Thai Words Taken From Other Languages

[Johpa]

Lots of words are from Khmer, because Thai sacked Angkor Wat and took many Khmer scholars.

The original Siamese is from Yunnan and they probably speak laos with some kham muang before Khmer influence.

There were probably several migrations of Tai people into present day Thailand who originated to the north. One of those groups migrated into the Central Plains and became the Siamese whose language evolved into Central Thai. I am not a historical linguist although, if memory serves me right, Marvin Brown of AUA fame did some early work on the various Tai languages spoken in modern Thailand and their asscoiated migrations of Tai folks. The earlier migrations would have included the Shan and thus their nickname the Tai Yai, or greater Tai, as they did not remain dominant for long. And as a footnote, in general, the original language is usually preserved more towards the farthest from the point of origin, so Central Thai may be closer to what the original migrants spoke than Lao or Kham Muang.

One of the largest area of Khmer is upon the Royal language, ratchasaap, but some have recently sugggested that this is a relatively modern creation. The other common words of Khmer origin are, as an earlier poster noted, those with the infix /am/ as in tamruat.

I see that the current thinking towards the larger parent language group for Tai languages has been swinging back to a Tai-Kadai association, meaning that the Tai languages are more genetically related, rather distantly I should add, to Indonesian, with the ancient split occuring on Taiwan where one group became island and coastal loving seafarers and the other moving orginally westwards to the mainland and becoming rice farmers. But the debate seems to change direction every generation or so and as my college Thai professor use to say, if you go back far enough you can make just about any historical linguistic claim you want.

where were the thais in 10 century?

and who were these people in central thai before the thai immigration? these were part of khmer empire so therefore, those people were originally khmer before the thais came to set sukhothai, then ayuthaya.

and can the immigration kill all those original people? no, the thais intermarriage with them for a long time, and that's how the thai is today.

There is no Tai Yai in Central Thailand during Khmer Empire reign

And the Shan are in Eastern Burma while Burma is Mon

There were no "Thais" in the 10th century, but Chinese chronicles indicate Tai people in present day Yunnan and today there are still many Tai people in Yunnan and in the hills of Vietnam. The largest diversity of Tai languages is still found in that area which indicates to linguists that this is the home area of the Tai peoples.

Before the Tai immigrations, the Chao Phraya area was probably dominated by Mon (one of the earliest settlers in the region) and Khmer, mostly Mon, but the area seems to have been a disputed area politically between the Mon and Khmer states, and only later between Tai and Burmese states. And I daresay you would be rather hard pressed to find anyone else who would argue that Burma is Mon, although the historical Mon influence on Thai and Burmese culture can not be understated. One can argue that before their encounter and conquest of Mon Kingdom in the area of Lamphun (Haripunchaya) the Tais were akin to uneducated warrior louts, the vikings of Southeast Asia.

No doubt the original people of Centrak Thailand, few as they were, assimilated towards a Siamese Tai identity, either by marriage or by the typical path of people assimilating towards the dominant elite. But the myth of a neat linear Tai migration from north to south (Chiang Saen --> Chiang Mai --> Sukhotai --> Ayuttaya --> Bangkok) does not hold up to lingustic analysis as there were probably numerous Tai groups migrating through the region prior to the establishment of the these historical Tai capitols.

I only used the Shan as an example of a migration of Tai people that occured before the migrations of the Tais who became the Siamese. I did not intend to infer there were Shan in Central Thailand at any time. But when the later migrations of Tai people came down south, they encountered this large and powerful group of Tai speaking people up north, and it is guessed that it was quite early on when the Shans were nicknamed the great Tais (tai yai) when the likes of Mengrai lorded over minor principalities (muangs)

[wilko]

and what about "CHECK BIN" which seems to be a combination of the US word "check" and the British word "bill" both meaning the same thing....and by coincidence comes in a "bin".

Actually, "check" here means "inspect", as in the British English "check the bill".

Interesting, I had assumed it came from the GIs calling for the "check" as they do in the states.....where have you found this out?

[s.sophon]

johpa

so...before the thais came, there's no khmer empire, just only tai yai there in central thailand? that's what you're trying to say, in a summary?

[Johpa]

johpa

so...before the thais came, there's no khmer empire, just only tai yai there in central thailand? that's what you're trying to say, in a summary?

I have reread my posts and can find no evidence of an erroneous statement that there was no Khmer Empire nor an erroneous statement that there were Shan populations in Central Thailand so I would think that any summary on my part for your benefit would be a tad bit superfluous at this point.

[sabaijai]

Came upon this thread two years late, but have a couple of things to add.

I was asked by a Thai friend if there are any Thai loan words in English. Couldn't think of any . . .

One very prominent one: 'bong', from the Thai บ้อง, referring to a section of bamboo such as those used to make smoking bongs as well as northeastern Thailand's famous bamboo rockets (บ้องไฟ)

Also, the word 'burut' in Thai means 'big man' ...could this have led to the word 'brute' in English?

'Burut' (บุรุษ) comes from PaI-Sanskrit purusha (पुरुष) 'person'

In Thai it has the connotation of 'gentleman' rather than 'big man', and certainly not 'brute'.

There are some probably very old Chinese loans into Thai such as ม้า and I suspect กว้าง and แล้ว, the numerals สอง to สิบ are definitely from Chinese

There are obviously many Chinese loan words in Thai, but it also works the other way, particularly since Austro-Thai language family is considered by some historical linguists to be older than the Sino-Tibetan family.

When I studied Austro-Thai linguistics at university, I was taught that กว้าง was one such an example, of Thai borrowed by Chinese. Ditto for the similarities in the numbers.

[Richard W]

There are some probably very old Chinese loans into Thai such as ม้า and I suspect กว้าง and แล้ว, the numerals สอง to สิบ are definitely from Chinese

There are obviously many Chinese loan words in Thai, but it also works the other way, particularly since Austro-Thai language family is considered by some historical linguists to be older than the Sino-Tibetan family.

When I studied Austro-Thai linguistics at university, I was taught that กว้าง was one such an example, of Thai borrowed by Chinese. Ditto for the similarities in the numbers.

Curious, as the Kra numerals seems to match the Malayo-Polynesian ones quite well. (The Formosan matches don't always extend to the higher numbers - *lima 'five' has a fairly limited extent in the Formosan languages, and may well not actually go back to Proto-Austronesian.) The current view is that Tai-Kadai is a subgroup of Austronesian, but the precise relationship with Malayo-Polynesian is debated.

A newly-reported conservative dialect of Buyang (see even Wikipedia!) seems to be quite helpful - it retains a sesquisyllabic stage intermediate between the modern monosyllabicity of most Tai-Kadai languages and the typcial disyllabic CVCVC structure prototypical of undisputed Austronesian. The development seems to be analogous to Cham, a Malayic language, which is now (at least, in Vietnam) passing from the sesquisyllabic form (which is how it is written) to a monosyllabic form. Ostapirat's reconstruction (1996, also published as Weera, O. 2000, "Proto-Kra", in Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 1-251, accessible via http://sealang.net/sala/htm/WEERAOstapirat.htm ) of Proto-Kra was handicapped by working with a phonetically more advanced dialect of Buyang, but it seems to have backed up what to me what like very bold deductions.

[grtaylor]

and what about "CHECK BIN" which seems to be a combination of the US word "check" and the British word "bill" both meaning the same thing....and by coincidence comes in a "bin".

Actually, "check" here means "inspect", as in the British English "check the bill".

Interesting, I had assumed it came from the GIs calling for the "check" as they do in the states.....where have you found this out?

Yes, I always assumed it was "check" from American English, and "bill" (which, of course, becomes "bin" in Thai) from British English. The actual Thai expression is either "gep tang" or "kit tang", I think.

[sabaijai]

There are some probably very old Chinese loans into Thai such as ม้า and I suspect กว้าง and แล้ว, the numerals สอง to สิบ are definitely from Chinese

There are obviously many Chinese loan words in Thai, but it also works the other way, particularly since Austro-Thai language family is considered by some historical linguists to be older than the Sino-Tibetan family.

When I studied Austro-Thai linguistics at university, I was taught that กว้าง was one such an example, of Thai borrowed by Chinese. Ditto for the similarities in the numbers.

Curious, as the Kra numerals seems to match the Malayo-Polynesian ones quite well. (The Formosan matches don't always extend to the higher numbers - *lima 'five' has a fairly limited extent in the Formosan languages, and may well not actually go back to Proto-Austronesian.) The current view is that Tai-Kadai is a subgroup of Austronesian, but the precise relationship with Malayo-Polynesian is debated.

If Austro-Thai or Tai-Kadai comes under Austronesian, the borrowing direction for certain numbers and other loan words could still be Tai --> Chinese.

[Richard W]

If Austro-Thai or Tai-Kadai comes under Austronesian, the borrowing direction for certain numbers and other loan words could still be Tai --> Chinese.

But then Kam-Tai needs to have innovated the numbers and spread them to Sino-Tibetan, though possibly the Sino-Tibetan forms are derived from Chinese. However, the Kam-Tai numerals do look rather Chinese. The clearest example of a Chinese innovation reflected in Kam-Tai is the /s/ in the word for 'four'. The appearance of a sibilant is not restricted to Chinese - Matisoff has some discussion of the development in Section 3.4.2(4)© of his Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman.

[AmeriThai]

and what about "CHECK BIN" which seems to be a combination of the US word "check" and the British word "bill" both meaning the same thing....and by coincidence comes in a "bin".

Actually, "check" here means "inspect", as in the British English "check the bill".

Interesting, I had assumed it came from the GIs calling for the "check" as they do in the states.....where have you found this out?

Yes, I always assumed it was "check" from American English, and "bill" (which, of course, becomes "bin" in Thai) from British English. The actual Thai expression is either "gep tang" or "kit tang", I think.

While I wouldn't argue that "bill" is from British English, both "check" and "bill" are commonly used in American English. They're similar but often slightly different in meaning or usage.

American English usage examples:

"Check, please" when you indicate to the person at a restaurant serving your table that you've finished eating and are ready to leave. I would suppose it might also indicate you want to "check" (inspect) the costs before paying and to determine how much of a tip to give. "Check" usually refers to the "bill" (the statement of what you owe).

"Bill" often a written financial statement of an amount of money you owe such as the phone "bill", electric "bill", car repair "bill", grocery "bill", etc.

[AmeriThai]

Came upon this thread two years late, but have a couple of things to add.

I was asked by a Thai friend if there are any Thai loan words in English. Couldn't think of any . . .

One very prominent one: 'bong', from the Thai บ้อง, referring to a section of bamboo such as those used to make smoking bongs as well as northeastern Thailand's famous bamboo rockets (บ้องไฟ)

LOL! Yes, "bong" seems to be a word that's been adopted into the English language probably when GIs were based in or on R&R in Thailand.