Languages

Thai

pah-SAH tai

Also Known As Siamese Historical exonym, now largely superseded by Thai.

Citation Formats

General Reference

Language Atlas. "Thai." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://language.interactiveatlas.org/languages/thai.

APA Style

Language Atlas. (n.d.). Thai. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://language.interactiveatlas.org/languages/thai

BibTeX

@misc{languageatlas-thai,
  author = {Language Atlas},
  title = {Thai},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://language.interactiveatlas.org/languages/thai},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

Thai (also called Central Thai or, historically, Siamese) is the sole official language of Thailand, belonging to the Southwestern branch of the Kra-Dai family. It has about 27 million native speakers and roughly 71 million total speakers counting second-language use, and it is written in its own Thai script, an abugida whose old and modern forms are distinguished chiefly by a lost voicing distinction that produced the language's own tone split.

Facts

ISO 639-3 Code

th 1

Speaker Count

27,000,000 1

Native (L1) speakers, 2024 estimate; total speakers including L2 use run to roughly 71 million.

Status

Living 1

Region

Thailand (official); minority communities in Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and Malaysia 1

Cross-Tradition Connections