where does Thai come from?

[BananaBandit]

In my experience, Thai people say their language comes from Sanskrit, and they pretty much leave it at that. 

 

But the few (farang-authored) materials I've read say that Thai language descends largely from Chinese and, after adopting a Sanskrit-based alphabet/abugida some 700 yrs ago, began to incorporate many Sanskrit words. I realise something called "Old Khmer" figures in here somewhere. 

 

How would y'all describe Thai origins?

 

Also, prior to using a Sanskrit-based writing system, did the Thai language ever use Chinese characters?   ((I've heard conflicting (and vague) answers to this question.))

[EricTh]

You will get different answers from different people.

 

Go to this website, it is the most accurate I have found on origin of Thai people and language.

 

It has many other ethnic groups origins as well.

 

Happy reading!!

 

http://eastasiaorigin.blogspot.com/2017/06/ethnic-origin-of-thai.html

 

http://eastasiaorigin.blogspot.com/2017/08/origin-of-thai-language.html

 

[Damrongsak]

Info:  https://eastasiaorigin.blogspot.com/2017/08/origin-of-thai-language.html

 

 

EricTH beat me to it.

[KhaoNiaw]

If you can read Thai, this is a great book by Sujit Wongthes on the origins of the Thai people, which of course has to deal with the language as well.  

[Damrongsak]

2 minutes ago, KhaoNiaw said:

If you can read Thai, this is a great book by Sujit Wongthes on the origins of the Thai people, which of course has to deal with the language as well.  

Catchy title.

[KhaoNiaw]

2 minutes ago, Damrongsak said:

Catchy title.

A lot of his work has catchy titles. But you won't find a better way to learn about genuine Thai history, very readable and a fine writer and historian.  

[Yinn]

This king....

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram_Khamhaeng

[swissie]

I believe this can be simplyfied:

 

DNA and language clearly points to mainly southern chinese origins. The written language, abandoning chinese "picture-language" to a ABC modus can only be interpreted as the willingness of the southern China immigrants to detach themselves from the chinese "Homeland". For whatever reason.

 

Along the way, influences from India played a major role, as in the very early stages, Angkor-Vat was clearly devoted to origional old "Indian-Gods". (Language Sanskrit among the religious elite only. Same as Latin in Catholic-Churches performed today). Buddhism came later. (A second wave of indian immigrants?)

Also noticable, the farther south from China, the less predominant the "asian eyelid-fold" becomes, replaced by "almond-eyes".
Clearly, the indian tradesmen/sailors of old days, must have found out that Thailand is easier to reach than mainland China. They (obviously) must have left their mark. Mix and mingle. Result = Almond eyes.

[JHicks]

Personally, I find Wikipedia a lot more convincing than the blog linked to above. It covers a number of proposed language classifications but none of them put Sanskrit, Mandarin or Khmer in the same extended family as Thai (the Tai-Kadai family). Tai-Kadai languages were certainly widely spoken in what is now southern China, but the languages spoken in that area 1000 years ago were not related to the language we now call Chinese.

 

Just for perspective, Sanskrit does belong to the same extended language family as English (the Indo-European family), so in this area "related" doesn't necessarily mean "similar".

 

I don't think there's a definite answer to whether Thai was ever written in Chinese characters (Sawndip), but it can't have happened much or it would have left more of a trace. There's a story called the Song of the Yue Boatman that was written in what is now southern China in about 500 BC. The characters are Sawndip or something similar, but it's not clear what the language is. Some people have theorised that it's actually a precursor of Thai. That's not much more than speculation though, and anyway it wouldn't follow that Thai speakers ever wrote their language in Sawndip. There's some more detail about this on the talk page here.

 

The current writing system was introduced in around 1350 (so about 1850 years after the Song of the Yue Boatman). It's descended from the Grantha script which had been developed in India (there was never a Sanskrit script as such, although Sanskrit can be written in the Grantha script). If you look at the Grantha characters here you can just about recognise most of the modern Thai characters. The script is thought to have come to Thailand via Cambodia. Back in India it developed into the Devanagari script which is used to write modern Hindi.

 

I'm not sure it was a case of adopting a script that was suitable for writing Sanskrit and then borrowing a lot of Sanskrit words - I think it's more the other way round. They liked to use Sanskrit words because Sanskrit was a language of sophistication and prestige, and by adopting a script that had characters for all the sounds of Sanskrit, they made sure they could write it in an accurate and sophisticated way (not like hicks). A lot of those sounds didn't exist in Thai, which is the basic reason why there are so many apparently redundant characters in the script. They also wanted to write Pali, because the form of Buddhism that had been adopted was based on the so-called Pali canon, and this required essentially the same set of consonants.

[PatOngo]

I think it originated here!

 

 

[torturedsole]

Will I get banned for suggesting 'Tinglish'?  

[BananaBandit]

12 hours ago, KhaoNiaw said:

If you can read Thai, this is a great book by Sujit Wongthes on the origins of the Thai people, which of course has to deal with the language as well. 

Thanks for the tip.  

 

I suspect my reading skills ain't quite there yet. Vocab still a bit limited. Maybe in a few months. I've put him on my to-read list. 

[BananaBandit]

11 hours ago, swissie said:

Also noticable, the farther south from China, the less predominant the "asian eyelid-fold" becomes, replaced by "almond-eyes".
Clearly, the indian tradesmen/sailors of old days, must have found out that Thailand is easier to reach than mainland China. They (obviously) must have left their mark. Mix and mingle. Result = Almond eyes.

I've noticed that BKK has a lot of women who almost look like foxy Latinas....So would you think they are genetically Indian for the most part?

 

Also, I've noticed that areas like Ramkhamhaeng (the neighborhood), have a lot of women who are like 1.7 metres or close to 1.8 metres tall, not fat but large bones, and big feet. And they're not khatoeys either (I can usually distinguish at this point).  What in the world is their genetic background?

[warcy]

On 9/24/2020 at 10:28 PM, Yinn said:

This king....

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram_Khamhaeng

Do you think that Thai only exists from 1279 AD and before that didn't exist at all?

 

Do you think that Europeans didn't exist before the Europeans migrated to America in 1492 AD?

 

[EricTh]

On 9/25/2020 at 4:27 AM, JHicks said:

Personally, I find Wikipedia a lot more convincing than the blog linked to above.

 

I am not sure whether you realize that ANYBODY can edit Wikipedia even amateurs.

 

There have been many 'edit wars' between different authors on the same topic in Wikipedia in the past when different authors write contradictory statements, fighting with each other. You can see their 'edit history'.

 

While it's true that Wikipedia is partially correct but I have found inaccuracies there as well.

 

I've found that blog contains many information that Wikipedia is missing. So I would say it supplements Wikipedia rather than saying Wiki is 'more convincing' which I don't find to be true at all.

[EricTh]

On 9/24/2020 at 11:04 PM, swissie said:

I believe this can be simplyfied:

 

DNA and language clearly points to mainly southern chinese origins. 

 

The common misconception is that Thailand is a mono-ethnic country which is not true. 

 

There are many ethnic groups in Thailand which explains the different looks just like in America where different ethnic groups look differently (eg. white, black, native, asian)

 

Again, that blog narrates the main ethnic groups in Thailand

 

http://eastasiaorigin.blogspot.com/2017/07/main-ethnicities-in-thailand.html

 

There are other articles in that blog that tells the origin of the real natives of Thailand i.e. Mon and Khmer who are darker-skinned than the Tai. 

 

The Thai government doesn't accentuate ethnic groups unlike America and other countries like Malaysia and Singapore but different ethnic groups DO exist.

 

It explains why some groups are darker-skinned versus fair-skinned and why some groups are Muslims versus Buddhists.

[Damrongsak]

On 9/24/2020 at 11:10 AM, KhaoNiaw said:

A lot of his work has catchy titles. But you won't find a better way to learn about genuine Thai history, very readable and a fine writer and historian.  

I don't doubt it.  I just like the fact that it rhymed. And that I could read the title after being away from Thailand for 40 some years. 

[cooked]

The origins of the Thai "alphabet" or script have little to do with the origins of the language itself. It is a fact that the first to have a need for a written language bound by rules would be people anxious to preserve the actual original message of their preferred religion, insofar as they could. Commerce, art and other interests will have followed on later (generations later). We have reports of Burmese religious leaders becoming anxious when Brahmin priests coming from India had different versions of their traditions than the indigenous priests had. Certain texts were 'engraved on stone', literally, in order to prevent oral traditions wandering off track. 

[Orton Rd]

I don't care as I'll never be able to read it ????

[TSF]

2 hours ago, Orton Rd said:

I don't care as I'll never be able to read it ????

It's actually quite easy to teach yourself using the kids books. I taught myself years ago and have reasonably good reading skills, though many times I can read a word but don't know what the meaning is. Also when in Lao and Cambodia I've been able to read bits and pieces as there are many similarities.