Thai language

Thai
ภาษาไทย phasa thai
Pronunciation [pʰāːsǎːtʰāj]
Spoken in
Total speakers over 20 million (2000)[1]
Ranking 45
Language family Tai-Kadai
  • Tai
    • Southwestern
      • East Central
        • Chiang Saeng
          • Thai
Writing system Thai script
Official status
Official language in Thailand
Regulated by The Royal Institute
Language codes
ISO 639-1 th
ISO 639-2 tha
ISO 639-3 tha
Linguasphere
Indic script
 This page contains Indic text. Without rendering support you may see irregular vowel positioning and a lack of conjuncts. More...

Thai (ภาษาไทย Phasa Thai[2] [pʰāːsǎːtʰāj]) is the national and official language of Thailand and the native language of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Tai-Kadai language family. Historical linguists have been unable to definitively link the Tai-Kadai languages to any other language family. Some words in Thai are borrowed from Pali, Sanskrit and Old Khmer. It is a tonal and analytic language. Thai also has a complex orthography and relational markers. Thai is mutually intelligible with Lao[3].

Contents

Languages and dialects

Standard Thai, also known as Central Thai or Siamese, is the official language of Thailand, spoken by over 20 million people (2000)[1], including speakers of Bangkok Thai (although the latter is sometimes considered 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 on a dialect continuum, and may be considered a variant of either. A majority of the people in the Isan region of Thailand speak a dialect of the Lao language, which has influenced the Central Thai dialect.

In addition to Standard Thai, Thailand is home to other related Tai languages, including:

Statistics are from Ethnologue 2003-10-4.

Many of these languages are spoken by larger numbers outside of Thailand. Most speakers of dialects and minority languages speak Central Thai as well, since it is the language used in schools and universities all across the kingdom.

Numerous languages not related to Thai are spoken within Thailand by ethnic minority hill tribespeople. These languages include Hmong-Mien (Yao), Karen, Lisu, and others.

Standard Thai is composed of several distinct registers, forms for different social contexts:

Most Thais can speak and understand all of these contexts. Street and elegant Thai are the basis of all conversations; rhetorical, religious and royal Thai are taught in schools as the national curriculum.

Script

Main article: Thai script

Many scholars believe that the Thai script is derived from the Khmer script, which is modeled after the Brahmic script from the Indic family. However, in appearance, Thai is closer to Thai Dam script, which may have the same Indian origins as the Khmer script. The language and its script are closely related to the Lao language and script. Most literate Lao are able to read and understand Thai, as more than half of the Thai vocabulary, grammar, intonation, vowels and so forth are common with the Lao language. Much like the Burmese adopted the Mon script (which also has Indic origins), the Thais adopted and modified the Khmer script to create their own writing system. While the oldest known inscription in the Khmer language dates from 611 CE, inscriptions in Thai writing began to appear around 1292 CE. Notable features include:

  1. It is an abugida script, in which the implicit vowel is a short /a/ in a syllable without final consonant and a short /o/ in a syllable with final consonant.
  2. Tone markers are placed above the consonant just before the vowel sound of the syllable.
  3. Vowels sounding after a consonant are nonsequential: they can be located before, after, above or below the consonant, or in a combination of these positions.

Transcription

There is no universal standard for transcribing Thai into the Latin alphabet. For example, the name of King Rama IX, the present monarch, is transcribed variously as Bhumibol, Phumiphon, phuuM miH phohnM, 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 script.

What comes closest to a standard is the Royal Thai General System of Transcription (RTGS), published by the Thai Royal Institute.[4] This system is increasingly used in Thailand by central and local governments, especially for road signs. Its main drawbacks are that it does not indicate tone or vowel length. Retro-transliteration, that is, reconstruction of Thai spelling from RTGS romanisation, is not possible.

Transliteration

The ISO published an international standard for the transliteration of Thai into Roman script in September 2003 (ISO 11940) [2]. By adding diacritics to the Latin letters, it makes the transcription reversible, making it a true transliteration. This system is intended for academic use, but is rarely used in any context.

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. Thai pronouns are selected according to the gender and relative status of speaker and audience.

Adjectives and adverbs

There is no morphological distinction between adverbs and adjectives. Many words can be used in either function. They follow the word they modify, which may be a noun, verb, or another adjective or adverb. Intensity can be expressed by a duplicated word, which is used to mean "very" (with the first occurrence at a higher pitch) or "rather" (with both at the same pitch) (Higbie 187-188). Usually, only one word is duplicated per clause.

Comparatives take the form "A X กว่า B" (kwa, IPA: [kwaː]), A is more X than B. The superlative is expressed as "A X ที่สุด" (thi sut, IPA: [tʰiːsut]), A is most X.

Because adjectives can be used as complete predicates, many words used to indicate tense in verbs (see Verbs:Tense below) may be used to describe adjectives.

  • Remark ฉันหิวแล้ว mostly means "I am hungry right now" because normally, แล้ว (laeo) is a past-tense marker, but แล้ว has many other uses as well. For example, in the sentence, แล้วเธอจะไปไหน (laeo thoe cha pai nai): So where are you going?, แล้ว (laeo) is used as a discourse particle.

Verbs

Verbs 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 intensively.

The passive voice is indicated by the insertion of ถูก (thuk, IPA: [tʰuːk])) before the verb. For example:

To convey the opposite sense, a sense of having an opportunity arrive, ได้ (dai, IPA: [dâj], can) is used. For example:

Note, dai (IPA: [dâj] and IPA: [dâːj]), though both spelled ได้ , convey two separate meanings. The short vowel dai (IPA: [dâj]) conveys an opportunity has arisen and is placed before the verb. The long vowel dai (IPA: [dâːj]) is placed after the verb and conveys the idea that one has been given permission or one has the ability to do something. Also see the past tense below.

Negation is indicated by placing ไม่ (mai, not) before the verb.

Tense is conveyed by tense markers before or after the verb.

Present can be indicated by กำลัง (kamlang, IPA: [kamlaŋ], currently) before the verb for ongoing action (like English -ing form), by อยู่ (yu, IPA: [juː]) after the verb, or by both. For example:
  • เขากำลังวิ่ง (khao kamlang wing, IPA: [kʰǎw kamlaŋ wiŋ]), or
  • เขาวิ่งอยู่ (khao wing yu, IPA: [kʰǎw wiŋ juː]), or
  • เขากำลังวิ่งอยู่ (khao kamlang wing yu, IPA: [kʰǎw kamlaŋ wiŋ juː]), He is running.
Future can be indicated by จะ (cha, IPA: [tɕaʔ], will) before the verb or by a time expression indicating the future. For example:
  • เขาจะวิ่ง (khao cha wing, IPA: [kʰǎw tɕaʔ wiŋ]), He will run or He is going to run
Past can be indicated by ได้ (dai, IPA: [dâːj]) before the verb or by a time expression indicating the past. However, แล้ว (laeo, :IPA: [lɛːw], already) is more often used to indicate the past tense by being placed behind the verb. Or, both ได้ and แล้ว are put together to form the past tense expression, i.e. Subject + ได้ + Verb + แล้ว. For example:
  • เขาได้กิน (khao dai kin, IPA: [kʰǎw dâːj kin]), He ate
  • เขากินแล้ว (khao kin laeo, IPA: [kʰǎw kin lɛːw], He (already) ate or He's already eaten
  • เขาได้กินแล้ว (khao dai kin laeo, IPA: [kʰǎw dâːj kin lɛːw]), He (already) ate or He's already eaten

Thai exhibits serial verb construction, where verbs are strung together. Some word combinations are common and may be considered set phrases.

Nouns and pronouns

Nouns are uninflected and have no gender; there are no articles.

Nouns are neither singular nor plural. Some specific nouns are reduplicated to form collectives: เด็ก (dek, child) is often repeated as เด็กๆ (dek dek) to refer to a group of children. The word พวก (phuak, [pʰûak]) may be used as a prefix of a noun or pronoun as a collective to pluralize or emphasise the following word. (พวกผม, phuak phom, [pʰûak pʰǒm], we, masculine; พวกเรา phuak rao, [pʰûak raw], emphasised we; พวกหมา phuak ma, (the) dogs) Plurals are expressed by adding classifiers, used as measure words (ลักษณนาม), in the form of noun-number-classifier (ครูห้าคน, "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").

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:

Word RTGS IPA Meaning
ผม phom [pʰǒm] I/me (masculine; formal)
ดิฉัน dichan [dìːtɕʰán]) I/me (feminine; formal)
ฉัน chan [tɕʰǎn] I/me (masculine or feminine; informal)
คุณ khun [kʰun] you (polite)
ท่าน than [tʰân] you (polite to a person of high status)
เธอ thoe [tʰɤː] you (informal), she/her (informal)
เรา rao [raw] we/us, I/me/you (casual)
เขา khao [kʰǎw] he/him, she/her
มัน man [mɑn] it, he/she (sometimes casual or offensive; if used to refer to a person)
พวกเขา phuak khao [pʰûak kʰǎw] they/them
พี่ phi [pʰîː] older brother, sister (also used for older acquaintances)
น้อง nong [nɔːŋ] younger brother, sister (also used for younger acquaintances)
ลูกพี่ ลูกน้อง luk phi luk nong [luːk pʰiː luːk nɔːŋ] first cousin (male or female)

The reflexive pronoun is ตัวเอง (tua eng), which can mean any of: myself, yourself, ourselves, himself, herself, themselves. This can be mixed with another pronoun to create an intensive pronoun, such as ตัวผมเอง (tua phom eng, lit: I myself) or ตัวคุณเอง (tua khun eng, lit: you yourself).

Thai does not have a separate possessive pronoun. Instead, possession is indicated by the particle ของ (khong). For example, "my mother" is แม่ของผม (mae khong phom, lit: mother of I). This particle is often implicit, so the phrase is shortened to แม่ผม (mae phom).

Thai has many more pronouns than those listed above. Their usage is full of nuances. For example:

Particles

The 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 elegant (written) Thai. The most common particles indicating respect are ครับ (khrap, IPA: [kʰráp], with a high tone) for a man, and ค่ะ (kha, [kʰâ], with a falling tone) for a woman; these can also be used to indicate an affirmative, though the ค่ะ (falling tone) is changed to a คะ (high tone).

Other common particles are:

Word RTGS IPA Meaning
จ๊ะ cha [tɕa] indicating a request
จ้ะ, จ้า or จ๋า cha [tɕaː] indicating emphasis
ละ or ล่ะ la [la] indicating emphasis
สิ si [si] indicating emphasis or an imperative
นะ na [na] softening; indicating a request

Phonology

Tones

There are five phonemic tones: mid, low, falling, high and rising, sometimes referred to in older reference works as rectus, gravis, circumflexus, altus and demissus, respectively.[5] The table shows an example of both the phonemic tones and their phonetic realization, in the IPA.

Tone Thai Example Phonemic Phonetic Example meaning in English
mid สามัญ นา /nāː/ [naː˧] paddy field
low เอก หน่า /nàː/ [naː˩] (a nickname)
falling โท หน้า /nâː/ [naː˥˩] face
high ตรี น้า /náː/ [naː˧˥] or [naː˥] aunt/uncle (younger than one's parents)
rising จัตวา หนา /nǎː/ [naː˩˩˦] or [naː˩˦] thick

Consonants

Thai distinguishes among three voice/aspiration patterns for plosive consonants:

Where English has only a distinction between the voiced, unaspirated /b/ and the unvoiced, aspirated /p/, Thai distinguishes a third sound which is neither voiced nor aspirated, which occurs in English only as an allophone of /p/, approximately the sound of the p in "spin". There is similarly an alveolar /t/, /tʰ/, /d/ triplet. In the velar series there is a /k/, /kʰ/ pair and in the postalveolar series the /tɕ/, /tɕʰ/ pair.

In each cell below, the first line indicates International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), the second indicates the Thai characters in initial position (several letters appearing in the same box have identical pronunciation).

  Bilabial Labio-
dental		 Alveolar Post-
alveolar		 Palatal Velar Glottal
Nasal   [m]
ม		     [n]
ณ,น		       [ŋ]
ง		  
Plosive [p]
ป		 [pʰ]
ผ,พ,ภ		 [b]
บ*		   [t]
ฏ,ต		 [tʰ]
ฐ,ฑ,ฒ,ถ,ท,ธ		 [d]
ฎ,ด*		     [k]
ก		 [kʰ]
ข,ฃ,ค,ฅ,ฆ		   [ʔ]
อ**
Fricative   [f]
ฝ,ฟ		 [s]
ซ,ศ,ษ,ส		         [h]
ห,ฮ
Affricate       [tɕ]
จ		 [tɕʰ]
ฉ, ช, ฌ		      
Trill       [r]
ร		        
Approximant         [j]
ญ,ย		   [w]
ว		  
Lateral
approximant		       [l]
ล,ฬ		        
* At the end of a syllable บ and ด are devoiced, becoming pronounced as [p] and [t] respectively
** The glottal plosive is implied after a short vowel without final, or the silent อ before a vowel.

Vowels

The basic vowels of the Thai language, from front to back and close to open, are given in the following table. The top entry in every cell is the symbol from the International Phonetic Alphabet, the second entry gives the spelling in the Thai alphabet, where a dash (–) indicates the position of the initial consonant after which the vowel is pronounced. A second dash indicates that a final consonant must follow.

Monophthongs of Thai. From Tingsabadh & Abramson (1993:25)
  Front Back
unrounded unrounded rounded
short long short long short long
Close /i/
 -ิ 		 /iː/
 -ี 		 /ɯ/
 -ึ 		 /ɯː/
 -ื 		 /u/
 -ุ 		 /uː/
 -ู 
Close-mid /e/
เ-ะ		 /eː/
เ-		 /ɤ/
เ-อะ		 /ɤː/
เ-อ		 /o/
โ-ะ		 /oː/
โ-
Open-mid /ɛ/
แ-ะ		 /ɛː/
แ-		     /ɔ/
เ-าะ		 /ɔː/
-อ
Open     /a/
-ะ, -ั		 /aː/
-า		    

The vowels each exist in long-short pairs: these are distinct phonemes forming unrelated words in Thai,[6] but usually transliterated the same: เขา (khao) means "he" or "she", while ขาว (khao) means "white".

The long-short pairs are as follows:

Long Short
Thai IPA Gloss Thai script IPA Gloss
–า /aː/ /fǎːn/ 'to slice' –ะ /a/ /fǎn/ 'to dream'
–ี  /iː/ /krìːt/ 'to cut' –ิ  /i/ /krìt/ 'dagger'
–ู  /uː/ /sùːt/ 'to inhale' –ุ  /u/ /sùt/ 'rearmost'
เ– /eː/ /ʔēːn/ 'to recline' เ–ะ /e/ /ʔēn/ 'ligament'
แ– /ɛː/ /pʰɛ́ː/ 'to be defeated' แ–ะ /ɛ/ /pʰɛ́ʔ/ 'goat'
–ื  /ɯː/ /kʰlɯ̂ːn/ 'wave' –ึ  /ɯ/ /kʰɯ̂n/ 'to go up'
เ–อ /ɤː/ /dɤ̄ːn/ 'to walk' เ–อะ /ɤ/ /ŋɤ̄n/ 'silver'
โ– /oː/ /kʰôːn/ 'to fell' โ–ะ /o/ /kʰôn/ 'thick (soup)'
–อ /ɔː/ /klɔːŋ/ 'drum' เ–าะ /ɔ/ /klɔ̀ŋ/ 'box'
Diphthongs of Thai. From Tingsabadh & Abramson (1993:25)

The basic vowels can be combined into diphthongs. Tingsabadh & Abramson (1993) analyze those ending in high vocoids as underlyingly /Vj/ and /Vw/. For purposes of determining tone, those marked with an asterisk are also classified as long:

Long Short
Thai IPA Thai IPA
–าย /aːj/ ไ–*, ใ–*, ไ–ย /aj/
–าว /aːw/ เ–า* /aw/
เ–ีย /iːa/ เ–ียะ /ia/
– – –ิว /iw/
–ัว /uːa/ –ัวะ /ua/
–ูย /uːj/ –ุย /uj/
เ–ว /eːw/ เ–็ว /ew/
แ–ว /ɛːw/ – –
เ–ือ /ɯːa/ – –
เ–ย /ɤːj/ – –
–อย /ɔːj/ – –
โ–ย /oːj/ – –

Additionally, there are three triphthongs, all of which are long:

Thai IPA
เ–ียว /iow/
–วย /uɛj/
เ–ือย /ɯɛj/

For a guide to written vowels, 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 borrowed from Sanskrit and Pāli; Buddhist terminology is particularly indebted to these. Old Khmer has also contributed its share, especially in regard to royal court terminology. Since the beginning of the 20th century, however, the English language has had the greatest influence. Many Teochew Chinese words are also used, some replacing existing Thai words.

As noted above, Thai has several registers, each having certain usages, such as colloquial, formal, literary, and poetic. Thus, the word "eat" can be กิน (kin; common), แดก (daek; vulgar), ยัด (yat; vulgar), บริโภค (boriphok; formal), รับประทาน (rapprathan; formal), ฉัน (chan; religious), or เสวย (sawoei; royal).

Thailand also uses the distinctive Thai six hour clock in addition to the 24 hour clock.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Ethnologue report for Thai
  2. ↑ Royal Thai General System of Transcription: phasa thai; ISO 11940 transliteration: p̣hās̄ʹāthịy
  3. ↑ Ausbau and Abstand languages
  4. ↑ Royal Thai General System of Transcription, published by the Thai Royal Institute only in Thai.
  5. ↑ Frankfurter, Oscar. Elements of Siamese grammar with appendices. American Presbyterian mission press, 1900 [1] (Full text available on Google Books)
  6. ↑ Tingsabadh & Abramson (1993:25)

References

External links