THAI FACTS:

NATIVE: ภาษาไทย

NATIVE SPEAKERS: 20 million

OFFICIAL LANGUAGE IN: Thailand

WRITING SYSTEMS: อักษรไทย (Thai script)

REGULATED BY: ราชบัณฑิตยสภา (Royal Society of Thailand)

Language

A member of the Tai-Kadai language family, Thai is the official language of Thailand. Thai features an SVO (subject-verb-object) orientation and it is an analytic language. Its nouns lack gender and are neither singular nor plural.

There is no universally applied approach for transcribing Thai into the Latin alphabet. Romanizing Thai script per ISO 11940-2, which is nearly identical to the Royal Thai General System of Transcription, is problematic because the Romanized text does not signify tone and, furthermore, diminishes vowel quality and quantity. In everyday speech, Romanized Thai bears little resemblance to actual pronunciation.

Economic Significance

Thailand is an emerging market and the second largest economy in Southeast Asia. It is heavily export driven while tourism accounts for 7% of the economy.

Dialects

The Thai language features many dialects. We translate Standard Thai by default, but we will discuss the various dialects on request.