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THAI LANGUAGE

Thai language is a tonal language. It has five tones. These five tones are low tone, high tone, falling tone, rising tone, mid tone.

For example let's take the syllable "MAI":

Beware tones are really important. By saying the wrong tone the meaning of the sentence can be changed. On first times Thai people might laugh due to funny sentences with wrong tones but they appreciate efforts to learn Thai language.


Thai grammar is quite easy. There is no conjugation like French, English verbs. Verbs are not irregular. The difference between a sentence at present time, future time or past time is just a small word added.

Difficulties remain with many different words. Words are changing depending on the person which you are speaking to. For example the verb "to eat":


กขฃคฅฆง จฉชซฌญฎ
ฏฐฑฒณดต ถทธนบปผ
ฝพฟภมยร ลวศษสหฬ
อฮ

There is 44 consonants but only 42 are used.


อะอาอิอีอึ อือุอูเอะเอ
แอะแอโอะโอเอาะ ออเออะเออเอียะเอีย
เอือะเอืออัวะอัวอำ ไอใอเอาฤฤๅ
ฦฦๅ อ่อ้อ๊อ๋

There is also about 32 vowels that can be before, under, after, on the top on the consonant or mixed.


Numbers can be represented in Thai way ( from 0 to 9 ) or most of the times there is only the Arabic representation.

๐๑๒๓๔๕๖๗๘๙ are Thai numbers from 0 to 10 said by a Thai lady. Speaker

Most of the times in museum there is a price for foreigners and a price for Thai people. The price for Thai people is shown in Thai writing, the price for foreigners is shown in Arabic numbers. It is useless to bargain and try to get the Thai price. Thai civil servants won't argue. Different of price is nevertheless small. Instead of paying 10 Baht the price might be 20 or 25 Baht.


One funny thing is the translation from Thai into English.

For example, one of the street of Bangkok called "WITTHAYU ROAD" (ถนนวิทยุ) is translated in English in "Wireless Road". In Thai language "WITTHAYU" means radio. An another example is for the Rama streets in Bangkok. "PHRA RAM" (พระราม) is said "Rama" in English. Rama is the name of each king of the current Chakri dynasty. In many cases, a meaning translation is done instead of a phonetical translation.

One funny thing is the translation from English into Thai. Thai people have difficulties when there are two consecutive consonants. For example the word "sprite" is said "SAPITE". A short sound "a" is added. An another origin for Thai words is English words: computer, bill and so on... But words are often changed like sprite, bill, mall, fan. Some are changed in pronunciation and some are changed in meaning. The English word fan has become faen and now means girlfriend or boyfriend. The English word bill has become bin because in Thai language the consonant "l" at the end of a word is pronounced "n".

Many Thai words are easy to remind because there is an association of the words. For example:


An another difficulty in Thai writing is dead letters.

พิพิธภัณฑ์ or "PHIPHITHAPHAN" means museum.

The last letter has a sign above it. It means that it is a dead letter so no sound is pronounced when speaking but it appears in writing. Most of these words came from Khmer or pali language.

In some words, a consonant can be present but is not pronounced and also not marked silent (พราหมณ์ - "BRAHMA"). In "Brahma", the "h" (ห) is silent.


In Thai language there is no difference between a word in plural mode or in no singular mode. Special extra words are used to state plural mode : they are called classifier words. For each kind of word there is a classifier. Classifiers for animal, person, furniture, clothes and so on... They are really numerous. So if you don't understand one thing in a sentence it might be the classifier. They are used when using plural and demonstrative sentences.

In Thai writing there is no blank space between words like in westerner languages.


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