Which language family is Thai in?
Table of Contents
Which language family is Thai in?
Tai language family
Thai language, also called Siamese, the standard spoken and literary language of Thailand, belonging to the Tai language family of Southeast Asia.
What language is Thai close to?
Lao
Its closest relatives are Lao, Shan, and Southern Thai. Thai is spoken as a first language by 20.2 million people and by 40 million speakers as a second language in Thailand.
They’re both tonal languages, but they’re not in the same language family, despite what linguists tended to believe some 15 years ago. Thai belongs to the Kra-Dai language family and has 5 tones. Mandarin is related to the Sino-Tibetan language family, and the Chinese uses 4 tones.
Do they speak English in Thailand?
The main language of Thailand is Thai (or Tai). In Bangkok and the southern regions of the country, a dialect of Thai is spoken that is faster and more abbreviated than other Thai dialects. English is the secondary language of the country’s educated and elite, and English is spoken much more commonly in Bangkok than other regions of the country.
Are the Thai and Shan languages mutually intelligible?
Other significant members of Tai group include Thai, Shan, and Zhuang; of these, Thai is most closely related to Thai, and for the most part, the two languages are mutually intelligible. Tradition holds that the initial form of the Thai script was created in 1283 A.D. by King Ramkhamhaeng, who modeled it on the Old Khmer script.
Is Lao and Thai language similar/same?
Thai and Lao are members of the Tai-Kadai language family. In fact, the two are quite similar , such that Thai and Lao are seen as languages in a Tai language ‘dialect continuum’ spanning from Thailand to southwest China. On the other hand, Khmer is part of the Mon-Khmer language family, linguistically related with neighboring Vietnamese.
How similar are the Thai and Lao languages?
Lao and Thai languages are very similar to each other. In fact, the two languages are linguistically similar, though their writing script varies a bit. Thai is the native language of Thailand and is spoken in minority in Cambodia. The two languages, Lao and Thai depict many similarities mainly because both belong to the Tai-Kadai language family.