Southern Thai language

Southern Thai (ภาษาไทยถิ่นใต้ [pʰaːsǎː tʰaj tʰìn tâːj]), also known as Dambro (ภาษาตามโพร [pʰaːsǎː taːm pʰroː]), Pak Tai (ภาษาปักษ์ใต้ [pʰaːsǎː pàk tâːj]), or "Southern language" (ภาษาใต้ [pʰaːsǎː tâːj]),^{[citation needed]} 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.^{[citation needed]} Most speakers are also fluent in or understand the Central Thai dialects.

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.

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

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.

Malay kingdoms ruled much of the Malay Peninsula,^{[citation needed]} 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.

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.

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: