Thais love to shorten words and phrases but here they never say kao when wanting to say they and always say khon un nun.Is this common in other areas or is it just Isaan?

In Phrae they just say kao.

Maybe they're trying to be specific as 'Kao' is a very general term - he/she/them etc.

Maybe they're trying to be specific as 'Kao' is a very general term - he/she/them etc.

Very possible. Also, like has been said before, people in Isarn dont speak Central Thai in their everyday life, they speak a language/dialect (let's not go there again, there are two threads full of that discussion) which resembles Lao more than Central Thai. They often call it Lao themselves.

In khammeuang, Northern Thai, the equivalent of Central Thai "khao" is [FS]poen (the "oe" represents a single vowel sound, not a diphtong as one might think). It is used for all of these: "he, she, him, her, they, them"

Thais love to shorten words and phrases but here they never say kao when wanting to say they and always say khon un nun.Is this common in other areas or is it just Isaan?

khao/lao/phoen = he/she

khon an nan = that person

Thais love to shorten words and phrases but here they never say kao when wanting to say they and always say khon un nun.Is this common in other areas or is it just Isaan?

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Is it "khon un nun" or " khon khon nun"?

Normally we don't use the classifier "un" with person.

the meaning of "khon khon nun" is more specific than "khao"

There are many words to say for "he" such as; อีตานั่น(ee dtaa nân), ไอ้หมอนั่น(ai mŏr nân), เจ้านั่น(jâo nân), ไอ้เบื๊อกนั่น(ai béuak nân)(a lit bit rude), etc.