language fact file: Thai

Thai is the official language in: Thailand

Number of native speakers: approximately 61m.

Learn some: Greet people with ‘sawatdee’, which means hello. In Thai, people often add the word ‘ka’ if the speaker is female or ‘khrap’ if male to the end of their sentences, especially if they’re greeting or making small talk. This is just a way to signal politeness. So hello would be ‘sawatdee-ka’ or ‘sawatdee-khrap’.

Fast facts:

Thai is a tonal language, like Mandarin, Vietnamese and Cantonese. This means a phoneme or sound can have many different meanings, depending on the tone that’s used. This is the source of many jokes in Thai culture!

There is a language system within the Thai language specifically for referring to the Thai Royal Family. This is called ‘Rachasap’; this kind of system is known as an honorific. These are used in several languages and exist to show the relationship between speakers and to confer respect.

Thai speakers love to use repetition to show emphasis – it is not unusual to use an adverb or adjective over and over until the speaker feels their point has been made! Another way to show emphasis is to draw a word out as long as possible.