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Languages and DialectsStandard 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 Ethnologue 2003-10-4 (http://www.ethnologue.com/). 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. ScriptMain 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 [1] (http://www.royin.go.th/) publishes sets of rules for transliterating Thai words into the Roman alphabet and vice versa (the Royal Thai General System of Transcription), but these are far from universally applied. The ISO published an international standard for the transliteration of Thai into Roman script in September 2003 [2] (http://www.iso.org/iso/en/CatalogueDetailPage.CatalogueDetail?CSNUMBER=20574&ICS1=1&ICS2=140&ICS3=10) . GrammarFrom 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. AdjectivesAdjectives follow the noun. A duplicated adjective is used to identify a person, e.g. คนอ้วนๆ (khon 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 (theesut). VerbsVerbs do not inflect (i.e. do not change with person, tense, voice, mood or number) nor are there any participles. Duplication conveys the idea of doing the verb a lot. The passive voice is indicated by the insertion of โดน (dohn) or ถูก (thuuk) 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. AdverbsMany adverbs are expressed by a duplicated adjective. Adverbs usually follow the verb. NounsNouns are uninflected and have no gender; 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"). PronounsSubject 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:
ParticlesThe 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), as well as varying the level of formality. 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:
PhonologyTonesThere 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:
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 khao, which are both pronounced with a high tone rather than the rising tone indicated by the script. ConsonantsThai 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. <p ALIGN="CENTER">
VowelsThe basic vowels of the Thai language, from back to front and close to open, are:
The short-long pairs are as follows:
The basic vowels can be combined into diphthongs as follows:
Additionally, there are three triphthongs, all of which are long:
For a guide to written vowels, see the Thai alphabet page. VocabularyOther 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
External links
de:Thailändische Sprache eo:Taja lingvo fi:Thain kieli fr:Thaï ms:Bahasa Thai nl:Thai (taal) id:Bahasa Thailand ja:タイ語 sv:Thailändska th:ภาษาไทย zh:泰语 pl:Język tajski
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