What languages are spoken in Thailand?
I spent my formative years living near Bangkok, geographically located at the centre of Thailand. As a result, I have only been exposed to Central Thai, which is the official language in the country.
In the past few months, I was lucky enough to venture out to the Northeast and the West of the country. I noticed the language changing — slight accents appeared as soon as I left Bangkok, eventually morphing into different dialects altogether. While I knew different dialects exist, I had never paid them much attention.
That is, until my own Thai accent immediately cast me as an outsider in places beyond Bangkok.
The four major dialects of Thailand
Curious to dig into the regional language differences I encountered during my travels, I researched and found that there are four major regional dialects in Thailand: North, Northeast, Central and South.
Northern Thai, also known as “Lanna” and “Kam Mueng”, has influences from Lao. The major difference in the language structure is that Northern Thai has two falling tones, whereas Central Thai only has one: the distinction in the tones are thus lost when using the Thai script to write the Northern Thai Language. Certain sounds in Central Thai are switched in Lanna.
For example, the “ch” sound becomes a “j” sound. So, the well-known city of Chiang Mai is pronounced “Jiang Mai” in Lanna. The “r” sound also becomes an “h”, changing the Thai word for “love”, from “rak” to “hak”.
The Northeast Language or Isan, is a mix of the Lao language and Central Thai; it is heavily influenced by its proximity to Laos and the migration of people in the 8th-10th century. Because of this influence, when an Isan person drops Isan terms into a conversation in Central Thai, they might get teased that they ตกลาว (“tok Lao”) or literally have “fallen into the Lao Language”.
Southern Thai or Pak Tai is spoken the fastest, and locals shorten words to single syllables and sentences to a few words. For example, the word delicious in Central Thai is “aroy” but becomes simply “roy” in Southern Thai. Due to its close proximity to Malaysia, Southern Thai carries influences from the Malay language and has several Malay loanwords. For example, the word for flower in Malay is “bunga”, and in Southern Thai, it’s “bungaa”. In addition, Southern Thai is also spoken by small communities in Northern Malaysia, just as Malay is also spoken in some southern Thai communities.
Learning about the diverse languages and dialects in Thailand is fascinating. While the country prides itself on homogeneity in ethnicity, religion and language, the claim that Thailand is a homogenous country is in fact a myth. In fact, only one-third of the population speaks the national language as their mother tongue.
While perpetuating the myth of homogeneity is understandable in the only Southeast Asian country never officially colonised by the Europeans, its show of unity risks negating the amount of linguistic and cultural diversity that is present in the country. This dive into learning more about the cultures, influences and languages in Thailand indicates that there is more to the story than what the surface reveals.
Written by Toffy Charupatanapongse
