Sawat Dee Ka! Today Is Thai National Language Day

While the majority of foreign tourists visiting Thailand will not probably go further with their Thai than a couple of most popular phrases like 'sawatdee' (hello), kop kun (thank you) and aroi (tasty), learning Thai starting with its weird (for us!) alphabet and to its tone pronunciation is a real fun and a very rewarding experience as well. Here are a few interesting facts about the Thai language you probably have not known before.

There are 20 million of native speakers of Thai.

Thai is tonal – it means that not only the phonetic structure or spelling of the word matter but the tone it is pronounced with. A word 'ma' pronounced with different tones can mean 'to come', 'a horse' or 'a dog'. Thai has 5 tones.

Thai alphabet contains 44 consonants out of which 2 are obsolete and are not used any more. RIP.

And there are vowels, of course. But these come extra. Vowels can be written before, after, above and under the consonant; they can be omitted in script but nevertheless pronounced – always after the consonant no matter the place they occupy.

Statistics says that to master English and Thai to the same level, a foreign speaking student needs 6 times more time for Thai than for English.

And finally some good news. Thai is analytic – it means you need helper words and word order to relate words within a sentence – like in English, in fact – and do not need to learn all those endings for nouns or attributes – like in German or Russian. Hurray.

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