Thai

About Thai

Thai is the official language of Thailand, spoken as a first language by about 21 million people and as a second language by tens of millions more across the country. Standard Thai is based on the speech of Bangkok and central Thailand.

Thai is a tonal language with five tones, so the same syllable can mean different things depending on its pitch. Politeness is shown with a particle at the end of a sentence: men say khrap and women say kha, as in sawatdee khrap (hello, said by a man). Thai has its own script with 44 consonant letters, and words are written without spaces between them. The guides use a Latin spelling to show the sounds, but spellings vary from one system to another.

FamilyKra-Dai, Tai
Native speakersabout 21 million (2019)
Second-language speakersabout 40 million (2001)
Official inThailand
ScriptThai script
Tonesfive
Codesth (ISO 639-1), tha (ISO 639-3)

Speaker numbers: Ethnologue (2019 and 2001), via Wikidata. Retrieved 26 September 2026.

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