsit
English-Thai Web Translation

Longdo
Thai-English/French/German/Japanese Dictionary

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