Thai language

 ( Analytic Languages ) 

Thais borrowed both the Royal vocabulary and rules to enlarge the vocabulary from Khmer.Varasarin 1984: 91 The Thais later developed the royal vocabulary according to their immediate environment. Thai and Pali, the latter from Theravada Buddhism, were added to the vocabulary. An investigation of the Ayutthaya Rajasap reveals that three languages, Thai, Khmer and Khmero-Indic were at work closely both in formulaic expressions and in normal discourse. In fact, Khmero-Indic may be classified in the same category as Khmer because Indic had been adapted to the Khmer system first before the Thai borrowed.

There was a two-way voiced vs. voiceless distinction among all fricative and sonorant consonants, and up to a four-way distinction among stop consonant and . The maximal four-way occurred in labial consonant () and denti-alveolars (); the three-way distinction among velar consonant () and palatals (), with the glottalized member of each set apparently missing.

The major change between old and modern Thai was due to voicing distinction losses and the concomitant tone split. This may have happened between about 1300 and 1600 CE, possibly occurring at different times in different parts of the Thai-speaking area. All voiced–voiceless pairs of consonants lost the voicing distinction:

• Plain voiced stops () became voiceless aspirated stops ().The glottalized stops were unaffected, as they were treated in every respect like voiceless unaspirated stops due to the initial glottal stop. These stops are often described in the modern language as phonemically plain stops , but the glottalization is still commonly heard.
• Voiced fricatives became voiceless.
• Voiceless sonorants became voiced.

The above consonant mergers and tone splits account for the complex relationship between spelling and sound in modern Thai. Modern "low"-class consonants were voiced in Old Thai, and the terminology "low" reflects the lower tone variants that resulted. Modern "mid"-class consonants were voiceless unaspirated stops or affricates in Old Thai—precisely the class that triggered lowering in original tone 1 but not tones 2 or 3. Modern "high"-class consonants were the remaining voiceless consonants in Old Thai (voiceless fricatives, voiceless sonorants, voiceless aspirated stops). The three most common tone "marks" (the lack of any tone mark, as well as the two marks termed mai ek and mai tho) represent the three tones of Old Thai, and the complex relationship between tone mark and actual tone is due to the various tonal changes since then. Since the tone split, the tones have changed in actual representation to the point that the former relationship between lower and higher tonal variants has been completely obscured. Furthermore, the six tones that resulted after the three tones of Old Thai were split have since merged into five in standard Thai, with the lower variant of former tone 2 merging with the higher variant of former tone 3, becoming the modern "falling" tone.Modern Lao language, Isan language and northern Thai dialects are often described as having six tones, but these are not necessarily due to preservation of the original six tones resulting from the tone split. For example, in standard Lao, both the high and low variants of Old Thai tone 2 merged; however, the mid-class variant of tone 1 became pronounced differently from either the high-class or low-class variants, and all three eventually became phonemic due to further changes, e.g. > . For similar reasons, Lao has developed more than two tonal distinctions in "dead" syllables.

At some point in the history of Thai, an alveolo-palatal nasal phoneme also existed, inherited from Proto-Tai. A letter ญ yo ying also exists, which is used to represent an alveolo-palatal nasal in words borrowed from Sanskrit and Pali, and is currently pronounced at the beginning of a syllable but at the end of a syllable. Most native Thai words that are reconstructed as beginning with are also pronounced in modern Thai, but generally spelled with ย yo yak, which consistently represents . This suggests that > in native words occurred in the pre-literary period. It is unclear whether Sanskrit and Pali words beginning with were borrowed directly with a , or whether a was re-introduced, followed by a second change > . The northeastern Thai dialect Isan language and the Lao language still preserve the phoneme /ɲ/, which is represented in the Lao script by ຍ, such as in the word ຍຸງ (, mosquito). This letter is distinct from the phoneme and its Lao letter ຢ, such as in the word ຢາ (, medicine). The distinction in writing has been lost in the informal writing of the Isan language with the Thai script and both sounds are represented by ย (See: Comparison of Lao and Isan).

Proto-Tai also had a glottalized palatal sound, reconstructed as in Li Fang-Kuei (1977). Corresponding Thai words are generally spelled หย, which implies an Old Thai pronunciation of (or ), but a few such words are spelled อย, which implies a pronunciation of and suggests that the glottalization may have persisted through to the early literary period.

• In , only long vowels occur. (This assumes that all apparent cases of short open syllables are better described as ending in a glottal stop. This makes sense from the lack of tonal distinctions in such syllables, and the glottal stop is also reconstructible across the Tai languages.)
• In , the long high vowels are rare, and cases that do exist typically have diphthongs in other Tai languages.
• In closed syllables, both short and long mid and low do occur. However, generally, only words with short and long are reconstructible back to Proto-Tai.
• Both of the mid back unrounded vowels are rare, and words with such sounds generally cannot be reconstructed back to Proto-Tai.

This leads Li to posit the following:

1. Proto-Tai had a system of nine pure vowels with no length distinction, and possessing approximately the same qualities as in modern Thai: high , mid , low .
2. All Proto-Tai vowels were lengthened in open syllables, and low vowels were also lengthened in closed syllables.
3. Modern Thai largely preserved the original lengths and qualities, but lowered to , which became short in closed syllables and created a phonemic length distinction . Eventually, length in all other vowels became phonemic as well and a new (both short and long) was introduced, through a combination of borrowing and sound change. Li believes that the development of long from diphthongs, and the lowering of to to create a length distinction , had occurred by the time of Proto-Southwestern-Tai, but the other missing modern Thai vowels had not yet developed.

Not all researchers agree with Li. Pittayaporn (2009), for example, reconstructs a similar system for Proto-Southwestern-Tai, but believes that there was also a mid back unrounded vowel (which he describes as ), occurring only before final velar . He also seems to believe that the Proto-Southwestern-Tai vowel length distinctions can be reconstructed back to similar distinctions in Proto-Tai.

• voiced consonant
• tenuis consonant (unvoiced, unaspirated)
• aspirated

Where English makes a distinction between voiced and unvoiced aspirated , Thai distinguishes a third sound – the unvoiced, unaspirated that occurs in English only as an allophone of , for example after an as in the sound of the p in "spin". There is similarly a laminal denti-alveolar , , triplet in Thai. In the velar series there is a , pair and in the postalveolar series a , pair, without the corresponding voiced sounds and . (In loanwords from English, English and are borrowed as the tenuis stops and .)

In each cell below, the first line indicates International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), the second indicates the Thai characters in initial position. Note that several letters appearing in the same box have identical pronunciation. In such cases, one of the letters may serve as the "default", being more common and/or preferred for borrowings from English and such; for example, น in the case of "n" and ส for "s". The letter ห, the default "h" letter, is also used to help write certain tones (described below).

Of the consonant letters, excluding the disused ฃ and ฅ, six (ฉ ผ ฝ ห อ ฮ) cannot be used as a final and the other 36 are grouped as following.

• (กร), (กล), (กว)
• (ขร, คร), (ขล, คล), (ขว, คว)
• (ปร), (ปล)
• (พร), (ผล, พล)
• (ตร)

The number of clusters increases in loanwords such as (ทร) in (, from Sanskrit indrā) or (ฟร) in (, from English free); however, these usually only occur in initial position, with either , , or as the second consonant sound and not more than two sounds at a time. In addition, ก may be Romanized as "g" and ป as "b" in those specific clusters to distinguish them from the corresponded aspirated stops.

Each vowel quality occurs in vowel length: these are distinct forming distinct words in Thai.

The long-short pairs are as follows:

There are also opening and closing in Thai, which analyze as and . For purposes of determining tone, those marked with an asterisk are sometimes classified as long:

Additionally, there are three triphthongs. For purposes of determining tone, those marked with an asterisk are sometimes classified as long:

Notes:

1. Five-level tone value: Mid 33, Low 21, Falling 41, High 45, Rising 214. Traditionally, the high tone was recorded as either 44 or 45. This remains true for the older generation, but the high tone is changing to 334 among youngsters.Teeranon, Phanintra. (2007). "The change of Standard Thai high tone: An acoustic study and a perceptual experiment". SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics, 4(3), 1–16.Thepboriruk, Kanjana. (2010). "Bangkok Thai Tones Revisited". Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, 3(1), 86–105.
2. For the diachronic changes of tone value, see Pittayaporn (2007).Pittayaporn, Pittayawat. (2007). target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> "Directionality of Tone Change". Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS XVI).
3. The full complement of tones exists only in so-called "live syllables", those that end in a long vowel or a sonorant ().
4. For "dead syllables", those that end in a plosive () or in a short vowel, only three tonal distinctions are possible: low, high, and falling. Because syllables analyzed as ending in a short vowel may have a final glottal stop (especially in slower speech), all "dead syllables" are phonetically Checked tone, and have the reduced tonal inventory characteristic of checked syllables.

Comparatives take the form "A X กว่า B" (kwa, ), 'A is more X than B'. The superlative is expressed as "A X ที่สุด" (thi sut, ), 'A is most X'.

Adjectives in Thai can be used as Stative verb. Because of this, many words used to indicate tense in verbs (see Verbs:Tense below) may be used to describe adjectives.

* Remark ฉันหิวแล้ว mostly means 'I am hungry right now' because normally, แล้ว () marks the change of a state, but แล้ว has many other uses as well. For example, in the sentence, แล้วเธอจะไปไหน (): 'So where are you going?', แล้ว () is used as a discourse particle.

In order to convey tense, aspect and mood (TAM), the Thai verbal system employs auxiliaries and verb serialization. TAM markers are however not obligatory and often left out in colloquial use. In such cases, the precise meaning is determined through context. This results in sentences lacking both TAM markers and overt context being ambiguous and subject to various interpretations.

The sentence chan kin thi nan can thus be interpreted as 'I am eating there', 'I eat there habitually', 'I will eat there' or 'I ate there'. Aspect markers in Thai have been divided into four distinct groups based on their usage. These markers could appear either before or after the verb. The following list describes some of the most commonly used aspect markers. A number of these aspect markers are also full verbs on their own and carry a distinct meaning. For example yu (อยู่) as a full verb means 'to stay, to live or to remain at'. However, as an auxiliary it can be described as a temporary aspect or continuative marker.

• Imperfective
• อยู่ yu
• ไป pai
• ยัง yang
• กำลัง kamlang
• เคย khoey
• Perfective
• ได้ dai
• Perfect aspect
• แล้ว laeo
• มา ma
• Prospective/Future tense
• จะ cha

The imperfective aspect marker กำลัง (kamlang, , currently) is used before the verb to denote an ongoing action (similar to the -ing suffix in English). Kamlang is commonly interpreted as a progressive aspect marker. Similarly, อยู่ (yu, ) is a post-verbal aspect marker which corresponds to the continuative or temporary aspect.

Comparably ยัง (yang, , still) which is used in an incompleted action, and usually cognates in phrase with yu (อยู่) or any second marker in common use.

The marker ได้ (dai, ) is usually analyzed as a past tense marker when it occurs before the verb. As a full verb, dai means 'to get or receive'. However, when used after a verb, dai takes on a meaning of potentiality or successful outcome of the main verb.

แล้ว (laeo, ; 'already') is treated as a marker indicating the perfect aspect. That is to say, laeo marks the event as being completed at the time of reference. Laeo has two other meanings in addition to its use as a TAM marker. Laeo can either be a conjunction for sequential actions or an archaic word for 'to finish'.

Future tense can be indicated by จะ (cha, ; 'will') before the verb or by a time expression indicating the future. For example:

Dative case ให้ (hai, ; 'give') often used in a sentence as prepositional or double objects.

The passive voice is indicated by the insertion of ถูก (thuk, ) before the verb. For example:

:This describes an action that is out of the receiver's control and, thus, conveys suffering.

Negation is indicated by placing ไม่ (mai, ; not) before the verb.

• เขาไม่ตี, (khao mai ti) 'He is not hitting' or 'He doesn't hit'.

Thai exhibits serial verb constructions, where verbs are strung together. Some word combinations are common and may be considered set phrases.

While in English, such classifiers are usually absent ("four chairs") or optional ("two bottles of beer" or "two beers"), a classifier is almost always used in Thai (hence "chair four item" and "beer two bottle").

Possessive case in Thai is indicated by adding the word ของ (khong) in front of the noun or pronoun, but it may often be omitted. For example:

Unlike any numeral, หนึ่ง ('one') can mark on both positions of classifier, but in different functions. The post-head one potentially marks a referent as indefinite article.

In the previous example khon (คน) acts as the classifier in the nominal phrase. This follows the form of noun-cardinal-classifier mentioned above. Classifiers are also required to form quantified noun phrases in Thai with some quantifiers such as ทุก ('all'), บาง ('some'). The examples below are demonstrated using the classifier khon, which is used for people.

However, classifiers are not utilized for negative quantification. Negative quantification is expressed by the pattern ไม่มี (mai mi, ) + NOUN.

It also has different usage of distinguishing the demonstratives by changing tones. In which the pronoun itself used for นี่ (ni, ); while นี้ (ni, ) refers to be modifier placed after the noun, prepositions, classifiers, etc. For example:

Following the word ไหน (nai, ) which plays role as interrogative determiner or pronoun.

The syntax for demonstrative phrases, however, differ from that of cardinals and follow the pattern noun-classifier-demonstrative. For example, the noun phrase "this dog" would be expressed in Thai as หมาตัวนี้ (literally 'dog (classifier) this').