|
|
The Thai Language
Thailand has a population of about 60 million people, but only about half this number speaks Standard Thai (estimates say that there are 25 million of people who speak Thai). Although the remaining group knows Standard Thai, they speak a different, more simplified form of the language. In the USA there is the major community of Thai speakers outside Thailand.Dialects
The historical proto-Tai family is the family of languages from which Thai has originated. In particular, the proto-Tai has generated three branches of languages and Thai belongs to the Southwestern branch. For this reason, Thai is considered a dialect on its own.Looking at Thai as a language and not as a dialect of proto-Tai, we can say that there are three main variations of it. These are NorthWestern, Northeastern and Southern Thai, which are very similar on e with the other as 70% of their words are similar. These dialects are tended to be used between people of the same area, preserving in this way a strong regional identity, even if almost everyone knows the Standard language. One of the reasons for which Standard Thai is so wide-known it has always been the language of education.
History
Thai's origins go back to the South Indian Script, or better, to Mon and Khmer, a language which evoluted from the South Indian Script and on which the first Thai Alphabet (dated 1283) was based. Thai culture received a great impulse from this primitive form of language and the proof of this lies in the numerous literary works which were written in the 13th century. This literary tradition allowed the preservation of Thai alphabet through the years, so that ancient text still are intelligible for speakers of modern Thai.Later, Thai was mainly influenced by Sanskrit and in the following years, given to commercial exchanges with sorroundin countries, Thai vocabulary absorbed some Chinese words.
Grammar
Thai grammar might seem a lot easier in comparison with that of romances languages. Indeed, in Thai verbs don't conjugate, nouns don't inflect, there are no object pronouns or definite and indefinite articles...but beware!! Sometimes the absence of fixed rules might complicated things when learning a langauge. The following examples will offer you an overview on Thai's grammar, so that you can have an idea of what would mean studying this language. Undoubltely, when studying a language at least once in your life you have had to face with difficult verbs' paradigm, shifts in time and different modes...with Thai forget this all, as you won't have to learn dozens of tenses: indeed, shift in time are either indicated by context or by a word as, for instance, "yesterday". In Thai, "yesterday" is translated with "moer-warn-nee", so to say "We learned Thai languages yesterday", you simply have to add the magic word at the end of the sentence, which becomes "rao rian par-sar Thai moer-warn-nee".A peculiarity of Thai with respect to other languages lies in the expressions of time, quantity and space, which always come at the end of the sentence. So, the equivalent of "What is your name", is "kun cheu a-rai?", which corresponds to "Your name what".
Finally, possession is expressed by the word "kong", which you have to add in front of the noun: to express the concept of "mother's child", you have to say "look kong mae", something which is similar to "child belonging to mother".
Slang
Like all languages, Thai has a colorful set of slang expressions which will be useful to know before flying to the East.In order to be nice with a man, use "Khun Pan", which is more or less the equivalent of "Don Juan"..he would feel immensely pleased. When you go out to disocver Thai nightlife, it is possible that you drink too much and the next day you will experiment the "mao sut" state, that is one of extreme intoxication (the literal translation is "drunk animal")...Watch out!!! This expression is quite informal, so be careful when using it. In particular, try to avoid it when you meet the parents of your Thai girlfriend, as they might "nawlut", which is lose their temper.