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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.
The Tai languages include the most widely spoken of the Tai–Kadai languages, including Standard Thai or Siamese, the national language of Thailand; Lao or Laotian, the national language of Laos; Myanmar's Shan language; and Zhuang, a major language in the Southwestern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, spoken by the Zhuang people (壯 ...
Central Thai is a Kra-Dai language closely related to Lao, Shan, and numerous indigenous languages of southern China and northern Vietnam. It is the solely language of education (except international schools used English and Chinese school in Maesai used Mandarin) and government and is spoken throughout the country. In practice, almost all Thai ...
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.
Chiang Mai is the only city outside Bangkok to cover multiple districts in its urban area. Together, Bangkok and Chiang Mai are the only cities in Thailand with a population of over one million. Thailand has an urbanization rate of 52% (2021), translating to 36,217,020 people of the total population.
Hinduism has left substantial and present marks on Thai culture. Some Thais worship Hindu gods like Ganesha, Shiva, Vishnu, or Brahma (e.g., at Bangkok's well-known Erawan Shrine). They do not see a contradiction between this practice and their primary Buddhist faith. [74] The Thai national epic Ramakien is an adaption of the Hindu Ramayana.
Thailand [i] was known by outsiders prior to 1939 as Siam. [ii] According to George Cœdès, the word Thai means 'free man' in the Thai language, "differentiating the Thai from the natives encompassed in Thai society as serfs".
This stems from a major change (a tone split) that occurred historically in the phonology of the Thai language. At the time the Thai script was created, the language had three tones and a full set of contrasts between voiced and unvoiced consonants at the beginning of a syllable (e.g. z vs. s). At a later time, the voicing distinction ...