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The Thai Language
Although Thailand has a population of around 60 million people, little more than half this number speaks Standard Thai. Indeed, the estimated number of Thai speakers is 25 million, the remaining group, although knows the Standard Thai, speaks a simplified form of the language. Outside Thailand, the major community of Thai speakers is found in the Usa.Dialects
It is curious that the Thai Language is a dialect on its own, as it is one of the three branches into which the historical proto-Tai family is divided. In particular, the proto-tai has generated three branches of languages and the Thai spoken in Thailand belongs to the Souhtwestern branch.There are three main dialects of Thai, the Northwestern, the Northeastern and the Southern, which are intellegebly as they share 70% of the lexicon. Indeed, we can say that Thai is a quite homogeneous language and that, even if there is a strong regional identity, almost everyone knows the standard language, even if between people of the same area they tend to speak their regional dialect. Educational programs in schools have always been in standard Thai and maybe this is one of the reasons why standard Thai is so wide-known.
History
The origins of Thai can be traced in the South Indian Script, which evoluted into Mon and Khmer, a language which became the base for the first Thai Alphabet, written in 1283. This primitive form of language gave a great impulse to Thai culture, as there are many literary works dating back to the 13th century. Maybe given to literary works, the alphabet has survived intact through the years, and nowadays many speakers of modern Thai still can read ancient texts. In the following years, Sanskrit had a major influence on Thai and only later, when commercial activities with sorrounding countries started, some Chinese words entered Thai vocabulary.Grammar
In comparison to Romance languages, Thai grammar may seem easy as pie, as there's no definite or indefinite articles, no verb conjugations, no noun declensions, no object pronouns...but watch out!!! Not always the absence of fixed rules can be of help when learning a language. Here you will find some examples, just to have an idea of what would be studying Thai. If Spanish or Italian can literally drive you crazy with all the tenses and modes of their verbs, nothing of this will happen with Thai: in This wonderful language there aren't paradigms to be learnt by heart, as shifts in time, if not by context, are simply indicated by a word as "already". For instance, the word "moer-warn-nee" means "yestarday", so if you want to say "We learned Thai languages yesterday", you add this magic word at the end of the sentence: "rao rian par-sar Thai moer-warn-nee".Different from other languages, the expressions which denote time, space and quantity always come at the end, so to ask "What is your name", you have to say the equivalent of "Your name what", which is "kun cheu a-rai?", where "a-rai" means "what".
And finally, to express possession you have to add the word "kong" in front of the noun: "mother's child" is expressed by "look kong mae", a phrase which sounds like "child belonging to mother".