Standard Thai (phaasăa thai, “language of the Thai”), also known as Central Thai or Siamese, is the official language of Thailand. It belongs to the Tai-Kadai language family. These languages presumably come from southern China. Some linguists also see connections with the Austro-Asian, Austronesian, or Sino-Tibetan language families, but the experts do not agree. Most loan words in Thai come from Chaozhouhua (a form of Chinese), Khmer, Sanskrit, and Pali (the language of the ancient writings of Theravada Buddhism). Many English loan words have appeared in Thai in recent years.

Thai is a tonal language

Thai is a tonal language that is pronounced with five key accents (ascending, descending, high, low, and neutral). If a word has different meanings, the tone determines which meaning is intended. A nice example is this sentence (written in the Latin alphabet): ‘Mai mai mai mai’. This means: ‘The green forest is not burning, right’? Each ‘mai’ is pronounced with a different tone here, which gives them different meanings.

Thai is difficult, or is it…

All Thai characters are written sequentially without spaces and without capital letters, commas, dots, and other punctuation marks. But before you think it is a completely impossible language you will never master, you should also know that Thai has no articles and does not distinguish between male, female, or neutral. Singular and plural have the same form, and what is also nice is that verbs are never conjugated.

In-country translators

Having good knowledge of the local situation is always an advantage. That is why we like to work with Thai translators who live in their country of origin and are native speakers of Thai. This way, the translation can be optimally aligned with the target audience for which the text is intended. This means we are always looking for locally specialised translators. A result of this method is that we work with a large number of different translators.

Guarantees

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