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Pasah Thai is the national language of Thailand and is spoken by approximately 50 million people.  Lao, spoken in the neighboring country Laos,  is closely related to the Thai language.  Except for the people living in Isaan (Northeastern Thailand), most Thais would have considerable problems understanding the Lao language.  The other neighboring countries' languages in Cambodia, Burma and Malaysia are totally different.  There are distinct dialects of Thai spoken in the North, Northeast and south, but its the language of the Central Region and Bangkok which is used throughout the country as the medium for education and mass media.

Thai is a tonal language.  In tonal languages the meaning of a syllable is determined by the pitch at which it is pronounced.  If tones make pronunciation in Thai seem more complex than in more familiar Western languages, the learner will probably find Thai grammar considerably easier to absorb, because non of the complex verb tenses and noun endings which seem to dominate many people's experience of language-learning exists.

In the Thai language, when you mispronounce a word, you don't simply say it incorrectly, you say another word entirely.  TONES are very important!

Thai is written in its own alphabetic script which has developed from a script originally found in India.  It is written across the page from left to right, with certain vowels appearing above and below the line of writing.   There are no spaces between words and spaces only occur as a form of punctuation, similar to commas, semi-colons and full stops.

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