Kam Mueang ( Northern Thai : ᨣᩴᩤᨾᩮᩬᩥᨦ , กำเมือง ) or Northern Thai language ( Thai : ภาษาไทยถิ่นเหนือ ) is the language of the Northern Thai people of Lanna , Thailand . It is a Southwestern Tai language . Kam Mueang has approximately six million speakers, most of whom live in the native Northern Thailand , with a smaller community of Lanna speakers in northwestern Laos .
43-620: A sala ( Thai : ศาลา [sǎːlaː] ), also known as a Sala Thai , is an open pavilion , used as a meeting place and to give people shade. With etymological roots in the Sanskrit sala , the word in Thai connotes buildings for specific purposes, such as sala klang ('provincial hall'). Most are open on all four sides. They are found throughout Thailand in Buddhist temple areas, or wats , although they can also be at other places. A person who builds
86-411: A dialect continuum . Thai language is spoken by over 69 million people (2020). Moreover, most Thais in the northern (Lanna) and the northeastern (Isan) parts of the country today are bilingual speakers of Central Thai and their respective regional dialects because Central Thai is the language of television, education, news reporting, and all forms of media. A recent research found that the speakers of
129-551: A second language among the country's minority ethnic groups from the mid-late Ayutthaya period onward. Ethnic minorities today are predominantly bilingual, speaking Thai alongside their native language or dialect. Standard Thai is classified as one of the Chiang Saen languages—others being Northern Thai , Southern Thai and numerous smaller languages, which together with the Northwestern Tai and Lao-Phutai languages, form
172-590: A branch of the Kra–Dai language family , which encompasses a large number of indigenous languages spoken in an arc from Hainan and Guangxi south through Laos and Northern Vietnam to the Cambodian border. From a purely genealogical standpoint, most linguists consider Northern Thai to be more closely related to Central Thai than to Lao or Isan , but the language has been heavily influenced by both Lao and Central Thai throughout history. All Southwestern Tai languages form
215-481: A broad and generic sense, with meanings such as "stall" for cattle, "shed" for corn, room or house, etc. The owner or the head of the house is called the "sala-pati" in Atharvaveda. Term "sala" is a cognate of Hindi शाल, meaning hall, large room or shed. Thai language Thai , or Central Thai (historically Siamese ; Thai: ภาษาไทย ), is a Tai language of the Kra–Dai language family spoken by
258-865: A coherent dialect continuum of more or less mutually intelligible varieties, with few sharp dividing lines. Nevertheless, Northern Thai has today become closer to the Central Thai language, as Standard Thai is the principal language of education and government and spoken throughout Thailand. Hlai languages Kam-Sui languages Kra languages Be language Northern Tai languages Central Tai languages Khamti language Shan language others Tai Lue language Kam Mueang language Thai language Southern Thai language Tai Yo language Phuthai language Lao language ( Isan language ) The Northern Thai language has various names in Northern Thai, Thai, and other Tai languages . The ancestors of
301-631: A final consonant must follow. The vowels each exist in long-short pairs : these are distinct phonemes forming unrelated words in Northern Thai, but usually transliterated the same: เขา ( khao ) means "they/them", while ขาว ( khao ) means "white". The long-short pairs are as follows: The basic vowels can be combined into diphthongs . For purposes of determining tone, those marked with an asterisk are sometimes classified as long: Additionally, there are three triphthongs , For purposes of determining tone, those marked with an asterisk are sometimes classified as long: The following section largely concerns
344-533: A four-way distinction among stops and affricates . The maximal four-way occurred in labials ( /p pʰ b ʔb/ ) and denti-alveolars ( /t tʰ d ʔd/ ); the three-way distinction among velars ( /k kʰ ɡ/ ) and palatals ( /tɕ tɕʰ dʑ/ ), with the glottalized member of each set apparently missing. The major change between old and modern Thai was due to voicing distinction losses and the concomitant tone split . This may have happened between about 1300 and 1600 CE, possibly occurring at different times in different parts of
387-470: A sala at a temple or in a public place gains religious merit. A sala located in a temple is called a salawat (ศาลาวัด), it's a transliteration from the Khmer word "sala wat", means a house for gathering to study, meeting in a wat. Some temples have large salas where laity can hear sermons or receive religious instruction. These are called sala kan parian (ศาลาการเปรียญ), meaning 'pavilion where monks learn for
430-525: A syllable that formerly began with a voiceless consonant (including glottalized stops). An additional complication is that formerly voiceless unaspirated stops/affricates (original /p t k tɕ ʔb ʔd/ ) also caused original tone 1 to lower, but had no such effect on original tones 2 or 3. The above consonant mergers and tone splits account for the complex relationship between spelling and sound in modern Thai. Modern "low"-class consonants were voiced in Old Thai, and
473-443: Is a tonal and analytic language . Thai has a complex orthography and system of relational markers . Spoken Thai, depending on standard sociolinguistic factors such as age, gender, class, spatial proximity, and the urban/rural divide, is partly mutually intelligible with Lao , Isan , and some fellow Thai topolects . These languages are written with slightly different scripts, but are linguistically similar and effectively form
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#1732891773412516-504: Is called Kam Mueang . There is a resurgence of interest in writing it in the traditional way, but the modern pronunciation differs from that prescribed in spelling rules. Northern Thai is classified as one of the Chiang Saen languages—others being Thai , Southern Thai and numerous smaller languages, which together with the Northwestern Tai and Lao-Phutai languages, form the Southwestern branch of Tai languages . The Tai languages are
559-511: Is closely related to the old Tai Lue alphabet and the Lao religious alphabets. The use of the Tua Mueang , as the traditional alphabet is known, is now largely limited to Buddhist temples, where many old sermon manuscripts are still in active use. There is no active production of literature in the traditional alphabet, and when used in writing standard Thai script is invariably used. The modern spoken form
602-449: Is typically code-switched with standard Thai, especially in more developed and urbanized areas of Northern Thailand, whereas exclusive use of Northern Thai remains prevalent in more remote areas. Thanajirawat (2018) classifies Tai Yuan into five major dialect groups based on tonal split and merger patterns. ( See also Proto-Tai language#Tones ) Northern Thai consonant inventory is similar to that of Lao ( Isan ); both languages have
645-431: The / ɲ / sound and lack / tɕʰ / . There are two relatively common consonant clusters: There are also several other, less frequent clusters recorded, though apparently in the process of being lost: All plosive sounds (besides the glottal stop /ʔ/) are unreleased . Hence, final /p/ , /t/ , and /k/ sounds are pronounced as [p̚] , [t̚] , and [k̚] respectively. ฒ ,ด, ต, ถ, ท, ธ, ศ, ษ, ส The basic vowels of
688-528: The Central Thai , Mon , Lao Wiang , Phuan people in Central Thailand and the vast majority of Thai Chinese enclaves throughout the country. It is the sole official language of Thailand . Thai is the most spoken of over 60 languages of Thailand by both number of native and overall speakers. Over half of its vocabulary is derived from or borrowed from Pali , Sanskrit , Mon and Old Khmer . It
731-459: The Northern Thai language (also known as Phasa Mueang or Kham Mueang) have become so few, as most people in northern Thailand now invariably speak Standard Thai, so that they are now using mostly Central Thai words and only seasoning their speech with the "Kham Mueang" accent. Standard Thai is based on the register of the educated classes by Central Thai and ethnic minorities in the area along
774-549: The Northern Thai people were speakers of Southwestern Tai dialects that migrated from what is now southeastern China, specifically what is now Guangxi and northern Vietnam where the diversity of various Tai languages suggests an Urheimat . The Southwestern Tai languages began to diverge from the Northern and Central branches of the Tai languages, covered mainly by various Zhuang languages , sometime around 112 AD, but likely completed by
817-404: The Southwestern branch of Tai languages . The Tai languages are a branch of the Kra–Dai language family , which encompasses a large number of indigenous languages spoken in an arc from Hainan and Guangxi south through Laos and Northern Vietnam to the Cambodian border. Standard Thai is the principal language of education and government and spoken throughout Thailand. The standard is based on
860-526: The sixth century . Due to the influx of Han Chinese soldiers and settlers, the end of the Chinese occupation of Vietnam, the fall of Jiaozhi and turbulence associated with the decline and fall of the Tang dynasty led some of the Tai peoples speaking Southwestern Tai to flee into Southeast Asia, with the small-scale migration mainly taking place between the eighth and twelfth centuries. The Tais split and followed
903-452: The Khmer system first before the Thai borrowed. Old Thai had a three-way tone distinction on "live syllables" (those not ending in a stop), with no possible distinction on "dead syllables" (those ending in a stop, i.e. either /p/, /t/, /k/ or the glottal stop that automatically closes syllables otherwise ending in a short vowel). There was a two-way voiced vs. voiceless distinction among all fricative and sonorant consonants, and up to
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#1732891773412946-729: The Nan dialect of Northern Thai. ( Tai Tham script ) ( Thai script ) There are six phonemic tones in the Chiang Mai dialect of Northern Thai: low-rising, low-falling, high-level with glottal closure, mid-level, high-falling, and high-rising. or low-rising, mid-low, high-falling, mid-high, falling, and high rising-falling The table below presents six phonemic tones in the Chiang Mai and Nan dialects in smooth syllables, i.e. closed syllables ending in sonorant sounds such as [m], [n], [ŋ], [w], and [j] and open syllables. Sources have not agreed on
989-541: The Northern Thai language are similar to those of Standard Thai . They, from front to back and close to open, are given in the following table. The top entry in every cell is the symbol from the International Phonetic Alphabet , the second entry gives the spelling in the Thai alphabet , where a dash (–) indicates the position of the initial consonant after which the vowel is pronounced. A second dash indicates that
1032-486: The Parian examination'. The city halls or offices of the province governors are called sala wa kan (ศาลาว่าการ, literally meaning 'government pavilion') or sala klang changwat (ศาลากลางจังหวัด, literally meaning a 'provincial main pavilion'). In Thailand, they have many purposes similar to the roadside pavilions of Asoka . In rural areas, travelers can use them to rest and reflect. These salas are called sala asai . One at
1075-484: The Thai-speaking area. All voiced–voiceless pairs of consonants lost the voicing distinction: However, in the process of these mergers, the former distinction of voice was transferred into a new set of tonal distinctions. In essence, every tone in Old Thai split into two new tones, with a lower-pitched tone corresponding to a syllable that formerly began with a voiced consonant, and a higher-pitched tone corresponding to
1118-489: The city, ending 200 years of Burmese rule. Kawila was installed as the prince of Lampang and Phraya Chaban as the prince of Chiang Mai, both as vassals of Siam. In 1899, Siam annexed the Northern Thai principalities, effectively dissolving their status as sovereign tributary states. The Compulsory Education Act of 1921 banned schools and temples from using languages other than Central Thai (standard Thai), in an effort to bring remote regions under Siamese control. Northern Thai
1161-495: The dialect of the central Thai people, and it is written in the Thai script . Hlai languages Kam-Sui languages Kra languages Be language Northern Tai languages Central Tai languages Khamti language Tai Lue language Shan language others Northern Thai language Thai language Southern Thai language Tai Yo language Phuthai language Lao language (PDR Lao, Isan language ) Thai has undergone various historical sound changes. Some of
1204-515: The local patois as pronounced in Guangdong Ayutthaya , the old capital of Thailand from 1351 - 1767 A.D., was from the beginning a bilingual society, speaking Thai and Khmer . Bilingualism must have been strengthened and maintained for some time by the great number of Khmer-speaking captives the Thais took from Angkor Thom after their victories in 1369, 1388 and 1431. Gradually toward the end of
1247-529: The major river courses, with the ancestral Northern Thai originating in the Tai migrants that followed the Mekong River . Ancestors of the Northern Thai people established Ngoenyang , an early kingdom that existed between the 7th to 13th centuries, as well as smaller kingdoms like Phayao , in what is now modern-day northern Thailand. They settled in areas adjacent to the kingdom of Hariphunchai , coming into contact with Mon-speaking people whose writing system
1290-547: The most significant changes occurred during the evolution from Old Thai to modern Thai. The Thai writing system has an eight-century history and many of these changes, especially in consonants and tones, are evidenced in the modern orthography . According to a Chinese source, during the Ming dynasty , Yingya Shenglan (1405–1433), Ma Huan reported on the language of the Xiānluó (暹羅) or Ayutthaya Kingdom, saying that it somewhat resembled
1333-465: The name "Tai Yuan" to be pejorative . They refer to themselves as Khon Mueang ( ᨤᩫ᩠ᨶᨾᩮᩬᩥᨦ , คน เมือง , [kʰon˧.mɯaŋ˧] – literally "people of Mueang " meaning "city dwellers"), Lanna, or Northern Thai. The language is also sometimes referred to as Phayap (พายัพ, Thai pronunciation: [pʰāː.jáp] ), "Northwestern (speech)". The term Yuan is still sometimes used for Northern Thai's distinctive Tai Tham alphabet , which
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1376-443: The past 100 years ), the information about the six tones from Gedney (1999) should be considered with caution. The Gedney boxes for the tones are shown below the descriptions. The table below presents four phonemic tones in checked syllables, i.e. closed syllables ending in a glottal stop [ʔ] and obstruent sounds such as [p], [t], and [k]. The grammar of Northern Thai is similar to those of other Tai languages . The word order
1419-415: The period, a language shift took place. Khmer fell out of use. Both Thai and Khmer descendants whose great-grand parents or earlier ancestors were bilingual came to use only Thai. In the process of language shift, an abundance of Khmer elements were transferred into Thai and permeated all aspects of the language. Consequently, the Thai of the late Ayutthaya Period which later became Ratanakosin or Bangkok Thai,
1462-535: The phonetic realization of the six tones in the Chiang Mai dialect. The table presents information based on two sources, one from Gedney (1999) and the other one from the Lanna dictionary (2007) which is a Northern Thai-Thai dictionary. Although published in 1999, Gedney's information about the Chiang Mai dialect is based on data he collected from one speaker in Chiang Mai in 1964 (p. 725). As tones may change within one's lifetime (e.g., Bangkok Thai tones have changed over
1505-564: The ring surrounding the Metropolis . In addition to Central Thai, Thailand is home to other related Tai languages . Although most linguists classify these dialects as related but distinct languages, native speakers often identify them as regional variants or dialects of the "same" Thai language, or as "different kinds of Thai". As a dominant language in all aspects of society in Thailand, Thai initially saw gradual and later widespread adoption as
1548-523: The roadside is a sala rim thanon (ศาลาริมถนน) and may be used as a bus stop. If on a riverbank or canal at a landing-place for watercraft, they are called sala tha nam (ศาลาท่าน้ำ 'water pier pavilions'). The term "sala" earliest known mention is found in Atharvaveda , which is an Indian Hindu text written in sanskrit language , which has been dated to 1200 BC to 1000 BC. "Sala" in Atharvaveda and later in various Indian languages denotes "house" in
1591-484: The royal vocabulary according to their immediate environment. Thai and Pali, the latter from Theravada Buddhism, were added to the vocabulary. An investigation of the Ayutthaya Rajasap reveals that three languages, Thai, Khmer and Khmero-Indic were at work closely both in formulaic expressions and in normal discourse. In fact, Khmero-Indic may be classified in the same category as Khmer because Indic had been adapted to
1634-535: The terminology "low" reflects the lower tone variants that resulted. Modern "mid"-class consonants were voiceless unaspirated stops or affricates in Old Thai—precisely the class that triggered lowering in original tone 1 but not tones 2 or 3. Modern "high"-class consonants were the remaining voiceless consonants in Old Thai (voiceless fricatives, voiceless sonorants, voiceless aspirated stops). The three most common tone "marks" (the lack of any tone mark, as well as
1677-445: The three tones of Old Thai were split have since merged into five in standard Thai, with the lower variant of former tone 2 merging with the higher variant of former tone 3, becoming the modern "falling" tone. หม ม หน น, ณ หญ ญ หง ง ป ผ พ, ภ บ ฏ, ต ฐ, ถ ท, ธ ฎ, ด จ ฉ ช Northern Thai language Speakers of this language generally consider
1720-423: The two marks termed mai ek and mai tho ) represent the three tones of Old Thai, and the complex relationship between tone mark and actual tone is due to the various tonal changes since then. Since the tone split, the tones have changed in actual representation to the point that the former relationship between lower and higher tonal variants has been completely obscured. Furthermore, the six tones that resulted after
1763-449: Was a thorough mixture of Thai and Khmer. There were more Khmer words in use than Tai cognates. Khmer grammatical rules were used actively to coin new disyllabic and polysyllabic words and phrases. Khmer expressions, sayings, and proverbs were expressed in Thai through transference. Thais borrowed both the Royal vocabulary and rules to enlarge the vocabulary from Khmer. The Thais later developed
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1806-625: Was eventually adapted for the Northern Thai language as the Tai Tham script . In the 13th century, King Mangrai consolidated control of these territories, establishing the kingdom of Lan Na . In the 15th century, King Tilokkarat ushered in a golden age for Northern Thai literature, with a profusion of palm leaf manuscripts written in Tai Tham, using vernacular Northern Thai and interspersed with Pali and Buddhist Indic vocabulary. In 1775, Kawila of Lampang revolted with Siamese assistance, and captured
1849-469: Was relegated from the public sphere, with influential religious leaders like Khruba Srivichai jailed for using Northern Thai in sermons. In the 1940s, authorities promulgated Thai cultural mandates that reinforced the importance of learning and using Central Thai as the prestige language . These economic and educational pressures have increased the use of standard Thai to the detriment of other regional languages like Northern Thai. Today, Northern Thai
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