The Thai language is the national language and the official language of Thailand.
Apart from Thailand, it is spoken all over the world in countries including Northern Malaysia, Cambodia, Canada, Myanmar, Laos, the U.S., France, the Midway Islands, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, and England.
The Thai language is spoken by more than 60 million people worldwide: over 20 million native speakers in Thailand and over 40 million people who are learning it as a second language.
The Thai language and its inner logic are very different from Indo-European languages, such as English, French, German, or Russian. Thai does not have articles, verb conjugation or the concept of singular and plural. Similarly, there are concepts in Thai that do not exist in many other languages.
Thai is also a tonal language. Words are broken into syllables and each syllable is pronounced with one of five tones. Each vowel has a short and a long version. Modifying the vowel length or the tone changes the syllable completely, to the extent that if you mispronounce a single vowel or tone, a Thai person hears a different word to the one you meant to say.
There are also several degrees of politeness that can be hard to master.
On the other hand, Thai has a very simple grammar (some go as far as to say it has ‘no grammar at all’) and is also phonetic, with words written just as they sound.
The Thai language is a tonal language. Tones are essential for the language, as important as any vowel or any consonant. Tones distinguish the meaning of one word from another.
Each syllable is pronounced with one of five distinct tones - middle, low, falling, high, or rising. Each vowel has a short and a long version. Modifying the vowel length or the tone changes the syllable completely, to the extent that if you mispronounce a single vowel or tone, a Thai person hears a different word to the one you meant to say.