Origins of the Thai Language
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Thai (Siamese, Central Thai) belongs to the Tai language family, a subgroup of the Kadai or Kam-Tai family. A number of linguists now regard Kam Tai, along with Austronesian, as a branch of Austro-Tai, although this hypothesis remains controversial.
All members of the Tai family derive from a single proto-parent designated as Proto-Tai. Linguistic research has shown the area near the border of northern Vietnam and southeastern China as the probable place of origin for the Tai languages. Today the Tai family includes language spoken in Assam, northern Burma, all of Thailand including the peninsula, Laos, northern Vietnam and the Chinese provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou (Kweichow) and Guangxi (Kwangsi)...
Sukhothai, established in central Thailand in the early to mid-thirteenth century, represents the first major Kingdom of the Thai. Current theories state that the language spoken in Sukhothai resembled Proto-Tai in tonal structure. This early system consisted of three tones on syllables ending in a long vowel, a semi-vowel or a nasal (kham pen ’live syllable’ in traditional Thai grammatical terms)... This system prevailed at the time of the creation of the writing system by King Ramkhamhaeng (1275-1317) in the latter part of the thirteenth century....
In 1350 the center of power shifted from Sukhothai to Ayutthaya. Recent theories, which will not be discussed here for lack of space, claim that the Sukhothai and Ayutthaya dialects underwent different sound changes. These theories, furthermore, claim that Southern Thai evolved from the Sukhothai dialect and Central Thai or Thai from the Ayutthaya dialect...
The first of the changes, the sound change known as the tonal split, affected all of the languages in the Tai family. Because of the splits, sound systems with three contrasting tones, for example, became systems typically with six tones, two different tones from each of the three earlier tones. In some dialects, however, special characteristics of the dialect created more or fewer tones. Thai, for example, now has five tones. In brief, these shifts resulted when the phonetic nature of the initial consonant of each syllable conditioned an allophonic pitch difference. Subsequent changes in the initial consonant, then, caused these allophonic non-contrastive pitches to become contrastive (section two contains more details of the early tones and the tonal split in Thai). Linguists frequently set a date as early as AD1000 for these sound changes. For the Thai spoken in Ayutthaya, however, the splits seem to have occurred much later.....
The Ayutthaya period (1350-1767) also saw large numbers of Sanskrit and Pali words borrowed, although this phenomenon was not strictly limited to this period. These Indic loanwords comprise a large portion of the technical vocabularies for science, government, education, religion and literature. Gedney (1947:1) states that these loanwords are as common in spoken Thai as Latin and Greek forms are in spoken English. Sanskrit and, to a much lesser extent, Pali assume the same cultural importance for Thai as Latin does for English....
During the Ayutthaya period, Thai began to acquire other characteristics that have led the Thai to regard their language as highly complex and stratified, difficult to acquire even for the very educated. In the past, this impression grew because of the Indic loanwords. But far more central to the creation of this belief was the proliferation of titles, ranks, pronouns, royal vocabulary and royal kin terminology that reflected the growing stratification and complexity of the society. Although much of the complexity applied only to the court, Thai speakers nevertheless interpreted these changes as changes in their own language.
Many of these new terms had their origin in Sanskrit and Pali. Still others came from Khmer. Khmer institutions had always had an influence on the Thai court and this influence increased when the Thai imported Khmer intelligentsia into Thailand after the fall of Angkor. Royal titles provide a good example of this increasing complexity. Originally, during the Sukhothai period, the Khmer title "khun" referred to the king . By the Ayutthaya period, this title applied only to officials and the king had acquired more elaborate ones. Other changes affected the titles for the king’s offspring. Newly created titles included those for children by the royal queen, for the children by a non-royal queen and for the grandchildren. In the ninteenth-century titles for great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren were also added.
In Thailand, Thai serves as the official national language. It is the language taught and used in the schools, the same language used by the media and in government affairs. According to the 1980 census, 47 million people live in Thailand. An estimated 80 percent of this total or 37,600,000 people speak Thai. Outside Bangkok and the central plains, other dialects and languages of the Tai family coexist with the standard : Northern Thai (Kam Muang or Yuan) in the North, Southern Thai in the South and Lao or Northeastern Thai in the Northeast. Still other Tai languages such as Lue, Phuthai and Phuan are spoken as small 'speech islands' in various parts of the country. In addition, Thailand has many minority groups who speak languages that do not belong to the Tai family of languages.
Excerpt From
Comrie, Bernard (ed.) The World's Major Languages. New York: Oxford University Press. 1990
All members of the Tai family derive from a single proto-parent designated as Proto-Tai. Linguistic research has shown the area near the border of northern Vietnam and southeastern China as the probable place of origin for the Tai languages. Today the Tai family includes language spoken in Assam, northern Burma, all of Thailand including the peninsula, Laos, northern Vietnam and the Chinese provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou (Kweichow) and Guangxi (Kwangsi)...
Sukhothai, established in central Thailand in the early to mid-thirteenth century, represents the first major Kingdom of the Thai. Current theories state that the language spoken in Sukhothai resembled Proto-Tai in tonal structure. This early system consisted of three tones on syllables ending in a long vowel, a semi-vowel or a nasal (kham pen ’live syllable’ in traditional Thai grammatical terms)... This system prevailed at the time of the creation of the writing system by King Ramkhamhaeng (1275-1317) in the latter part of the thirteenth century....
In 1350 the center of power shifted from Sukhothai to Ayutthaya. Recent theories, which will not be discussed here for lack of space, claim that the Sukhothai and Ayutthaya dialects underwent different sound changes. These theories, furthermore, claim that Southern Thai evolved from the Sukhothai dialect and Central Thai or Thai from the Ayutthaya dialect...
The first of the changes, the sound change known as the tonal split, affected all of the languages in the Tai family. Because of the splits, sound systems with three contrasting tones, for example, became systems typically with six tones, two different tones from each of the three earlier tones. In some dialects, however, special characteristics of the dialect created more or fewer tones. Thai, for example, now has five tones. In brief, these shifts resulted when the phonetic nature of the initial consonant of each syllable conditioned an allophonic pitch difference. Subsequent changes in the initial consonant, then, caused these allophonic non-contrastive pitches to become contrastive (section two contains more details of the early tones and the tonal split in Thai). Linguists frequently set a date as early as AD1000 for these sound changes. For the Thai spoken in Ayutthaya, however, the splits seem to have occurred much later.....
The Ayutthaya period (1350-1767) also saw large numbers of Sanskrit and Pali words borrowed, although this phenomenon was not strictly limited to this period. These Indic loanwords comprise a large portion of the technical vocabularies for science, government, education, religion and literature. Gedney (1947:1) states that these loanwords are as common in spoken Thai as Latin and Greek forms are in spoken English. Sanskrit and, to a much lesser extent, Pali assume the same cultural importance for Thai as Latin does for English....
During the Ayutthaya period, Thai began to acquire other characteristics that have led the Thai to regard their language as highly complex and stratified, difficult to acquire even for the very educated. In the past, this impression grew because of the Indic loanwords. But far more central to the creation of this belief was the proliferation of titles, ranks, pronouns, royal vocabulary and royal kin terminology that reflected the growing stratification and complexity of the society. Although much of the complexity applied only to the court, Thai speakers nevertheless interpreted these changes as changes in their own language.
Many of these new terms had their origin in Sanskrit and Pali. Still others came from Khmer. Khmer institutions had always had an influence on the Thai court and this influence increased when the Thai imported Khmer intelligentsia into Thailand after the fall of Angkor. Royal titles provide a good example of this increasing complexity. Originally, during the Sukhothai period, the Khmer title "khun" referred to the king . By the Ayutthaya period, this title applied only to officials and the king had acquired more elaborate ones. Other changes affected the titles for the king’s offspring. Newly created titles included those for children by the royal queen, for the children by a non-royal queen and for the grandchildren. In the ninteenth-century titles for great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren were also added.
In Thailand, Thai serves as the official national language. It is the language taught and used in the schools, the same language used by the media and in government affairs. According to the 1980 census, 47 million people live in Thailand. An estimated 80 percent of this total or 37,600,000 people speak Thai. Outside Bangkok and the central plains, other dialects and languages of the Tai family coexist with the standard : Northern Thai (Kam Muang or Yuan) in the North, Southern Thai in the South and Lao or Northeastern Thai in the Northeast. Still other Tai languages such as Lue, Phuthai and Phuan are spoken as small 'speech islands' in various parts of the country. In addition, Thailand has many minority groups who speak languages that do not belong to the Tai family of languages.
Excerpt From
Comrie, Bernard (ed.) The World's Major Languages. New York: Oxford University Press. 1990
