Spoken by about 80% of the sixty million natives of Thailand, Thai is the country's native tongue and is believed to have originated in the area in and around Vietnam and China. An uninflected, primarily monosyllabic, tonal language of the Ka-Tai group, Thai is closely related to the languages spoken in Northern Vietnam, Yunnan, Myanmar and Laos. The early Thai settlers gradually borrowed Mon and Khmer words from other languages, thereby enlarging their Chinese-influenced monosyllabic and tonal language. The language further absorbed polysyllabic Sanskrit and Pali words as Brahmanism and Theraveda Buddhism were introduced. Today, standard Thai is spoken nationwide, albeit with regional dialects varying widely from region to region.
King Ramkamhaeng of the Sukothai period was the one who introduced Thai as a written language. It has undergone very few alterations since then. Writings from the Sukothai period can therefore be read today, because of its many similarities to modern Thai writings. They were based on Pali, Sanskrit and Indian concepts along with Mon and Khmer words which entered the language as well. Created in 1923, the Thai alphabet has forty-four consonants and fifteen basic vowel characters. These are placed horizontally from left to right, with no intervening space, to form syllables, words and sentences.
Vowels can be written before, after, above or below the consonants and can be combined in a host of different ways to produce compound vowels - dipthongs and tripthongs. An interesting feature of the Thai language is that, there are different pronouns used for the pronoun 'I' for male and female speakers. In formal communication, men use 'phom' and women use 'dee-chan'. Poetry is a popular Thai art form and until 1850, all written literary works were in verse form.
OutsourcingTranslation provides effective solutions for translation, interpretation and transcription to several companies in the world. We stand out in the market of translation service providers by positioning ourselves entirely on the basis of high-quality work, delivered within a shorter turnaround time and at competitive rates.
Contact us for all your Thai translation, transcription and interpretation needs.
Get the Outsourcing Translation Advantage!
