Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 August 18

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August 18

Distance between different registers

How far are those Thai registers - street, formal, royal, rhetorical, religious - from each other? I assume, most Thais won't address the king ever, so, how good can royal Thai be, even if it's part of the national curriculum? Llaanngg (talk) 23:17, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

They can be quite far. Conversational colloquial Thai uses mostly native words (including old borrowings that are accepted as native). The other, higher, registers use the same basic grammar but the vocabulary becomes increasingly Khmero-Indic as one climbs the formality scale. Additionally the higher registers use different grammatical particles and markedly different pronouns. Similar to other languages, the more formal literary, religious and royal registers also use more complicated constructions and language that seems "flowery" or archaic to common folk. As for your question about "how good can (their) royal Thai be", I'll start by saying that the religious register is learned quite early, often from first learning to speak, since interaction with the temple and monks is an integral part of village life. So too is the formal register as children are taught to use that register when speaking to their parents/elders/local officials/strangers. Literary register is usually learned early on in temple schools or later in more formal education. The Royal Register is not only used when addressing the king. It is used extensively at court; it is the "conversational colloquial" Thai of the royal family. Commoners get exposure to it in the media, in literature, in school, and oftentimes in dealings with provincial officials who may be, especially in former times, members of the royal family. Today, commoners who have occasion to speak directly to royalty are often given a quick informal primer/reminder in protocol, which includes proper language usage. There are plenty of papers written on the subject but I'm having trouble finding references for you that aren't behind paywalls. Diller, Anthony VN. "High and Low Thai: views from within." Pacific Linguistics. Series A. Occasional Papers 67 (1983): 51-76. is a good start. You can find it the SEA Lang Archives with a little searching (the lexical differences between the registers is discussed beginning at pg 59). Glancing at the other papers available there under the "Thai" category, there are a few more that may help answer your question.--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 00:45, 19 August 2016 (UTC)