Southern Thai or Dambro is a Tai

Tai

Tai may refer to:*Tai peoples*Tai languages*Tai , a Chinese surname*Mount Tai, in Shandong, China*Lake Tai, on the border of the Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, China...

 language spoken in the 14 changwat of Southern Thailand

Southern Thailand

Southern Thailand is a distinct region of Thailand, connected with the Central region by the narrow Kra Isthmus.-Geography:Southern Thailand is located on the Malay Peninsula, with an area around 70,713 km², bounded to the north by Kra Isthmus as the narrowest part of the peninsula. The...

 as well as by small communities in the northernmost Malaysian states. It is spoken by roughly five million people, and as a second language by the 1.5 million speakers of Patani Malay and other ethnic groups such as the local Thai Chinese

Thai Chinese

The Thai Chinese are an overseas Chinese community who live in Thailand. Thailand is home to the largest, oldest, most prominent, and most integrated overseas Chinese community in the world with a population of approximately 9.5 million people...

 communities, Negritos, and other tribal groups. Most speakers are also fluent or understand the standard Thai language

Thai language

Thai , also known as Central Thai and Siamese, is the national and official language of Thailand and the native language of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Tai–Kadai language family. Historical linguists have been unable to definitively...

.

Distribution

In Thailand, speakers of Southern Thai can be found from as far north as Prachuap Khiri Khan Province

Prachuap Khiri Khan Province

Prachuap Khiri Khan is one of the central provinces of Thailand. Neighboring provinces are Phetchaburi in the north and Chumphon in the south. To the west it borders Tanintharyi Division of Myanmar....

 down to the border with Malaysia. Small numbers of speakers can be found in the Malaysian border states, especially Kelantan

Kelantan

Kelantan is a state of Malaysia. The capital and royal seat is Kota Bharu. The Arabic honorific of the state is Darul Naim, ....

, Penang

Penang

Penang is a state in Malaysia and the name of its constituent island, located on the northwest coast of Peninsular Malaysia by the Strait of Malacca. It is bordered by Kedah in the north and east, and Perak in the south. Penang is the second smallest Malaysian state in area after Perlis, and the...

, Perlis

Perlis

Perlis is the smallest state in Malaysia. It lies at the northern part of the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia and has Satun and Songkhla Provinces of Thailand on its northern border. It is bordered by the state of Kedah to the south...

, Kedah

Kedah

Kedah is a state of Malaysia, located in the northwestern part of Peninsular Malaysia. The state covers a total area of over 9,000 km², and it consists of the mainland and Langkawi. The mainland has a relatively flat terrain, which is used to grow rice...

, and Perak

Perak

Perak , one of the 13 states of Malaysia, is the second largest state in the Peninsular Malaysia bordering Kedah and Yala Province of Thailand to the north, Penang to the northwest, Kelantan and Pahang to the east, Selangor the Strait of Malacca to the south and west.Perak means silver in Malay...

. It is the primary language of Thais as well as of the ethnically Malay people on both sides of the Thai-Malaysian border in Satun and Songkhla provinces. Although numerous regional variations exist and there is no one standard, the language is most distinct near the Malaysian border, but all varieties remain mutually intelligible to each other. For economic reasons, many speakers of Southern Thai have moved to Bangkok and other Thai cities or to the Middle East, where many speakers share Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and .   : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

 as a professed religion.

History

Malay kingdoms ruled much of the Malay Peninsula

Malay Peninsula

The Malay Peninsula or Thai-Malay Peninsula is a peninsula in Southeast Asia. The land mass runs approximately north-south and, at its terminus, is the southern-most point of the Asian mainland...

, such as the Pattani Kingdom

Pattani kingdom

Pattani or Sultanate of Pattani was a Malay sultanate that covered approximately the area of the modern Thai provinces of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat and much of the northern part of modern Malaysia. The King of Patani is believed to have converted to Islam some time during the 11th century...

 and Tambralinga

Tambralinga

Tambralinga was an ancient kingdom located on the Malay Peninsula that at one time came under the influence of Srivijaya. The name had been forgotten until scholars recognized Tambralinga as Nagara Sri Dharmaraja. Early records are scarce while estimations range from the seventh to fourteenth...

, but most of the area fell under the rule of Srivijaya

Srivijaya

Srivijaya was a powerful ancient thalassocratic Malay empire based on the island of Sumatra, modern day Indonesia, which influenced much of Southeast Asia. The earliest solid proof of its existence dates from the 7th century; a Chinese monk, I-Tsing, wrote that he visited Srivijaya in 671 for 6...

. The area was heavily influenced by the culture of Indian

Demographics of India

The demographics of India are inclusive of the second most populous country in the world, with over 1.21 billion people , more than a sixth of the world's population. Already containing 17.5% of the world's population, India is projected to be the world's most populous country by 2025, surpassing...

 traders, and numerous Buddhist and Hindu shrines attest to the diffusion of culture. The collapse of Srivijaya was filled by the growth of the Kingdom of Nakhon Sri Thammarat, which subsequently became a vassal of Sukhothai

Sukhothai kingdom

The Sukhothai Kingdom ) was an early kingdom in the area around the city Sukhothai, in north central Thailand. The Kingdom existed from 1238 till 1438...

. The area has been a frontier between the northern Tai peoples and the southern Malay peoples as well as between Buddhism and Islam. The tensions fuelled by brutal Thaification

Thaification

Thaification is the process by which people of different cultural and ethnic origins living in Thailand become assimilated to the dominant Thai culture, or more precisely, to the culture of the Central Thais...

 policies, suppression of local culture, and general poverty has led to the current Southern Thailand insurgency.

Tones

There are five phonemic tones

Tone (linguistics)

Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...

 in the Nakohn Si Thammarat dialect: high, mid rising-falling, low-rising, mid-high, and low.

Tone	Standard Thai	Phonemic	Phonetic	Example meaning in English
high	ผ่า	/pʰáː/	[pʰaː˥˥]	to split
mid rising-falling	ปลา	/plâː/	[plaː˧˦˧]	fish
low-rising	ถ้า	/tʰǎː/	[tʰaː˩˦]	landing
mid-high	ห้า	/haː/	[haː˦˦]	five
low	ค้า	/kʰàː/	[kʰaː˩˩]	to trade

Consonants

	Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...			Labio- dental Labiodental consonant In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth.-Labiodental consonant in IPA:The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...	Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...			Post- alveolar Postalveolar consonant Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate...		Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....			Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...			[m]				[n]						[ŋ]
Plosive Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...	[p]	[pʰ]	[b]		[t]	[tʰ]	[d]				[k]	[kʰ]		[ʔ] *
Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...				[f]	[s]									[h]
Affricate Affricate consonant Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...								[tɕ]	[tɕʰ]
Trill Trill consonant In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish <rr> as in perro is an alveolar trill, while in Parisian French it is almost always uvular....							[r]
Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...										[j]			[w]
Lateral approximant							[l]

^* The glottal plosive is implied after a short vowel without final, or silent before a vowel.

Differences from Standard Thai

Although the most similar in lexicon

Lexicon

In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. A lexicon is also a synonym of the word thesaurus. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek "λεξικόν" , neut...

 and grammar to Central Thai of the major regional languages of Thailand, Southern Thai is sufficiently different that mutual intelligibility between the two can be problematic. Southern Thai represents a diglossic situation from the formal Thai spoken with Southern Thai tones and accent to the common language, which utilises more local vocabulary and incorporates more words from Patani Malay

Malay language

Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family. It is the official language of Malaysia , Indonesia , Brunei and Singapore...

. The Thai language was introduced with Siamese incursions into the Malay Peninsula allegedly starting as early as the Sukhothai Kingdom

Sukhothai kingdom

The Sukhothai Kingdom ) was an early kingdom in the area around the city Sukhothai, in north central Thailand. The Kingdom existed from 1238 till 1438...

, and the area in which Southern Thai is spoken was a frontier zone between Thailand and the Malay Sultanates. Malay vocabulary is an integral part of the vocabulary, as Malay was formerly spoken throughout the region and many speakers of the language still speak the Patani dialect of Malay.

Southern Thai is mainly a spoken language, although the Thai alphabet

Thai alphabet

Thai script , is used to write the Thai language and other, minority, languages in Thailand. It has forty-four consonants , fifteen vowel symbols that combine into at least twenty-eight vowel forms, and four tone marks ....

 is often used in the informal situations when it is written.

The words used that are etymologically Thai are often spoken in a reduced and rapid manner, making comprehension difficult. Also, the tonal distribution is different, with Southern Thai using up to seven tones in certain provinces. In contrast to Northern Thai

Northern Thai language

Northern Thai, Lanna, or Kham Mueang is the language of the Thai Yuan people of Lannathai, Thailand. It is a Tai language, closely related to Thai and Lao...

, the Lao based Isan language

Isan language

Isan language is the collective name for the dialects of the Lao language as they are spoken in Thailand. It is spoken by approximately 20 million people, which is nearly one-third of the entire population of Thailand, predominantly in the Isan region of northeastern Thailand. There are also large...

, and informal registers

Register (phonology)

In linguistics, a register language, also known as a pitch-register language, is a language which combines tone and vowel phonation into a single phonological system. Burmese and the Chinese dialect Shanghainese are examples...

of Standard Thai, Southern Thai speakers almost always preserve ร as /r/ and not as /l/.

Differences between Southern Thai and Thai

Dambro	Thai	English	Dambro	Thai	English
หร่อย, rɔːj	อร่อย, aʔrɔ̀ːj	delicious	ม่าย, maːj	ไหม, mǎj	question particle
แหลง, lɛːŋ	พูด, pʰûːt	to speak	จังหู้, tɕaŋhuː	มาก, mâːk	a lot
ลี้ปรี, liːpriː	พริก, pʰrík	chilli	หลุหละ, lulaʔ	สกปรก, sòk.ka.pròk	dirty
หย้บ, jop	ยี่สิบ, jîːsìp	twenty	บาย, baːj	สบาย, saʔbaːj	to be well
ยานัด, jaːnát	สับปะรด, sàp.paʔ.rót	pineapple	นากา, naːkaː	นาฬิกา, naːlí.kaː	clock
ขี้มัน, kʰiːman	ขี้เหนียว, kʰîːnǐaw	stingy	พรือ, pʰrɯːa	อะไร, aʔraj	what?
ยัง, jaŋ	มี, miː	to have	แค, kʰɛː	ใกล้, klâj	near
พี่บ่าว, pʰiːbaːw	พี่ชาย, pʰîːtɕʰaːj	older brother	เกือก, kɯːak	รองเท้า, rɔːŋtʰáːw	shoe
ตอเช้า, tɔ.tɕʰaw	พรุ่งนี้, pʰrûŋ.níː	tomorrow	พร้าว, pʰraːw	มะพร้าว, máʔ.pʰráːw	coconut
หลาด, laːt	ตลาด, taʔ.làːt	market	ตู, tuː	ประตู, pʰraʔ.tuː	door
แล, lɛː	ดู, duː	to see	นายหัว, naːj.hua	หัวหน้า, hǔa.nâː	boss

External links

• Ethnologue write-up on Southern Thai