Ethnic minorities today are predominantly bilingual, speaking Thai alongside their native language or dialect.įurther information: Tai–Kadai languages, Tai languages, and Tai peoples Īs a dominant language in all aspects of society in Thailand, Thai initially saw gradual and later widespread adoption as a second language among the country's minority ethnic groups since the establishment of the Rattanakosin Kingdom in late 18th century. These languages are written with slightly different scripts but are linguistically similar and effectively form a dialect continuum. Spoken Thai, depending on standard sociolinguistic factors such as age, gender, class, spatial proximity, and the urban/rural divide, is partly mutually intelligible with Lao, Isan, and some fellow Southwestern Tai languages. Thai has a complex orthography and system of relational markers. It is a tonal and analytic language, similar to Chinese and Vietnamese. Over half of its vocabulary is derived from or borrowed from Pali, Sanskrit, Mon and Old Khmer. Thai is the most spoken of over 60 languages of Thailand by both number of native and overall speakers. It is the sole official language of Thailand. Thai, or Central Thai (historically Siamese Thai: ภาษาไทย), is a Tai language of the Kra–Dai language family spoken by the Central Thai people and a vast majority of Thai Chinese. A native Thai speaker, recorded in Bangkok.
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