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Webster and Arthur Silva White. Volume II, We've been online since and have created 's of pages. But there is historical evidence which points to the fact that the Thai people, and with them their language, originate from southern China, from where they were driven south beginning in the ninth century C. In the area that stretches from contemporary Laos, North and Northeast Thailand, and the Shan State in Burma, Thai centers developed, which were reigned by war- lords.
Those sovereigns ruled over areas peopled with Thai, as well as Khmer, Mon and other ethnic groups. The first founding of a genuine Thai nation state took place in the eleventh cen- tury, culminating in the first great Thai kingdom, Sukhothai, with King Ramkhamhaeng the Great as its most influential ruler. The oldest still existing inscription in the Thai language is from that period. The Kingdom of Ayutthaya took over the function of Sukhothai as seat of a ruler who exacted tribute in exchange for protection in the late middle Ages.
After feuding with the Burmese for hundreds of years, in Ayutthaya lost a decisive battle and was burnt to the ground. From Thai as it was written before , only stone inscriptions remain.
A general called Taksin pushed them back. Taksin built his capital in Thonburi, and was king for a while, but the first ruler of the Chakri Dynasty, the still ruling lineage of Kings, soon followed. The site of the capital city was moved to Bangkok on the other side of the Chao Phraya River.
In , Bangkok became the new capital of a new Thai state called Rattanakosin, after the ruling dynasty. Thai used this name with foreigners from the s onwards to identify themselves and their country. Sources of written Thai Siamese are numerous since the founding of Bangkok. Although a modern, reasonably educated Thai would have great difficulties reading inscriptions from the time of King Ramkhamhaeng, he would be able to read the language after the founding of Thonburi, just as easily as we would read an original edition of a novel by Swift or Defoe.
Just as in English, nothing substantial has changed in the Thai language during the last two hundred and some years. Thai is a tonal language and can be typified as an isolating language, just like most other tonal languages, such as Mandarin and Burmese.
The language shows some fusional traits through loan morphemes and loan constructions from, for instance, Pali and Khmer. Modern Thai is written in a syllabic letter script, just like Sanskrit Devanagari script , and Khmer.
The first forms of Thai writing were based on italic Khmer, or handwritten Khmer, which in its turn has been developed from Indian scripts. The Thai script is ultimately, via the just mentioned italic Khmer, and just like the Burmese and Mon scripts, most directly based on the Pali-script.
You will see that some characters are used often in Thai written texts, others less frequently, and some hardly ever. Only in handwritten texts from before circa these two letters still occur. When orally spelling a word, that name is mentioned after each consonant occurring in the relevant word. This might remind one of the corny English primary school writing primers in which A stands for Apple, et cetera, but is rather more com- parable with the sign code which is used in air traffic control towers and in the military, in or- der to avoid misunderstandings and accidents.
Some consonants are very similar in sound and usage, and can be easily confused when not pronounced together with their names. In the first vertical column you will find the Thai consonant, then next to it by the same conso- nant together with the noun after which it is named. In most cases, the name of the consonant starts with the relevant consonant, but there are also consonants which are only found back somewhere in the middle of the noun after which they are named.
In the following column, you will find the transcription of the sound of the consonant as it is pronounced at the beginning of a syllable standard pronunciation , with in parentheses the transcription of the name of the consonant.
In the next column you will find the pronunciation of the consonant at the end of a syllable end pronunciation. The apostrophe behind stops will, by the way, not be used in the rest of the course after unreleased stops at the end of syllables. The unreleased pronunciation of stops in those places is a rule on which there are no exceptions.
The class of a consonant is essential to the written representation of tones in the Thai language. In many cases, this is important for the notation of the tone of a syllable. It takes the vowel sound of the vowel that accompanies it.
In the vowel-list in 1. They can be found at the end of a syllable, but in such cases they usually form a diphthong or triphthong together with other vowels. In Thai, the aspirated as well as the non-aspirated varieties of these sounds exist, and they are distinctive. This means that, in Thai, they are not varieties of the same sound, but distinctively different phonemes.
This in its turn means that aspiration or non-aspiration in a consonant can define the meaning of a morpheme. A reason for this luxury is that Thai is a tonal language, and in a syllabic letter-script, there must be enough letters in an alphabet to note those tones down. To simplify notation, all consonants must be divided in three Registers or Classes; High, Middle and Low. By designing consonants of which the Non- Class characteristics are equal, but which, by their membership of those different classes, can control the tone of the syllable they lead, the Thai have developed a basic instrument with which it is possible to note down the tone of a Thai syllable very adequately.
The division in classes of the consonants is therefore one of the reasons for the many consonants with the same non-Class characteristics. Another reason for the multitude of consonants is that some letters arrived with early loan words from Pali and Sanskrit, that stood for sounds which do not longer fit in the Thai pronunciation system.
These letters simply lost their distinction from others, as they were gradually completely integrated in the Thai phonemic system. In this course, all anomalies in spelling will be pointed out to you. These are, as you can see, not real clusters, but fixed combinations of consonants with an irregular pronunciation.
Further- more, the tones in some words are pronounced differently from how they should be pro- nounced according to the rules for writing tones down.
The sound element that makes a diphthong a triphthong always follows the last element of the diphthong, so triphthongs are not considered at this juncture. It takes the sound qualities of the vowel- or diphthong sound it bears. In the transcription, the tone of the vowels and diphthongs in the list have been ignored, as the tone of a syllable is dependent on the class of the consonant it starts with, as well as its ending. This rule is valid in stressed syllables.
When King Ramkhamhaeng the Great devised the first real Thai al- phabet, he designed an alphabet that was based on the sounds of the language: not on the meaning of concepts, like Chinese script, which consist of ideograms. He also developed a script that could represent the tonemes of his language clearly and correctly.
For the design of his characters, he drew from examples in non-tonal languages, such as Khmer and Pali. Khmer had consonant registers for inherent vowels, which might have made the King hit upon the idea to developed consonant registers for tones. Thus, three consonant registers were created. The registers — or classes, as we call them most often — stayed as the language developed, and additional tonal signs were designed when the language changed over the centuries from a three-tone system into a five-tone communication device.
A three-register, or three-class consonant system still exists. The length of the vowel in the syllable 3. The Class or register of the first consonant at the beginning of the syllable 4. The presence of a Tone Mark above the first consonant of the syllable — or in a consonant- cluster, above the last consonant in that cluster — and, if so, which one. It is easier, espe- cially at the beginning of your study, to refer to the tones according to the second column of Thai terms which are given below: 1.
Next, you are going to look what vowel your word uses; is it short or long? The next, and in this case the last piece of information you need is the class of the initial consonant.
Finding the tone for words with a tone marker is easier. A tone marker overrules all other tone rules! Attention: As mentioned in 1. See examples there. If you pronounce the tone wrong, you pronounce the word wrong. The mean- ing of a word can change completely if you change the tone of that word. As other languages, Thai has its fair share of exceptions of pronunciation- and spelling-rules. There are some more discrepancies between spelling and pronunciation which cannot all be men- tioned here.
The correct pronunciation is given in the transcription script. In syllables, which start with more than one consonant a consonant cluster , the tone rules which are valid for the first consonant in that cluster determine the tone of the syllable. The second consonant in the cluster — loo ling, a LOW Class Consonant — changes class, as it follows directly upon a MIDDLE Class consonant, and looses, as it were, its right to determine the tone of the syllable it is part of.
Following the tone rules, it is pronounced in a LOW tone. The tone mark, which further determines the tone of a word, is always written above the con- sonant in the closest position to the vowel; the one after which the vowel is directly pro- nounced. Non-stressed syllables without vowel characters have already been briefly mentioned in 1.
In non-stressed syllables with vowel characters, the tone also automatically be- comes MID. Also in other, poly- syllabic loan words we encounter mid tones in non-stressed syllables, where we would ex- pect low or high tones if we adhere to the tone rules.
In the transcriptions of dialogues, vocabulary lists and other texts, the tones of words are given as they should be pronounced. Colons : , semicolons ; , question marks? In places where in English a comma or a full stop would divide clauses and sentences, in Thai a space is left open.
Fast word recognition is essential to the fluent reading of Thai. In elementary school, Thai children learn how to read in primers with texts in which separate words are still sepa- rated by a space. In this course we shall use the same principle. Until lesson 24, the words in a Thai sentence will be written separately from each other, like in English, by a space. By the time you reach that chapter, your vocabu- lary will be sufficiently large to recognize words you already know. The method will take a minimum of time to get accustomed to for speakers of English.
The system is based on the International Phonetic Alphabet IPA , but beware, it has been amended to be optimally serviceable for the Thai language without using IPA characters that might be too obscure for the general learner.
We hear the glottal stop at the beginning of words, which begin with a vowel. Speakers of Cockney do it all the time. In Thai, the glottal stop occurs at the end as well as at the beginning of a syllable. It will not be shown at the beginning of each syllable starting with a vowel, as both English and Thai speakers automatically pronounce a glottal stop before releasing an initial vowel.
In the transcription of dialogues, words with an optional glottal stop will be transcribed as most appropri- ate given the circumstances in the texts. In Thai, there are no cases, no articles, no noun genders, and no verb conjugations. Certainly, the Thai language offers enough pit- falls and challenges, such as the script, the tones, polite particles, question particles, classifiers, an initially confusing time indication system and a very large amount of idiomatic expressions.
But Thai grammar is relatively easy to master. There is no difference in form be- tween lower case letters, capital letters, italics and handwritten letters. There is just one alpha- bet, although many typefaces have been designed the Thai are enthusiastic graphic designers.
If you would like to learn the sound that goes with the letter immediately, as well, feel free, although nobody will expect you to master the whole alphabet after this mere introduc- tion. It must be emphasized once more that is important to get the form of the Thai letters into your subconscious. Write the letters as follows: 1. You start with the little circle, which you will find on every consonant, except two, and on many of the vowels.
After that, add the little vertical strokes. First the little half moon is drawn, then the little circle. To show you how what a Thai sentence looks like, here is an example sentence with vowels in front of, behind, under, after, above and around the consonants, tone marks, high-written vow- els and diphthongs; spaces between clauses and punctuation marks.
In this lesson, you actually start learning Thai. Just like a linguist on the first day of his fieldwork, you will learn to ask some simple but important questions — and see some possible answers. You will notice that the study texts, and every word in the word lists, are offered to you written in the Thai script as well as in the transcription system. This is done to offer you a written reference of every Thai word and sentence you will learn before you have actually mastered the Thai script after lesson It is recommended that you repeat the sections written in Thai from time to time, as in the beginning of your study your reading and writing skills will probably lag behind your speaking and listening skills for a while.
Fast word recognition is the basis of learning to read Thai fluently. As has been made clear in section 1. In this course, Thai texts will be written in the true Thai way starting from the 25th lesson in Intermediate Thai Part 2.
Until that lesson, Thai words are written separated from each other, like in Thai primary school primers. Exercises in word recognition are, from now on, an essential part of the course. In the first few lessons of the course, you will learn how to speak basic Thai, and you will start building up your fundamental knowledge of grammar and idioms. Because Thai is a tonal language, a question is not indicated by intonation as in English in which every word can be made into a question by using a rising intonation O.
Demonstrative and relative pronouns Like in every other language, including English, demonstrative pronouns in Thai are used to indicate things.
Demonstrative pronouns should not be confused with relative pronouns. What is this? What is that? What is that over there? This is a book. That is a pen. That is a pencil. What are these? What are those? What are those over there? Those over there are fields. Those over there are people. Those are erasers. Those over there are girls. Those are chairs. Who is this? Who is that? Who are they? Who are these people? Who are those people?
Is this a dog? Is this a girl? Yes, that is a dog. Yes, that is a girl. No, that is a cat. No, that is a boy. No, this is a notebook. No, this is a pen. This person is thin. This chair is old. That cat is cute. That house is red. Are those dogs? No, those are cats. In earlier times, relationships were simpler. A farmer worked the land of his Lord, and was thus assured of protection against enemies and intruders. Today, an employee works hard and is polite to his chief, expecting goodwill, a fair treatment and promotion.
One could see Thai society as a strictly hierarchical society, which on the other hand forms a community in which everyone fulfils his duty, and each is dependent on the other.
One could easily think that a foreigner would only awkwardly fit into this system. It is a fact, though, that the Thai have been touched by foreign influences since the beginning of their state-formation. And the tendency to form city-states had been taken from the Thai homeland in Southern China.
Also, instead of enslaving or destroying conquered peoples, the Thai assimilated and absorbed them. This benevolent attitude has actually done the Thai a world of good. Apart from the strong international policy of nineteenth- and early twentieth century kings, early diplomatic ties with the important political powers of the time have been a guarantee for the fact that Thailand, as one of only a few countries in Asia, has never fallen prey to Western colonialism and expansionism.
In Thailand, you will not be called to account as a representative of Dutch or French colonial- ism or a scion of the British Raj. Nor will you be seen as a superior or inferior being in ethical, military, intellectual, or any other sense. In Thailand, you shall always be recognizable as an occidental, but you shall, if you learn the language well and adhere to social rules, not stay the odd one out for long.
Typical for the Thai mentality in this aspect, is the fact that popular Thai actors, social reformers and sportsmen of mixed parentage are always proudly presented as being Thai, although one of their parents or grandparents is a Westerner. Tones co-define the meaning of a mor- pheme a morpheme is the minimal distinctive unit of form and meaning in grammar. Furthermore, fusional influence is visible in loan constructions both ancient and modern from languages such as Pali and Sanskrit.
Thai has thus become a tonal language with a relatively complex morphology. Adjuncts follow the subject. There is no inflection. Thai has five tones, and, on the whole, very few Thai words sound in the least bit like English words with the same meaning. Thai has a beauti- ful writing system, but it differs greatly from the Latin alphabet and cannot be learned in a day or two. Thai has four or five different language levels; from a special vocabulary that is only used when speaking to, or referring to the King, via levels of polite, social and familiar lan- guage to a coarse and impolite, intimate language which is only used among close friends, and which can hurt when it is used towards strangers.
But most of all, Thai is a melodious and intriguing language, spoken by many nice people in a beautiful country. Note, though, that adjuncts and adjectives follow the noun, like in French. The question particle also called question marker is generally the last word before the polite particle see lesson 3.
This is indeed accidental: In other Thai dialects, as for instance Isan or Lao, the question particle has no rising tone. At the end of a sentence they are placed just in front of the question particle and the polite particle.
Example 1 is ambiguous. There are no plural forms of the noun in Thai. To indicate plural and variety, one may repeat the noun, or one adds a noun to the singular, which indicates a plural form in 2.
During this course you will learn more about these group-nouns and other classifiers. Although the words are still used as described in 2. The demonstrative pronouns are often pronounced in a high tone, especially in informal language — just as the relative pronouns.
I man speaks ; 2. Translate the following sentences into English: 1. Translate into Thai. Use the transcription script.
That is a boy. Those people, are they girls? That cat over there. Learn all words from lesson 2 by heart. Repeat the alphabet in Lesson 1. Translate into English: 1. Use the transcription script: 1. This dog is beautiful. Yes, that is a man. Who are those girls over there? No, these are pencils. Are these tables? Make sentences. Make ten good Thai sentences with the words in the wordlist.
Note with every word you use why it should be in the position within the sentence where you have put it. You may take the sentences from 2. Can he speak Thai? Are those cats beautiful? That dog over there bites.
This is not a man. You will learn how you get acquainted with other people, and how other people introduce themselves to you. The first ice between you and the Thai will be broken. In Thai, there exist more words which can be pronounced in slightly different manners.
Especially in complex loan words and surnames, pronunciation is sometimes not fixed, and more than one pronunciation is often accepted. Peter Wolf. Thai names and nicknames Apart from his official given name, almost every Thai has a nickname, which is used far more often than his official name. The official first name - hardly ever more than one — is printed in front of his family name on his national identity card and in his passport, and is only used for official occasions.
The nickname is intended for daily use. Other nicknames are animal names. People can be called after any animal, from mighty beasts like the tiger and the elephant, to the bear and the cat and the rat, to animals like the grasshop- per, the chicken, and the mosquito larva. Furthermore, names of expensive and beautiful things are used as nicknames Diamond, Crystal, Gold , names of flowers Lotus, Blossom, Rose , and names of fruits Apple, Rambutan, Rose Apple.
In the last decades of the 20th century people also started to give their children real English names as given names. Famous actors and ac- tresses of mixed blood became well known by their foreign given name, like Willy MacIntosh and Marsha Wattanaphanit.
Another foreign name that was already popular in the eighties is Linda. Linda Kathancharoen was a very popular actress in those days. There are now many people named Marisa, James after James Wattana, the snooker-player , Tiger after Tiger Woods and even a fair number of people named Jackie Jackie Chan, though not Thai, is a popular actor here. Most Thai names, though, consist of three or four syllables, and because given names are often used as personal pronouns 1st, 2nd and 3rd person singular , the constant repetition of your own name and that of your discussion partner during a dialogue would make a conversation needlessly long.
Polysyl- labic nicknames, which also exist, are often shortened to one syllable in their turn. There is still a small group of aged Thai citizens that goes through life with only a single, monosyllabic name. This group has been born before — when the King ordered all his subjects to take a surname — in desolate areas in some of the least inhabited provinces of the Kingdom.
Most Chinese-Thai now carry Thai names. In the s most Chinese families exchanged their Chinese name for a Thai one. Their surnames are often poetic and flowery; their first names are often classically Thai — a bit old-fashioned. In Britain, Mr. People with an obviously higher status, such as high po- lice officers, professors, ministers, etc. The forms of address in parentheses would be less fre- quently used alternatives.
In all kinds of directo- ries, people are alphabetically arranged according to their first name. Some families, though, regard their surname in high esteem. Sometimes, a new surname is chosen as a sign of the fact that one has broken with his past or family. Given names are changed even more often. Many guides and other peo- ple working in the tourism industry are no longer called Narong, Saowalak, Preecha or Siri- porn, but David, Suzy, Ken and Charlie. There are countless manners to transcribe Thai names in Latin script.
In Thailand most people transcribe their language, and also their name, according to their own insights and tastes. In this course every name will be transcribed according to our transcription system. In the translations, names are Lati- nized in recognizable ways. Your choice of words and your body language during the greeting are important in order to es- tablish your status with regard to the other person.
The higher he raises both his hands, the more respectful is the greeting. You keep your body up straight, your elbows against the sides of your chest, and you bring your hands, with palms and fingers pressed together, up to your face, the ends of your thumbs touching your brow, so that your fingers reach a point a little higher than the top of your head.
The fingertips can reach the level of the eyebrows, the nose bridge, the nose point, the lips, the chin, and the neck. A smile will do as an answer. The polite parti- cles mentioned above are the three basic varieties of the particle.
In colloquial and very polite language there are more. Note that women may use two standard polite particles, which only differ from each other in tone; an affirmative one with a short falling tone, and an interroga- tive one with a high tone. The male polite particle always has a high tone.
Also note that the use of the polite particle is not dependent on the fact whether you speak to a man or to a woman; it is dependent on your own sex.
In the early stages of your study, you might find it easy to use these particles to everybody you meet — except children, beggars, and servants. In the end, your experience will teach you to whom to be polite and to whom politeness is an unnecessarily extended favor. Is usually placed before the name of the country, but is often omitted in speech.
In linguistics, a static verb is a verb of which no imperative can be formed. Jintana is a student. Surasak is 24 years old. Wolf works in Thailand. Kanya is 19 years old. Surasak just graduated. Good afternoon, my name is Peter Wolf. Everyone calls me Peter. I am an Australian. Learn all new words in this lesson by heart. Repeat the words from the previous lessons. Arrange the following sentences into the right order : 1. Wolf is a Dutchman. He works in Thailand. Surasak is an engineer. That is a crime!
He speaks a little Thai. Make the following sentences interrogative and negative: 1. Translation into English: 1. This is Jintana. Good day. My name is Peter. This is Surasak Chakraphet 7.
He is an engineer. Kanya is a servant. Translation into Thai in transcription script : 1. Interrogative: 1. The dialogues are written in the language that the average Thai uses every day: spoken language. The spoken language, which you will learn in this course, is the language as spoken in Bangkok, which is understood all over the country. Here and there you will be made acquainted with a word originating from another dialect, but which will be recognized and understood by every Thai.
The dialogue will first be given in Thai script. During the start of your study, this will be of lit- tle use to you, but you will learn how to read very rapidly, and rereading the first dialogues of the course in Thai script will be an excellent exercise for when you have become more ad- vanced. Please try to direct your attention not only to the transcribed texts, but also to the original Thai.
Although it is possible to learn a little Thai without learning to read and write, it is of the greatest importance to be able to write the script well and read it fluently if you really want to learn the language well.
Try to recognize letters and words by using the lists of conso- nants and vowels, and the reference diagram for the tone rules given in lesson 1.
Men and women in Thailand have a slightly different vocabulary and they use their language differently from each other; not only through their use of different personal pronouns and po- lite particles, but also in their general manner of speech. Timbre and intonation, the rhythm of speech and the use of vocabulary are distinctly different between the sexes.
This method has been chosen because women are often more meticulous in their speech, and generally pro- nounce the tone of a word more clearly. Later in the course, there will be enough male roles in the dialogues to help you perfect your male pronunciation. Remember though, that boys and girls speak rather differently in almost all matters and situations. Furthermore, in Thailand there exist - like everywhere else in the world - differences between the speech of the highly educated and the less highly educated.
There is political, military and scientific jargon, teenage language, argot and slang. There is true language, false language and the language of Buddhism. Elderly people sometimes still speak the Thai of the forties or fif- ties, which is, among other features, characterized by a series of archaic personal pronouns.
Generally, Thai people use more sayings and idiomatic expressions in their language than Westerners. You will thus be duly introduced to all kinds of idioms and proverbs. You shall have to learn this vocabulary well enough to be able to understand news items about the Royal Family on radio and television, and to take part in conversation when you have an audience with the King.
In Thailand, transsexuality is not frowned upon like in the West. Joy: to-wave hand hey Nikki. I to-stay here. Nikki: Aha! Why face red red. Nikki: Face red [question particle]. Joy: Yes. Day this weather warm much. Nikki: I free not busy. Both of them are students at the Chulalong- korn University. Joy studies English and French at the faculty of Humanities. As for Nikki, she is a student at the Faculty of Economics. After they have followed the lectures of their sub- jects, Joy and Nikki meet each other in a coffee bar.
Nikki enters the coffee bar, while Joy is drinking ice coffee Joy: waves her hand Hey, Nikki! I am here! Nikki: Ah! Have you been here long already? Joy: I just came in. Do you want to drink something, Nikki? Joy: Nikki, are you not feeling well or what? Why is your face so red! Nikki: Is my face red? Joy: Yes, today it is really hot.
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