Southern Thai
ภาษาไทยถิ่นใต้
Pronunciation	/pʰaː.sǎːtʰajtʰìntâːj/
Native to	Southern Thailand,Kedah,Kelantan andTanintharyi Region
Ethnicity	Southern Thai Peranakans Malaysian Siamese Thai Malays
Native speakers	4.5 million (2006)[1]
Language family	Kra–Dai Tai Southwestern Tai Chiang Saen Sukhothai Southern Thai
Writing system	Thai script Thai Braille
Official status
Recognised minority language in	Thailand
Regulated by	None
Language codes
ISO 639-3	sou
Glottolog	sout2746
This article containsIPA phonetic symbols. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead ofUnicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA.

Southern Thai (ภาษาไทยถิ่นใต้[pʰaːsǎːtʰajtʰìntâːj]), also known asDambro (ภาษาตามโพร[pʰaːsǎːtaːmpʰroː]),Pak Tai (ภาษาปักษ์ใต้[pʰaːsǎːpàktâːj]), or "Southern language" (ภาษาใต้[pʰaːsǎːtâːj]),^{[citation needed]} is aSouthwestern Taiethnolinguistic identity^[2] and language spoken insouthern Thailand, as well as by small communities in the northernmost states ofMalaysia. It is spoken by roughly five million people and as a second language by the 1.5 million speakers ofPattani and other ethnic groups such as the localPeranakan communities,Negritos and other tribal groups.^{[citation needed]} Most speakers are also fluent in or understand theCentral Thai dialects.

Southern Thai is classified as one of the Chiang Saen languages, the others beingThai,Northern Thai and numerous smaller languages. They, together with the Northwestern Tai and the Lao-Phutai languages, form theSouthwestern branch of theTai languages. The Tai languages are a branch of theKra–Dai language family, which encompasses a large number of indigenous languages that are spoken in an arc fromHainan andGuangxi south throughLaos and northernVietnam to theCambodia border.

Phonyarit (2018)^[3] recognizes the following nine main dialects of Southern Thai, based on tone split and merger patterns.

• Nakhonsithammarat dialect (Standard), spoken in the upper part ofNakhon Si Thammarat Province and eastern part ofSurat Thani Province
• Thungsong dialect, spoken in the lower part of Nakhon Si Thammarat Province and surrounding provinces such asPhatthalung
• Songkhla dialect, spoken inSongkhla and surrounding provinces, except inHat Yai district, where Krungthep dialect with southern loanwords is spoken
• Syburi dialect, spoken inSyburi (Kedah),Palis andSatun Province

• Chaiya dialect, spoken in the most part ofSurat Thani Province andRanong Province, classified as a dialect of thePeranakans except inBandon district, where the Krungthep dialect is spoken with southern loanwords.
• Chumphon dialect, spoken inChumphon Province and the southern part ofPrachuap Khiri Khan Provinces
• Phuket dialect, spoken byPeranakans inPhuket Province,Krabi Province,Trang Province andPhang Nga Provinces
• Samui dialect, spoken inSamui District andPha-ngan District

• Takbai dialect, spoken by theSiamese minority inPattani

This sectiondoes notcite anysources. Please helpimprove this section byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged andremoved.(August 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

In Thailand, speakers of Southern Thai can be found in a contiguous region beginning as far north as southern part ofPrachuap Khiri Khan Province and extending southward to the border withMalaysia. Smaller numbers of speakers reside in the Malaysian border states, especiallyKedah,Kelantan,Penang,Perlis, andPerak. 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.^[4]

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 sharesIslam, which is practiced by some speakers of Southern Thai.

Malay kingdoms ruled much of theMalay Peninsula,^{[citation needed]} such as thePattani Kingdom andTambralinga, but most of the area, at one time or another, was under the rule ofSrivijaya. The population of the Malay Peninsula was heavily influenced by theculture 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 ofSrivijaya was filled by the growth of theNakhon Si Thammarat Kingdom, which subsequently became a vassal of theSukhothai Kingdom. The area has been a frontier between the northernTai peoples and the southernethnic Malays as well as betweenBuddhism andIslam.

The majority of speakers using Southern Thai varieties display five phonemic tones (tonemes) in citation monosyllables although effects ofsandhi can result in a substantially higher number of tonalallophones. This is true for dialects north of approximately 10° N and south of 7° Nlatitude, as well as urbansociolects throughout Southern Thailand. In between, there are dialects with six- and seven-tone systems. The dialect ofNakhon Si Thammarat Province (approximately centered on 8° N latitude), for example, has seven phonemic tones.^[5]

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 hasphonotactical constraints that define the permissible syllable structure,consonant clusters and vowel sequences. The original Thai vocabulary introduces only 11 combined consonantal patterns:

• /kr/ (กร),/kl/ (กล),/kw/ (กว)
• /kʰr/ (ขร, คร),/kʰl/ (ขล, คล),/kʰw/ (ขว, คว)
• /pr/ (ปร),/pl/ (ปล)
• /pʰr/ (พร),/pʰl/ (ผล, พล)
• /tr/ (ตร)

Allplosive sounds (besides theglottal stop /ʔ/) areunreleased. Hence, final/p/,/t/, and/k/ sounds are pronounced as[p̚],[t̚], and[k̚] respectively. Of the consonant letters, excluding the disused ฃ and ฅ, six (ฉ ผ ฝ ห อ ฮ) cannot be used as a final, and the other 36 are grouped as follows:

The vowels of Southern Thai are similar to those ofCentral Thai and, from front to back and close to open, are given in the following table. The top entry in every cell is the symbol from theInternational Phonetic Alphabet, the second entry gives the spelling in theThai alphabet, where a dash (–) indicates the position of the initial consonant after which the vowel is pronounced. A second dash indicates that a final consonant must follow.

The vowels each exist inlong-short pairs: these are distinctphonemes forming unrelated words in Southern Thai, but usually transliterated the same: เขา /khaw/ means "he/she", while ขาว /khaːw/ means "white".

The long-short pairs are as follows:

The basic vowels can be combined intodiphthongs. For purposes of determining tone, those marked with an asterisk are sometimes classified as long:

Additionally, there are threetriphthongs. For purposes of determining tone, those marked with an asterisk are sometimes classified as long:

Although of the major regional languages of Thailand, Southern Thai is most similar inlexicon and grammar to Central Thai, the varieties are sufficiently different that mutual intelligibility between the two can be problematic. Southern Thai presents adiglossic situation whereinregisters range from the most formal (Standard Central Thai spoken with Southern Thai tones and accent) to the common vernacular (usually a contracted form of Thai expressions and with some amount of loan words fromMalay). The Thai language was introduced with Siamese incursions into the Malay Peninsula possibly starting as early as theSukhothai Kingdom. During this and successive kingdoms, the area in which Southern Thai is spoken was a frontier zone between Thai polities and the Malay Sultanates.^{[citation needed]} Malay vocabulary has been absorbed into the lexicon, as a considerable number of Malay speakers lived in or near Patani polity and interacted with the Thai speakers through trade; and the Malay language was formerly considered to be alingua franca of the southern part of the Malay peninsula.

Southern Thai is mainly a spoken language although theThai alphabet is often used when it is written in informal situations.

The words used that are etymologically Thai are often spoken in a reduced and rapid manner, making comprehension by speakers of other varieties difficult. Also, as Southern Thai uses up to seven tones in certain provinces, the tonal distribution is different from other regional varieties of Thai. Additionally, Southern Thai speakers almost always preserve ร as /r/ in contrast toNorthern Thai, the Lao-basedIsan language, and informalregisters of Central Thai where it is generally realized as /l/.

• Bradley, David. (1992). "Southwestern Dai as a lingua franca."Atlas of Languages of Intercultural Communication in the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas. Vol. II.I:13, pp. 780–781.
• Levinson, David.Ethnic Groups Worldwide: A Ready Reference Handbook. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISPN: 1573560197.
• Miyaoka, Osahito. (2007).The Vanishing Languages of the Pacific Rim. Oxford University Press.ISBN 0-19-926662-X.
• Taher, Mohamed. (1998).Encyclopaedic Survey of Islamic Culture. Anmol Publications Pvt. Ltd.ISBN 81-261-0403-1.
• Yegar, Moshe.Between Integration and Secession: The Muslim Communities of the Southern Philippines, Southern Thailand, and Western Burma/Myanmar. Lexington Books.ISBN 0-7391-0356-3.
• Diller, A. Van Nostrand. (1976).Toward a Model of Southern Thai Diglossic Speech Variation. Cornell University Publishers.
• Li, Fang Kuei. (1977).A Handbook of Comparative Tai. University of Hawaii Press.ISBN 0-8248-0540-2.

• Southwestern Tai languages
• Subject–verb–object languages
• Isolating languages
• Languages of Thailand
• Languages of Malaysia
• Languages of Myanmar
• Malay Peninsula
• Peninsular Malaysia
• Southern Thailand

• Pages containing links to subscription-only content
• Language articles citing Ethnologue 18
• CS1 Thai-language sources (th)
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles containing Southern Thai-language text
• Pages with plain IPA
• Pages with Thai IPA
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from September 2022
• Articles with unsourced statements from July 2023
• Articles needing additional references from August 2025
• All articles needing additional references
• Articles with unsourced statements from April 2018