The Thai Language：Useful Words and Phrases

As the official language of Thailand, Thai is spoken by more than 20 million people in Thailand. It is a member of the Tai language family, with plenty of words borrowed from Old Khmer, Pali, and Sanskrit. It is a tonal language, and spoken Thai is mutually intelligible with Laotian.

The script of Thai derives from the Khmer language and is closely related to Laotian. It has a complex orthography, with silent letters used to keep the traditional spelling and many letters with the same sound. There are several different ways to transcribe Thai using the Latin alphabet, and their main weakness is the lack of tonal indication. The first Thai inscriptions date back to 1292 CE.

Thai Language Facts

• About 40 million people speak Thai all over the world. Native speakers in Thailand are about 20 million.
• There are five different tones in the Thai language, and there are about 32 vowels and 44 consonants in Thai phonology.
• Thai is also known as Siamese, which emerged in the area between China and Vietnam in the 13th century.
• The first occurrence of written Thai language is assumed to be a stone inscription date back to 1292 AD.

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The Thai Alphabet and Tones

The Thai alphabet has 44 consonants and 15 vowels. The vowels can be written with up or down accents and with consonants before or after to modify the vowel. The 15 vowels can also be combined in different ways to produce a further 17 compound vowels.

There are five tones in the Thai language: mid, low, falling, rising, and high. As with any tonal language, they are the core of the language, and they are essential for comprehension and correctness.

Each syllable consists of a vowel (single or compound) and one consonant or more.

Useful Phrases in Thai for Tourists

Numbers in Thai

Thai Phrases Used in Restaurants

General Greetings in Thai

Read more on Greetings in Thailand.

Asking Directions in Thai

Thai Phrases Used in an Emergency

Thai Phrases Used in Taxis

Asking the Price in Thai

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Dialects of the Thai Language

There are four major dialects of the Thai language in Thailand: southern, northern ("Yuan"), northeastern (close to Lao language), and central.

The central regions’ Thai dialect is called Central Thai or Bangkok Thai. Central Thai is the most widely used dialect around the whole country. All schools in Thailand teach in central Thai. Most video media and paper books are in Central Thai.

Besides the major four dialects, there are some ethnic group dialects in Thailand, such as Phuan and Lue. They are spoken by just small populations in Thailand.

Writing Thai

The Thai script is believed to be derived from the Khmer script (Cambodia’s official language script). Thai is written from left to right. Different from English, written Thai has no spaces to separate words. You can often see a block of text on a page, with little spacing/punctuation.

It is believed that more than half of Thai vocabulary, grammar, intonation, and vowels are common with the Lao language. Thai script is so close to the Lao script that most literate Lao can understand written Thai.

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