While the majority of foreign tourists visiting Thailand will not probably go further with their Thai than a couple of most popular phrases like 'sawatdee' (hello), kop kun (thank you) and aroi (tasty), learning Thai starting with its weird (for us!) alphabet and to its tone pronunciation is a real fun and a very rewarding experience as well. Here are a few interesting facts about the Thai language you probably have not known before.
There are 20 million of native speakers of Thai.
Thai is tonal – it means that not only the phonetic structure or spelling of the word matter but the tone it is pronounced with. A word 'ma' pronounced with different tones can mean 'to come', 'a horse' or 'a dog'. Thai has 5 tones.
Thai alphabet contains 44 consonants out of which 2 are obsolete and are not used any more. RIP.
And there are vowels, of course. But these come extra. Vowels can be written before, after, above and under the consonant; they can be omitted in script but nevertheless pronounced – always after the consonant no matter the place they occupy.
Statistics says that to master English and Thai to the same level, a foreign speaking student needs 6 times more time for Thai than for English.
And finally some good news. Thai is analytic – it means you need helper words and word order to relate words within a sentence – like in English, in fact – and do not need to learn all those endings for nouns or attributes – like in German or Russian. Hurray.
Sawat Dee Ka! Today Is Thai National Language Day
News in Asia
On July, 29th, Thailand marks the National Thai Language Day. On this day in 1962 the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej attended a discussion on the Thail language at Chulalongkorn University.