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67-715: Suchinda Kraprayoon ( Thai : สุจินดา คราประยูร , RTGS : Suchinda Khraprayun ; born 6 August 1933) is a Thai retired army general and politician. As the commander-in-chief of the Royal Thai Army (1990–1992) he led the 1991 Thai coup d'état in February and was a member of the junta called " National Peace Keeping Council ". A year after the coup, on 7 April 1992 he was appointed Prime Minister of Thailand . This sparked mass protests that were violently suppressed during Black May which finally led to his resignation on 24 May 1992. Suchinda, son of Juang and Sompong Kraprayoon,
134-469: A Japonic language family rather than dialects of Japanese, the Japanese language itself was considered a language isolate and therefore the only language in its family. Most of the world's languages are known to be related to others. Those that have no known relatives (or for which family relationships are only tentatively proposed) are called language isolates , essentially language families consisting of
201-411: 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
268-551: 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
335-533: 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
402-504: A linguistic area). In a similar vein, there are many similar unique innovations in Germanic , Baltic and Slavic that are far more likely to be areal features than traceable to a common proto-language. But legitimate uncertainty about whether shared innovations are areal features, coincidence, or inheritance from a common ancestor, leads to disagreement over the proper subdivisions of any large language family. The concept of language families
469-426: A number of sign languages have developed in isolation and appear to have no relatives at all. Nonetheless, such cases are relatively rare and most well-attested languages can be unambiguously classified as belonging to one language family or another, even if this family's relation to other families is not known. Language contact can lead to the development of new languages from the mixture of two or more languages for
536-532: A proto-language into daughter languages typically occurs through geographical separation, with different regional dialects of the proto-language undergoing different language changes and thus becoming distinct languages over time. One well-known example of a language family is the Romance languages , including Spanish , French , Italian , Portuguese , Romanian , Catalan , and many others, all of which are descended from Vulgar Latin . The Romance family itself
603-427: A single language and have no single ancestor. Isolates are languages that cannot be proven to be genealogically related to any other modern language. As a corollary, every language isolate also forms its own language family — a genetic family which happens to consist of just one language. One often cited example is Basque , which forms a language family on its own; but there are many other examples outside Europe. On
670-507: A single language. A speech variety may also be considered either a language or a dialect depending on social or political considerations. Thus, different sources, especially over time, can give wildly different numbers of languages within a certain family. Classifications of the Japonic family , for example, range from one language (a language isolate with dialects) to nearly twenty—until the classification of Ryukyuan as separate languages within
737-462: A single language. There are an estimated 129 language isolates known today. An example is Basque . In general, it is assumed that language isolates have relatives or had relatives at some point in their history but at a time depth too great for linguistic comparison to recover them. A language isolate is classified based on the fact that enough is known about the isolate to compare it genetically to other languages but no common ancestry or relationship
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#1733092899270804-525: 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
871-562: Is a Tai language of the Kra–Dai language family spoken by 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
938-483: Is a geographic area having several languages that feature common linguistic structures. The similarities between those languages are caused by language contact, not by chance or common origin, and are not recognized as criteria that define a language family. An example of a sprachbund would be the Indian subcontinent . Shared innovations, acquired by borrowing or other means, are not considered genetic and have no bearing with
1005-450: Is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term family is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics analogous to a family tree , or to phylogenetic trees of taxa used in evolutionary taxonomy . Linguists thus describe the daughter languages within a language family as being genetically related . The divergence of
1072-483: Is also a sister language to that fourth branch, then the two sister languages are more closely related to each other than to that common ancestral proto-language. The term macrofamily or superfamily is sometimes applied to proposed groupings of language families whose status as phylogenetic units is generally considered to be unsubstantiated by accepted historical linguistic methods. Some close-knit language families, and many branches within larger families, take
1139-448: Is an absolute isolate: it has not been shown to be related to any other modern language despite numerous attempts. A language may be said to be an isolate currently but not historically if related but now extinct relatives are attested. The Aquitanian language , spoken in Roman times, may have been an ancestor of Basque, but it could also have been a sister language to the ancestor of Basque. In
1206-543: Is based on the historical observation that languages develop dialects , which over time may diverge into distinct languages. However, linguistic ancestry is less clear-cut than familiar biological ancestry, in which species do not crossbreed. It is more like the evolution of microbes, with extensive lateral gene transfer . Quite distantly related languages may affect each other through language contact , which in extreme cases may lead to languages with no single ancestor, whether they be creoles or mixed languages . In addition,
1273-523: Is derived from or borrowed from Pali , Sanskrit , Mon and Old Khmer . It 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
1340-522: Is found with any other known language. A language isolated in its own branch within a family, such as Albanian and Armenian within Indo-European, is often also called an isolate, but the meaning of the word "isolate" in such cases is usually clarified with a modifier . For instance, Albanian and Armenian may be referred to as an "Indo-European isolate". By contrast, so far as is known, the Basque language
1407-454: Is no upper bound to the number of languages a family can contain. Some families, such as the Austronesian languages , contain over 1000. Language families can be identified from shared characteristics amongst languages. Sound changes are one of the strongest pieces of evidence that can be used to identify a genetic relationship because of their predictable and consistent nature, and through
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#17330928992701474-637: Is not a measure of) a genetic relationship between the languages concerned. Linguistic interference can occur between languages that are genetically closely related, between languages that are distantly related (like English and French, which are distantly related Indo-European languages ) and between languages that have no genetic relationship. Some exceptions to the simple genetic relationship model of languages include language isolates and mixed , pidgin and creole languages . Mixed languages, pidgins and creole languages constitute special genetic types of languages. They do not descend linearly or directly from
1541-451: Is not attested by written records and so is conjectured to have been spoken before the invention of writing. A common visual representation of a language family is given by a genetic language tree. The tree model is sometimes termed a dendrogram or phylogeny . The family tree shows the relationship of the languages within a family, much as a family tree of an individual shows their relationship with their relatives. There are criticisms to
1608-446: Is part of the larger Indo-European family, which includes many other languages native to Europe and South Asia , all believed to have descended from a common ancestor known as Proto-Indo-European . A language family is usually said to contain at least two languages, although language isolates — languages that are not related to any other language — are occasionally referred to as families that contain one language. Inversely, there
1675-422: Is possible to recover many features of a proto-language by applying the comparative method , a reconstructive procedure worked out by 19th century linguist August Schleicher . This can demonstrate the validity of many of the proposed families in the list of language families . For example, the reconstructible common ancestor of the Indo-European language family is called Proto-Indo-European . Proto-Indo-European
1742-458: The North Germanic language family, including Danish , Swedish , Norwegian and Icelandic , which have shared descent from Ancient Norse . Latin and ancient Norse are both attested in written records, as are many intermediate stages between those ancestral languages and their modern descendants. In other cases, genetic relationships between languages are not directly attested. For instance,
1809-459: 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
1876-510: 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
1943-669: The comparative method can be used to reconstruct proto-languages. However, languages can also change through language contact which can falsely suggest genetic relationships. For example, the Mongolic , Tungusic , and Turkic languages share a great deal of similarities that lead several scholars to believe they were related . These supposed relationships were later discovered to be derived through language contact and thus they are not truly related. Eventually though, high amounts of language contact and inconsistent changes will render it essentially impossible to derive any more relationships; even
2010-489: The comparative method of linguistic analysis. In order to test the hypothesis that two languages are related, the comparative method begins with the collection of pairs of words that are hypothesized to be cognates : i.e., words in related languages that are derived from the same word in the shared ancestral language. Pairs of words that have similar pronunciations and meanings in the two languages are often good candidates for hypothetical cognates. The researcher must rule out
2077-547: 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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2144-553: The NPKC seized power. Suchinda is married to Khunying Wannee Kraprayoon (née Noonpakdee), sister of Isarapong Noonpakdee , Suchinda's classmate from military academy. The couple has two sons: Jerdwut Kraprayoon, currently an advisor to the Royal Thai Army, and Janewit “Jack” Kraprayoon. Monarchy of Thailand Prime Ministers of Thailand Military dictators Institutions Key events Thai language Thai , or Central Thai (historically Siamese ; Thai: ภาษาไทย ),
2211-611: The Romance languages and the North Germanic languages are also related to each other, being subfamilies of the Indo-European language family , since both Latin and Old Norse are believed to be descended from an even more ancient language, Proto-Indo-European ; however, no direct evidence of Proto-Indo-European or its divergence into its descendant languages survives. In cases such as these, genetic relationships are established through use of
2278-484: 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
2345-610: The US Army Command and General Staff Course at the Artillery Regiment, Fort Sill , Oklahoma , and the US Army Command and General Staff Course at Fort Leavenworth , Kansas . Suchinda returned to Thailand in 1953 to serve as a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Thai Army . On 25 January 1958 he became Troop Leader in an artillery infantry regiment. He was gradually promoted and given more responsibilities, including: Suchinda
2412-491: The common ancestor of the Germanic subfamily, was itself a descendant of Proto-Indo-European , the common ancestor of the Indo-European family. Within a large family, subfamilies can be identified through "shared innovations": members of a subfamily will share features that represent retentions from their more recent common ancestor, but were not present in the overall proto-language of the larger family. Some taxonomists restrict
2479-541: 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
2546-558: The family tree model. Critics focus mainly on the claim that the internal structure of the trees is subject to variation based on the criteria of classification. Even among those who support the family tree model, there are debates over which languages should be included in a language family. For example, within the dubious Altaic language family , there are debates over whether the Japonic and Koreanic languages should be included or not. The wave model has been proposed as an alternative to
2613-415: The family. The largest five language families in terms of number of speakers (Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Afro-Asiatic, Niger-Congo and Austronesian) make up five-sixths (almost 83.3%) of the world’s population. Two languages have a genetic relationship , and belong to the same language family, if both are descended from a common ancestor through the process of language change , or one is descended from
2680-415: The family. Thus, the term family is analogous to the biological term clade . Language families can be divided into smaller phylogenetic units, sometimes referred to as "branches" or "subfamilies" of the family; for instance, the Germanic languages are a subfamily of the Indo-European family. Subfamilies share a more recent common ancestor than the common ancestor of the larger family; Proto-Germanic ,
2747-495: The following families that contain at least 1% of the 7,164 known languages in the world: Glottolog 5.0 (2024) lists the following as the largest families, of 7,788 languages (other than sign languages , pidgins , and unclassifiable languages ): Language counts can vary significantly depending on what is considered a dialect; for example Lyle Campbell counts only 27 Otomanguean languages, although he, Ethnologue and Glottolog also disagree as to which languages belong in
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2814-464: The form of dialect continua in which there are no clear-cut borders that make it possible to unequivocally identify, define, or count individual languages within the family. However, when the differences between the speech of different regions at the extremes of the continuum are so great that there is no mutual intelligibility between them, as occurs in Arabic , the continuum cannot meaningfully be seen as
2881-503: The global scale, the site Glottolog counts a total of 423 language families in the world, including 184 isolates. One controversial theory concerning the genetic relationships among languages is monogenesis , the idea that all known languages, with the exceptions of creoles , pidgins and sign languages , are descendant from a single ancestral language. If that is true, it would mean all languages (other than pidgins, creoles, and sign languages) are genetically related, but in many cases,
2948-535: The language family concept. It has been asserted, for example, that many of the more striking features shared by Italic languages ( Latin , Oscan , Umbrian , etc.) might well be " areal features ". However, very similar-looking alterations in the systems of long vowels in the West Germanic languages greatly postdate any possible notion of a proto-language innovation (and cannot readily be regarded as "areal", either, since English and continental West Germanic were not
3015-444: The latter case, Basque and Aquitanian would form a small family together. Ancestors are not considered to be distinct members of a family. A proto-language can be thought of as a mother language (not to be confused with a mother tongue ) being the root from which all languages in the family stem. The common ancestor of a language family is seldom known directly since most languages have a relatively short recorded history. However, it
3082-515: 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
3149-547: 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
3216-423: The oldest demonstrable language family, Afroasiatic , is far younger than language itself. Estimates of the number of language families in the world may vary widely. According to Ethnologue there are 7,151 living human languages distributed in 142 different language families. Lyle Campbell (2019) identifies a total of 406 independent language families, including isolates. Ethnologue 27 (2024) lists
3283-454: The other. The term and the process of language evolution are independent of, and not reliant on, the terminology, understanding, and theories related to genetics in the biological sense, so, to avoid confusion, some linguists prefer the term genealogical relationship . There is a remarkably similar pattern shown by the linguistic tree and the genetic tree of human ancestry that was verified statistically. Languages interpreted in terms of
3350-415: 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,
3417-470: The possibility that the two words are similar merely due to chance, or due to one having borrowed the words from the other (or from a language related to the other). Chance resemblance is ruled out by the existence of large collections of pairs of words between the two languages showing similar patterns of phonetic similarity. Once coincidental similarity and borrowing have been eliminated as possible explanations for similarities in sound and meaning of words,
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#17330928992703484-486: The premiership on 24 May 1992. The Deputy Prime Minister, Meechai Ruchuphan , became caretaker prime minister for an interim period until the new government was assigned. He was succeeded by Anand Panyarachun . After resigning, General Suchinda was appointed Chairman of Telecom Holdings, the holding company of Telecom Asia. Telecom Asia was awarded an unprecedented concession to build 2 million telephone lines in Bangkok after
3551-427: The prime minister. His appointment as prime minister on 7 April 1992 resulted in large protests, culminating in a general curfew and military deployment in Bangkok. In the event known as Black May , hundreds of people are believed to have died when soldiers opened fire on unarmed students and demonstrators during the protests. Further escalation was avoided by the intervention of King Bhumibol . Suchinda resigned from
3618-653: The purposes of interactions between two groups who speak different languages. Languages that arise in order for two groups to communicate with each other to engage in commercial trade or that appeared as a result of colonialism are called pidgin . Pidgins are an example of linguistic and cultural expansion caused by language contact. However, language contact can also lead to cultural divisions. In some cases, two different language speaking groups can feel territorial towards their language and do not want any changes to be made to it. This causes language boundaries and groups in contact are not willing to make any compromises to accommodate
3685-531: The putative phylogenetic tree of human languages are transmitted to a great extent vertically (by ancestry) as opposed to horizontally (by spatial diffusion). In some cases, the shared derivation of a group of related languages from a common ancestor is directly attested in the historical record. For example, this is the case for the Romance language family , wherein Spanish , Italian , Portuguese , Romanian , and French are all descended from Latin, as well as for
3752-413: The relationships may be too remote to be detectable. Alternative explanations for some basic observed commonalities between languages include developmental theories, related to the biological development of the capacity for language as the child grows from newborn. A language family is a monophyletic unit; all its members derive from a common ancestor, and all descendants of that ancestor are included in
3819-570: The remaining explanation is common origin: it is inferred that the similarities occurred due to descent from a common ancestor, and the words are actually cognates, implying the languages must be related. When languages are in contact with one another , either of them may influence the other through linguistic interference such as borrowing. For example, French has influenced English , Arabic has influenced Persian , Sanskrit has influenced Tamil , and Chinese has influenced Japanese in this way. However, such influence does not constitute (and
3886-564: 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
3953-484: 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
4020-426: The term family to a certain level, but there is little consensus on how to do so. Those who affix such labels also subdivide branches into groups , and groups into complexes . A top-level (i.e., the largest) family is often called a phylum or stock . The closer the branches are to each other, the more closely the languages will be related. This means if a branch of a proto-language is four branches down and there
4087-535: 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
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#17330928992704154-415: 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 Language family A language family
4221-502: The tree model. The wave model uses isoglosses to group language varieties; unlike in the tree model, these groups can overlap. While the tree model implies a lack of contact between languages after derivation from an ancestral form, the wave model emphasizes the relationship between languages that remain in contact, which is more realistic. Historical glottometry is an application of the wave model, meant to identify and evaluate genetic relations in linguistic linkages . A sprachbund
4288-423: 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
4355-508: Was a leader of the National Peace Keeping Council (NPKC), which conducted the 1991 Thai coup d'état that ousted the elected government of Prime Minister Chatichai Choonhavan on 23 February 1991. The NPKC installed former diplomat Anand Panyarachun as prime minister. After the general election on 22 March 1992 , five parties (Rassadorn, Justice Unity , Social Action , Thai Citizen, Chart Thai ) designated Suchinda as
4422-449: 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
4489-666: Was born on 6 August 1933, in Thonburi , Siam , and is of mixed Chinese and Mon descent. Suchinda first attended Wat Rajabopit School and later Amnuayslip School. He studied medicine at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok for 12 months before entering the Chulachomklao Royal Military Academy . He graduated from Class 5 of the Academy, of which many students would join the National Peace Keeping Council . He also attended
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