Thailand Language

The official language of Thailand is Thai, a tonal language whereby the meaning of the word is determined by the tone or pitch (inflection). There are five tones in the Thai language – rising, falling, a high tone, a low tone and a level tone. Thai is a member of the Tai-Kadai language family thought to have originated from what is now southern China. Standard Thai, also known as Siamese, is spoken by about 85% of the population and is the language taught in schools and used by the government. Within this group are major subgroups such as Bangkok Thai, Isan (spoken in the north and sometimes considered a dialect of the Lao language), and Khorat Thai (somewhere between Central Thai and Isan). Smaller groups include the Nyaw, Galung, Phuan, Shan, and Thai Dam.
 
The combination of tonality, a distinct alphabet, and complex orthography makes Thai one of the more difficult languages to learn among non-native speakers.
 
The Thai alphabet is presumed to have been derived from the old Khmer alphabet. It is a syllabic alphabet with 44 consonants with an inherent vowel sound. Some consonants have multiple letters as they used to represent separate sounds, but these sounds were lost over time. Tone markers are placed above the initial consonant of a syllable or on the last consontant of an initial consonant cluster. Vowels that are associated with a consonant can appear before, after, above or below their associated consonant, which makes it difficult for compute encoding and text rendering. There are no spaces between words in Thai, with the use of spaces reserved for the end of clauses or sentences. Because there is no official Latin transliteration system for Thai, there can be considerable variations in the spelling translations from Thai into English of place names and locations. It is recommended that travellers learn the Thai alphabet to minimize confusion.
 
Outside of Thai, there are large minorities of Chinese speakers (12%), Malay speaking muslims (3%), Khmer, and Vietnamese. There are also a number of mountain dwelling tribes, such as the Hmong and Mein.
Last edited Aug 30, 07 3:28 PM.