Thai is the national language of Thailand, spoken by around eighty percent of
the fifty million residents of the South-East Asian country. Linguists consider
it an "uninflected, primarily monosyllabic, tonal language." The
spoken language is believed to have originated in the area which is now the
border between Vietnam and China, an idea which provides clues to the origin of
the Thai people, an area of continued scholarly debate. Linguistically, the
language is related to languages spoken in eastern Burma, northern Vietnam,
Yunnan, and Laos.
Within Thailand, there are four major dialects, corresponding to the southern,
northern ("Yuan"), northeastern (close to Lao language), and central
regions of the country; the latter is called Central Thai or Bangkok
Thai and is taught in all schools, is used for most television broadcasts,
and is widely understood in all regions. Nowadays, English is also taught in all
public schools. There are a few minor Thai dialects such as Phuan and Lue,
spoken by small populations. Also within Thailand, small ethnic minority groups
(including so-called "hill tribes") account for around sixty languages
which are not considered related to Thai.
The four primary dialects of Thai should not be confused with four different
"languages" used by Thais in different social circumstances. For
example, certain words are used only by Thai royalty, creating a royal language.
There are also languages used for religious figures, polite everyday
interactions, and gruff or crude communications.
The written Thai Language was introduced by the third Sukothai period king,
Ramkamhaeng, in 1283. This writing system has undergone little change since its
introduction, so inscriptions from the Sukothai era can be read by modern Thai
readers. The writing was based on Pali, Sanskrit, and Indian concepts, and many
Mon and Khmer words entered the language. Unlike the Chinese language, the
system is alphabetic, so pronunciation of a word is independent of its
meaning (English is also an alphabetic language). On the other hand, Thai is tonal,
like Chinese and unlike English. This means that each word has a certain pitch
characteristic with which it must be spoken to be properly understood. The Thai
language uses five tones, called mid, low, high, rising, and falling.
The Thai alphabet uses forty-four consonants and fifteen basic vowel characters.
These are horizontally placed, left to right, with no intervening space, to form
syllables, words, and sentences. Vowels are written above, below, before, or
after the consonant they modify, although the consonant always sounds first when
the syllable is spoken. The vowel characters (and a few consonants) can be
combined in various ways to produce numerous compound vowels (dipthongs and
tripthongs).
Each syllable, consisting of one or more consonants and a simple or compound
vowel (possibly inherent or implied, and thus not written) has a
"default" tone determined by several factors, including the type of
consonant(s) present (consonants are divided into three classes for this
purpose). The syllable's tone can be modified by one of four tone markers. Some
people incorrectly assume that the tone marks identify all necessary tones, or
perhaps force certain tones, but neither of these is correct. Actually the final
tone of a syllable is determined by the tone mark in conjunction with the type
of syllable, as determined by the vowel and consonant characters present.
The grammar of the Thai language is considerably simpler than grammar in Western
languages, and for many students, this makes up for the additional difficulty of
tones. Most significantly, words are not modified or conjugated for tenses,
plurals, genders, or subject-verb agreement. Articles such as a, an,
or the are also not used. Tenses, levels of politeness, verb-to-noun
conversion, and other language concepts are accomplished with the simple
addition of various modifying words (called "particles") to the basic
subject-verb-object format.
Many westerners do not make time to learn written Thai, focusing instead only on
speaking. One problem with this approach is that the various reference materials
you will accumulate each have a different transliteration (phonetic spelling
with a western alphabet) scheme, and it thus becomes difficult to recognize
connections between your multiple sources of information. Although only you
can decide whether to make the extra effort to study Thai script, I think it can
provide a valuable and rewarding foundation for continued learning of the Thai
language.
Introduction to the Thai Language