45-602: The First Thai–Lao Friendship Bridge ( Thai : สะพานมิตรภาพ ไทย-ลาว แห่งที่ 1 , pronounced [sā.pʰāːn mít.trā.pʰâːp tʰāj lāːw hɛ̀ŋ tʰîː nɯ̀ŋ] ; Lao : ຂົວມິດຕະພາບ ລາວ-ໄທ ແຫ່ງທຳອິດ , pronounced [kʰǔa mīt.tā.pʰâːp láːw tʰáj hɛ̄ŋ tʰám.ʔít] ) is a bridge over the Mekong , connecting Nong Khai Province and the city of Nong Khai in Thailand with Vientiane Prefecture in Laos . The Lao capital city Vientiane
90-411: A dialect continuum . Thai language is spoken by over 69 million people (2020). Moreover, most Thais in the northern (Lanna) and the northeastern (Isan) parts of the country today are bilingual speakers of Central Thai and their respective regional dialects because Central Thai is the language of television, education, news reporting, and all forms of media. A recent research found that the speakers of
135-526: A monophyletic group. Gedney (1989) considers Central and Southwestern Tai to form a subgroup, of which Northern Tai is a sister. The top-level branching is in agreement with Haudricourt (1956). Luo Yongxian (1997) classifies the Tai languages as follows, introducing a fourth branch called Northwestern Tai that includes Ahom , Shan , Dehong Dai, and Khamti . All branches are considered to be coordinate to each other. Pittayawat Pittayaporn (2009) classifies
180-565: A second language among the country's minority ethnic groups from the mid-late Ayutthaya period onward. Ethnic minorities today are predominantly bilingual, speaking Thai alongside their native language or dialect. Standard Thai is classified as one of the Chiang Saen languages—others being Northern Thai , Southern Thai and numerous smaller languages, which together with the Northwestern Tai and Lao-Phutai languages, form
225-682: A word-initial unaspirated voiceless sound for Tai , which in any event might sound artificial or arcane to outsiders. According to Michel Ferlus , the ethnonyms Tai/Thai (or Tay/Thay) would have evolved from the etymon *k(ə)ri: 'human being' through the following chain: kəri: > kəli: > kədi:/kədaj ( -l- > -d- shift in tense sesquisyllables and probable diphthongization of -i: > -aj ). This in turn changed to di:/daj (presyllabic truncation and probable diphthongization -i: > -aj ). And then to *daj (Proto-Southwestern Tai) > tʰaj (in Siamese and Lao) or > taj (in
270-632: A Tai language. For some, Thai should instead be considered a member of the Lao language family. One or more Ancient Chinese characters for 'Lao' may be cited in support of this alternative appellation. Some scholars, including Benedict (1975), have used Thai to refer to a wider ( Tai ) grouping and one sees designations like proto-Thai and Austro-Thai in earlier works. In the institutional context in Thailand, and occasionally elsewhere, sometimes Tai (and its corresponding Thai-script spelling, without
315-629: A branch of the Kra–Dai language family . The Tai languages include the most widely spoken of the Tai–Kadai languages, including Standard Thai or Siamese, the national language of Thailand ; Lao or Laotian, the national language of Laos ; Myanmar 's Shan language ; and Zhuang , a major language in the Southwestern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region , spoken by the Zhuang people ( 壯 ),
360-467: A final -y symbol) is used to indicate varieties in the language family not spoken in Thailand or spoken there only as the result of recent immigration. In this usage, Thai would not then be considered a Tai language. On the other hand, Gedney , Li and others have preferred to call the standard language of Thailand Siamese rather than Thai , perhaps to reduce potential Thai/Tai confusion, especially among English speakers not comfortable with making
405-533: A four-way distinction among stops and affricates . The maximal four-way occurred in labials ( /p pʰ b ʔb/ ) and denti-alveolars ( /t tʰ d ʔd/ ); the three-way distinction among velars ( /k kʰ ɡ/ ) and palatals ( /tɕ tɕʰ dʑ/ ), with the glottalized member of each set apparently missing. The major change between old and modern Thai was due to voicing distinction losses and the concomitant tone split . This may have happened between about 1300 and 1600 CE, possibly occurring at different times in different parts of
450-530: A syllable that formerly began with a voiceless consonant (including glottalized stops). An additional complication is that formerly voiceless unaspirated stops/affricates (original /p t k tɕ ʔb ʔd/ ) also caused original tone 1 to lower, but had no such effect on original tones 2 or 3. The above consonant mergers and tone splits account for the complex relationship between spelling and sound in modern Thai. Modern "low"-class consonants were voiced in Old Thai, and
495-527: Is a Tai language of the Kra–Dai language family spoken by the Central Thai , Mon , Lao Wiang , Phuan people in Central Thailand and the vast majority of Thai Chinese enclaves throughout the country. It is the sole official language of Thailand . Thai is the most spoken of over 60 languages of Thailand by both number of native and overall speakers. Over half of its vocabulary
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#1732798843243540-407: Is approximately 20 km (12 mi) from the bridge. The bridge is 1,170 meters (0.73 mi) long. It has two 3.5 m (11 ft 6 in)-wide road lanes, two 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in)-wide footpaths and a single 1,000 mm ( 3 ft 3 + 3 ⁄ 8 in ) gauge railway line in the middle, straddling the narrow central reservation. Opened on 8 April 1994, it
585-523: Is derived from or borrowed from Pali , Sanskrit , Mon and Old Khmer . It is a tonal and analytic language . Thai has a complex orthography and system of relational markers . Spoken Thai, depending on standard sociolinguistic factors such as age, gender, class, spatial proximity, and the urban/rural divide, is partly mutually intelligible with Lao , Isan , and some fellow Thai topolects . These languages are written with slightly different scripts, but are linguistically similar and effectively form
630-843: The Eastern and Oriental Express crosses the Mekong via the bridge into Laos. There is currently no connection to the China-Laos Railway . The standard gauge line circles the north east of Vientiane, to a depot just 2 km from the Friendship Bridge. A new bridge is proposed from this point, to join the proposed Thai High speed line at Nong Khai station just south of the Mekong. 17°52′42″N 102°42′56″E / 17.87833°N 102.71556°E / 17.87833; 102.71556 Thai language Thai , or Central Thai (historically Siamese ; Thai: ภาษาไทย ),
675-466: The Northern Thai language (also known as Phasa Mueang or Kham Mueang) have become so few, as most people in northern Thailand now invariably speak Standard Thai, so that they are now using mostly Central Thai words and only seasoning their speech with the "Kham Mueang" accent. Standard Thai is based on the register of the educated classes by Central Thai and ethnic minorities in the area along
720-521: The Southwestern branch of Tai languages . The Tai languages are a branch of the Kra–Dai language family , which encompasses a large number of indigenous languages spoken in an arc from Hainan and Guangxi south through Laos and Northern Vietnam to the Cambodian border. Standard Thai is the principal language of education and government and spoken throughout Thailand. The standard is based on
765-413: The Zhuang linguist Wei Qingwen using reconstructed Old Chinese for the characters discovered that the resulting vocabulary showed strong resemblance to modern Zhuang . Later, Zhengzhang Shangfang (1991) followed Wei's insight but used Thai orthography for comparison, since this orthography dates from the 13th century and preserves archaisms vis-à-vis the modern pronunciation. Haudricourt emphasizes
810-555: The Khmer system first before the Thai borrowed. Old Thai had a three-way tone distinction on "live syllables" (those not ending in a stop), with no possible distinction on "dead syllables" (those ending in a stop, i.e. either /p/, /t/, /k/ or the glottal stop that automatically closes syllables otherwise ending in a short vowel). There was a two-way voiced vs. voiceless distinction among all fricative and sonorant consonants, and up to
855-625: The Lower Yangtze valleys. Ancient Chinese texts refer to non-Sinitic languages spoken across this substantial region and their speakers as " Yue " . Although those languages are extinct, traces of their existence could be found in unearthed inscriptional materials, ancient Chinese historical texts and non-Han substrata in various Southern Chinese dialects. Thai, as the most-spoken language in the Tai-Kadai language family , has been used extensively in historical-comparative linguistics to identify
900-1027: The Q (Southwestern), N (Northern), B (Ningming), and C (Chongzuo) subgroups (Pittayaporn 2009:300–301). Furthermore, the following shifts occurred at various nodes leading up to node Q. Jerold A. Edmondson 's (2013) computational phylogenetic analysis of the Tai languages is shown below. Tay and Nung are both shown to be coherent branches under Central Tai . Northern Tai and Southwestern Tai are also shown to be coherent branches. Proto-Tai has been reconstructed in 1977 by Li Fang-Kuei and by Pittayawat Pittayaporn in 2009. Proto-Southwestern Tai has also been reconstructed in 1977 by Li Fang-Kuei and by Nanna L. Jonsson in 1991. Others have taken up specific area reconstructions, such as David Strecker's 1984 work regarding "Proto-Tai Personal Pronouns." Strecker's proposed system of personal pronouns in Proto-Tai involves "three numbers, three persons, an inclusive/exclusive distinction and an animate/non-animate distinction in
945-475: The Tai languages based on clusters of shared innovations (which, individually, may be associated with more than one branch) (Pittayaporn 2009:298). In Pittayaporn's preliminary classification system of the Tai languages, Central Tai is considered to be paraphyletic and is split up into multiple branches, with the Zhuang varieties of Chongzuo in southwestern Guangxi (especially in the Zuo River valley at
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#1732798843243990-491: The Thai-speaking area. All voiced–voiceless pairs of consonants lost the voicing distinction: However, in the process of these mergers, the former distinction of voice was transferred into a new set of tonal distinctions. In essence, every tone in Old Thai split into two new tones, with a lower-pitched tone corresponding to a syllable that formerly began with a voiced consonant, and a higher-pitched tone corresponding to
1035-748: The Vietnamese, kɛɛu , derived from the name of Jiaozhi in Vietnam, and that the indigenous Bai Yue were given family names by their northern rulers during the Northern and Southern dynasties , while the Thai didn't have family names into the 19th century, Jerold A. Edmondson of the University of Texas at Arlington posited that the split between Zhuang (a Central Tai language ) and the Southwestern Tai languages happened no earlier than
1080-567: The border to Vietnam) having the most internal diversity. The Southwestern Tai and Northern Tai branches remain intact as in Li Fang-Kuei 's 1977 classification system, and several of the Southern Zhuang languages allocated ISO codes are considered to be paraphyletic . The classification is as follows. Standard Zhuang is based on the dialect of Shuangqiao (双桥), Wuming District . The following phonological shifts occurred in
1125-454: The central reservation of the bridge. Road traffic is stopped when a train is crossing. In March 2004, an agreement between the Thai and Lao governments was signed to extend the railway to Thanaleng Railway Station in Laos, about 3.5 km (2.2 mi) from the bridge. This was the first modern railway link to Laos, as a short portage line once existed. The Thai government agreed to finance
1170-545: The dialect of the central Thai people, and it is written in the Thai script . Hlai languages Kam-Sui languages Kra languages Be language Northern Tai languages Central Tai languages Khamti language Tai Lue language Shan language others Northern Thai language Thai language Southern Thai language Tai Yo language Phuthai language Lao language (PDR Lao, Isan language ) Thai has undergone various historical sound changes. Some of
1215-538: The extension. Construction was originally slated to begin in December 2010. Lao railway officials confirmed as late as September 2010 that plans would go ahead. The extension, which would have taken an estimated three years to complete, would have stretched 9 km (5.6 mi) from Thanaleng to a new main Khamsavath Station. The station will be completed by June 2022, and open 2023. Since February 2010,
1260-485: The founding of Jiaozhi in 112 BCE but no later than the 5th–6th century AD. Based on layers of Chinese loanwords in Proto-Southwestern Tai and other historical evidence, Pittayawat Pittayaporn (2014) suggests that the dispersal of Southwestern Tai must have begun sometime between the 8th and 10th centuries AD. The Tai languages descend from proto-Tai-Kadai , which has been hypothesized to originate in
1305-650: The largest minority ethnic group in China, with a population of 15.55 million, living mainly in Guangxi , the rest scattered across Yunnan , Guangdong , Guizhou and Hunan provinces. Cognates with the name Tai ( Thai, Dai , etc.) are used by speakers of many Tai languages. The term Tai is now well-established as the generic name in English. In his book The Tai-Kadai Languages , Anthony Diller claims that Lao scholars he has met are not pleased with Lao being regarded as
1350-590: The line through a combination of grant and loan. Construction began in January 2007. Test trains began running in July 2008. The formal inauguration occurred on 5 March 2009. In February 2006, approval of funding for the rail line from Thanaleng Railway Station to Vientiane, was announced by the French Development Agency . A US$ 50 million loan was reportedly received from the Thai government for
1395-528: The local patois as pronounced in Guangdong Ayutthaya , the old capital of Thailand from 1351 - 1767 A.D., was from the beginning a bilingual society, speaking Thai and Khmer . Bilingualism must have been strengthened and maintained for some time by the great number of Khmer-speaking captives the Thais took from Angkor Thom after their victories in 1369, 1388 and 1431. Gradually toward the end of
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1440-551: The most significant changes occurred during the evolution from Old Thai to modern Thai. The Thai writing system has an eight-century history and many of these changes, especially in consonants and tones, are evidenced in the modern orthography . According to a Chinese source, during the Ming dynasty , Yingya Shenglan (1405–1433), Ma Huan reported on the language of the Xiānluó (暹羅) or Ayutthaya Kingdom, saying that it somewhat resembled
1485-578: The origins of language(s) spoken in the ancient region of South China. One of the very few direct records of non-Sinitic speech in pre-Qin and Han times having been preserved so far is the " Song of the Yue Boatman " (Yueren Ge 越人歌), which was transcribed phonetically in Chinese characters in 528 BC, and found in the 善说 Shanshuo chapter of the Shuoyuan 说苑 or 'Garden of Persuasions'. In the early 1980s
1530-512: The other Southwestern and Central Tai languages by Li Fangkuei). Michel Ferlus ' work is based on some simple rules of phonetic change observable in the Sinosphere and studied for the most part by William H. Baxter (1992). The Central Tai languages are called Zhuang in China and Tay and Nung in Vietnam. Citing the fact that both the Zhuang and Thai peoples have the same exonym for
1575-415: The period, a language shift took place. Khmer fell out of use. Both Thai and Khmer descendants whose great-grand parents or earlier ancestors were bilingual came to use only Thai. In the process of language shift, an abundance of Khmer elements were transferred into Thai and permeated all aspects of the language. Consequently, the Thai of the late Ayutthaya Period which later became Ratanakosin or Bangkok Thai,
1620-515: The right. The changeover at the Lao end, just before the border post, is controlled by traffic lights. A shuttle bus service operates across the bridge, between the Lao and Thai border posts. Bicycles and tricycles can travel on either the road or the footpath, while pedestrians can walk directly on the footpath. The bridge is part of AH12 of the Asian Highway Network . A meter gauge rail track from Nong Khai station runs along
1665-519: The ring surrounding the Metropolis . In addition to Central Thai, Thailand is home to other related Tai languages . Although most linguists classify these dialects as related but distinct languages, native speakers often identify them as regional variants or dialects of the "same" Thai language, or as "different kinds of Thai". As a dominant language in all aspects of society in Thailand, Thai initially saw gradual and later widespread adoption as
1710-492: The royal vocabulary according to their immediate environment. Thai and Pali, the latter from Theravada Buddhism, were added to the vocabulary. An investigation of the Ayutthaya Rajasap reveals that three languages, Thai, Khmer and Khmero-Indic were at work closely both in formulaic expressions and in normal discourse. In fact, Khmero-Indic may be classified in the same category as Khmer because Indic had been adapted to
1755-900: The specificity of Dioi (Zhuang) and proposes to make a two-way distinction between the following two sets. The original language names used in Haudricourt's (1956) are provided first; alternative names are given in parentheses. Characteristics of the Dioi group pointed out by Haudricourt are Li Fang-Kuei divided Tai into three sister branches. Li's Northern group corresponds to Haudricourt's Dioi group, while his Central and Southwestern groups correspond to Haudricourt's Tai proper. The three last languages in Haudricourt's list of 'Tai proper' languages are Tho (Tày) , Longzhou , and Nung , which Li classifies as 'Central Tai'. This classification scheme has long been accepted as standard in comparative Tai linguistics. However, Central Tai does not appear to be
1800-535: The terminology "low" reflects the lower tone variants that resulted. Modern "mid"-class consonants were voiceless unaspirated stops or affricates in Old Thai—precisely the class that triggered lowering in original tone 1 but not tones 2 or 3. Modern "high"-class consonants were the remaining voiceless consonants in Old Thai (voiceless fricatives, voiceless sonorants, voiceless aspirated stops). The three most common tone "marks" (the lack of any tone mark, as well as
1845-691: The three tones of Old Thai were split have since merged into five in standard Thai, with the lower variant of former tone 2 merging with the higher variant of former tone 3, becoming the modern "falling" tone. หม ม หน น, ณ หญ ญ หง ง ป ผ พ, ภ บ ฏ, ต ฐ, ถ ท, ธ ฎ, ด จ ฉ ช Tai languages The Tai , Zhuang–Tai , or Daic languages ( Ahom :𑜁𑜪𑜨 𑜄𑜩 or 𑜁𑜨𑜉𑜫 𑜄𑜩 kwáam tái ; Shan : ၵႂၢမ်းတႆး ; Thai : ภาษาไท or ภาษาไต , transliteration : p̣hās̛̄āthay or p̣hās̛̄ātay , RTGS : phasa thai or phasa tai; Lao : ພາສາໄຕ , Phasa Tai ) are
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1890-423: The two marks termed mai ek and mai tho ) represent the three tones of Old Thai, and the complex relationship between tone mark and actual tone is due to the various tonal changes since then. Since the tone split, the tones have changed in actual representation to the point that the former relationship between lower and higher tonal variants has been completely obscured. Furthermore, the six tones that resulted after
1935-453: Was a thorough mixture of Thai and Khmer. There were more Khmer words in use than Tai cognates. Khmer grammatical rules were used actively to coin new disyllabic and polysyllabic words and phrases. Khmer expressions, sayings, and proverbs were expressed in Thai through transference. Thais borrowed both the Royal vocabulary and rules to enlarge the vocabulary from Khmer. The Thais later developed
1980-483: Was proposed by Bruce Ramsay of VSL with the final design carried out by Maunsell consulting engineers. It was built by John Holland . The official name of the bridge was changed, with the addition of "First" after the opening of the Second Thai–Lao Friendship Bridge further south at Savannakhet in January 2007. Traffic on the bridge drives on the left , as in Thailand. Traffic in Laos drives on
2025-530: Was the first bridge across the lower Mekong, and the second on the full course of the Mekong. The cost was about A$ 42 million, funded by the Government of Australia as development aid for Laos. The bridge was designed and built by Australian companies as a demonstration of their ability to complete major infrastructure projects in Southeast Asia. The concept design of a balanced cantilever bridge
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