Southern Thai (ภาษาไทยถิ่นใต้ ), also known as Dambro (ภาษาตามโพร ), Pak Tai (ภาษาปักษ์ใต้ ), or "Southern language" (ภาษาใต้ ), is a Southwestern Tai ethnolinguistic identity and language spoken in southern Thailand, as well as by small communities in the northernmost states of Malaysia. It is spoken by roughly five million people and as a second language by the 1.5 million speakers of Pattani and other ethnic groups such as the local Peranakan communities, Negritos and other tribal groups. Most speakers are also fluent in or understand the Central Thai dialects.

Classification

Southern Thai is classified as one of the Chiang Saen languages, the others being Thai, Northern Thai and numerous smaller languages. They, together with the Northwestern Tai and the Lao-Phutai languages, form the Southwestern branch of the Tai languages. The Tai languages are a branch of the Kra–Dai language family, which encompasses a large number of indigenous languages that are spoken in an arc from Hainan and Guangxi south through Laos and northern Vietnam to the Cambodia border.

Dialects

Phonyarit (2018) recognizes the following nine main dialects of Southern Thai, based on tone split and merger patterns.

Southern Thai (Eastern)

Southern Thai (Western)

Takbai dialect

Distribution

In Thailand, speakers of Southern Thai can be found in a contiguous region beginning as far north as southern part of Prachuap Khiri Khan Province and extending southward to the border with Malaysia. Smaller numbers of speakers reside in the Malaysian border states, especially Kedah, Kelantan, Penang, Perlis, and Perak. In those areas, it is the primary language of ethnic Thais and of the ethnicall- Malay people on both sides of the Thai-Malaysian border in Satun and Songkhla provinces. Although numerous regional variations exist, and there is no standard, the language is most distinct near the Malaysian border. All varieties, however, remain mutually intelligible. For economic reasons, many speakers of Southern Thai have migrated to Bangkok and other Thai cities. Some have also emigrated to Malaysia, which offers economic opportunity but also a culture that shares Islam, which is practiced by some speakers of Southern Thai.

History

Malay kingdoms ruled much of the Malay Peninsula, such as the Pattani Kingdom and Tambralinga, but most of the area, at one time or another, was under the rule of Srivijaya. The population of the Malay Peninsula was heavily influenced by the culture of India that was transmitted through missionaries or indirectly through traders. Numerous Buddhist and Hindu shrines attest to the diffusion of Indian culture. The power vacuum left by the collapse of Srivijaya was filled by the growth of the Nakhon Si Thammarat Kingdom, which subsequently became a vassal of the Sukhothai Kingdom. The area has been a frontier between the northern Tai peoples and the southern ethnic Malays as well as between Buddhism and Islam.

Phonology

Tones

The majority of speakers using Southern Thai varieties display five phonemic tones (tonemes) in citation monosyllables although effects of sandhi can result in a substantially higher number of tonal allophones. This is true for dialects north of approximately 10° N and south of 7° N latitude, as well as urban sociolects throughout Southern Thailand. In between, there are dialects with six- and seven-tone systems. The dialect of Nakhon Si Thammarat Province (approximately centered on 8° N latitude), for example, has seven phonemic tones.

Initials

Clusters

In Southern Thai, each syllable in a word is considered separate from the others and so combinations of consonants from adjacent syllables are never recognised as clusters. Southern Thai has phonotactical constraints that define the permissible syllable structure, consonant clusters and vowel sequences. The original Thai vocabulary introduces only 11 combined consonantal patterns:

Finals

All plosive sounds (besides the glottal stop /ʔ/) are unreleased. Hence, final, , and sounds are pronounced as , , and respectively. Of the consonant letters, excluding the disused ฃ and ฅ, six (ฉ ผ ฝ ห อ ฮ) cannot be used as a final, and the other 36 are grouped as follows:

Vowels

The vowels of Southern Thai are similar to those of Central Thai and, from front to back and close to open, are given in the following table. The top entry in every cell is the symbol from the International Phonetic Alphabet, the second entry gives the spelling in the Thai alphabet, where a dash (–) indicates the position of the initial consonant after which the vowel is pronounced. A second dash indicates that a final consonant must follow. The vowels each exist in long-short pairs: these are distinct phonemes forming unrelated words in Southern Thai, but usually transliterated the same: เขา /khaw/ means "he/she", while ขาว /khaːw/ means "white". The long-short pairs are as follows: The basic vowels can be combined into diphthongs. For purposes of determining tone, those marked with an asterisk are sometimes classified as long: Additionally, there are three triphthongs. For purposes of determining tone, those marked with an asterisk are sometimes classified as long:

Differences from Central Thai

Although of the major regional languages of Thailand, Southern Thai is most similar in lexicon and grammar to Central Thai, the varieties are sufficiently different that mutual intelligibility between the two can be problematic. Southern Thai presents a diglossic situation wherein registers range from the most formal (Standard Central Thai spoken with Southern Thai tones and accent) to the common vernacular (usually a contracted form of Thai expressions and with some amount of loan words from Malay). The Thai language was introduced with Siamese incursions into the Malay Peninsula possibly starting as early as the Sukhothai Kingdom. During this and successive kingdoms, the area in which Southern Thai is spoken was a frontier zone between Thai polities and the Malay Sultanates. Malay vocabulary has been absorbed into the lexicon, as a considerable number of Malay speakers lived in or near Patani polity and interacted with the Thai speakers through trade; and the Malay language was formerly considered to be a lingua franca of the southern part of the Malay peninsula. Southern Thai is mainly a spoken language although the Thai alphabet is often used when it is written in informal situations. The words used that are etymologically Thai are often spoken in a reduced and rapid manner, making comprehension by speakers of other varieties difficult. Also, as Southern Thai uses up to seven tones in certain provinces, the tonal distribution is different from other regional varieties of Thai. Additionally, Southern Thai speakers almost always preserve ร as /r/ in contrast to Northern Thai, the Lao-based Isan language, and informal registers of Central Thai where it is generally realized as /l/.

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