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A native Thai speaker, recorded in Bangkok. Thai, [a] or Central Thai [b] (historically Siamese; [c] [d] Thai: ภาษาไทย), is a Tai language of the Kra–Dai language family spoken by the Central Thai, Mon, Lao Wiang, Phuan people in Central Thailand and the vast majority of Thai Chinese enclaves throughout the country.
Northern Thai is spoken in the northern provinces that were formerly part of the independent kingdom of Lan Na, while Isan (a Thai variant of Lao) and Phu Thai are native languages of the northeast. All languages are partially mutually intelligible with Central Thai, with the degree depending on standard sociolinguistic factors.
On the other hand, Gedney, Li and others have preferred to call the standard language of Thailand Siamese rather than Thai, perhaps to reduce potential Thai/Tai confusion, especially among English speakers not comfortable with making a word-initial unaspirated voiceless sound for Tai, which in any event might sound artificial or arcane to ...
Southern Thai (Pak Thai) is often posited to be the most divergent; it seems to retain regular reflexes of early tonal developments that were obscured in the other (Central–Eastern) languages. The reconstructed language is called Proto-Thai ; cf. Proto-Tai , which is the ancestor of all of the Tai languages .
All languages in the family are tonal, including Thai and Lao, the national languages of Thailand and Laos, respectively. [1] Around 93 million people speak Kra–Dai languages; 60% of those speak Thai. [2] Ethnologue lists 95 languages in the family, with 62 of these being in the Tai branch. [3]
Thai จันทร์ (spelled chanthr but pronounced chan /tɕān/ because the th and the r are silent) "moon" (Sanskrit चन्द्र chandra) Thai phonology dictates that all syllables must end in a vowel, an approximant, a nasal, or a voiceless plosive. Therefore, the letter written may not have the same pronunciation in the initial ...
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