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 |
|
2 Script 3 Grammar 4 Phonology 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).
- Lü (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.
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.
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:
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.
Comparatives take the form "A X กว่า (gwa) B" (A is more X than B). The superlative is expressed as A X ที่สุด (teesut).
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:
Other common particles are:
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.
Script
The latter in particular causes problems for computer encoding and text rendering.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."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".Pronouns
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.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
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.
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.
Vocabulary
References
External links