Northern Thai language

Northern Thai, also called Kam Mueang, Lanna or Tai Yuan, is the language spoken by the Northern Thai people of Thailand. It is a Southwestern Tai language. The language has approximately six million speakers, most of whom live in Northern Thailand, with a smaller community of speakers in northwestern Laos.
Speakers of this language generally consider the name "Tai Yuan" to be pejorative. They refer to themselves as Khon Mueang, Lanna, or Northern Thai. The language is also sometimes referred to as Phayap, "Northwestern ".
The term Yuan is still sometimes used for Northern Thai's distinctive Tai Tham alphabet, which is closely related to the old Tai Lue alphabet and the Lao religious alphabets. The use of the Tua Mueang, as the traditional alphabet is known, is now largely limited to Buddhist temples, where many old sermon manuscripts are still in active use. There is no active production of literature in the traditional alphabet, and when used in writing standard Thai script is invariably used. The modern spoken form is called Kam Mueang. There is a resurgence of interest in writing it in the traditional way, but the modern pronunciation differs from that prescribed in spelling rules.File:Lanna cm2.jpg|thumb|Nameboard of a Buddhist temple in Chiang Mai written with Tai Tham script: Wat Mokhamtuang

Classification

Northern Thai is classified as one of the Chiang Saen branch, a model popularized by foundational linguists such as Fang-Kuei Li and Marvin Brown, others being Thai, Southern Thai and numerous smaller languages, which together with the Northwestern Tai and Lao-Phutai languages, form 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.
From a purely genealogical standpoint, most linguists consider Northern Thai to be more closely related to Central Thai than to Lao or Isan, but the language has been heavily influenced by both Lao and Central Thai throughout history. All Southwestern Tai languages form a coherent dialect continuum of more or less mutually intelligible varieties, with few sharp dividing lines. However, this genealogical classification is increasingly contested by modern scholars. Critics argue that these groupings may reflect political "Thaification" and a drive for national unity rather than purely linguistic history. While the Chiang Saen group is the standard model, it often masks the closer historical ties Northern Thai has with the Lao-Phutai branch. Nevertheless, Northern Thai has today become closer to the Central Thai language, as Standard Thai is the principal language of education and government and spoken throughout Thailand.

Names

The Northern Thai language has various names in Northern Thai, Thai, and other Tai languages.

In Northern Thai, it is commonly called kam mueang, or phasa Lan Na.
In Central Thai and Southern Thai, Northern Thai is known as phasa thin phayap, or phasa thai thin nuea.
In Lao, it is known as phasa nyuan or phasa nyon.
In Tai Lü, it is known as kam yon.
In Shan it is known as kwam yon.
History

Tai migration

The ancestors of the Northern Thai people were speakers of Southwestern Tai dialects that migrated from what is now southeastern China, specifically what is now Guangxi and northern Vietnam where the diversity of various Tai languages suggests an Urheimat. The Southwestern Tai languages began to diverge from the Northern and Central branches of the Tai languages, covered mainly by various Zhuang languages, sometime around 112 AD, but likely completed by the sixth century. Due to the influx of Han Chinese soldiers and settlers, the end of the Chinese occupation of Vietnam, the fall of Jiaozhi and turbulence associated with the decline and fall of the Tang dynasty led some of the Tai peoples speaking Southwestern Tai to flee into Southeast Asia, with the small-scale migration mainly taking place between the eighth and twelfth centuries. The Tais split and followed the major river courses, with the ancestral Northern Thai originating in the Tai migrants that followed the Mekong River.

Indianized kingdoms

Ancestors of the Northern Thai people established Ngoenyang, an early kingdom that existed between the 7th to 13th centuries, as well as smaller kingdoms like Phayao, in what is now modern-day northern Thailand. They settled in areas adjacent to the kingdom of Hariphunchai, coming into contact with Mon-speaking people whose writing system was eventually adapted for the Northern Thai language as the Tai Tham script. In the 13th century, King Mangrai consolidated control of these territories, establishing the kingdom of Lan Na. In the 15th century, King Tilokkarat ushered in a golden age for Northern Thai literature, with a profusion of palm leaf manuscripts written in Tai Tham, using vernacular Northern Thai and interspersed with Pali and Buddhist Indic vocabulary.

Thai subordination

In 1775, Kawila of Lampang revolted with Siamese assistance, and captured the city, ending 200 years of Burmese rule. Kawila was installed as the prince of Lampang and Phraya Chaban as the prince of Chiang Mai, both as vassals of Siam. In 1899, Siam annexed the Northern Thai principalities, effectively dissolving their status as sovereign tributary states.
The Compulsory Education Act of 1921 banned schools and temples from using languages other than Central Thai, in an effort to bring remote regions under Siamese control. Northern Thai was relegated from the public sphere, with influential religious leaders like Khruba Srivichai jailed for using Northern Thai in sermons. In the 1940s, authorities promulgated Thai cultural mandates that reinforced the importance of learning and using Central Thai as the prestige language.
These economic and educational pressures have increased the use of standard Thai to the detriment of other regional languages like Northern Thai. Today, Northern Thai is typically code-switched with standard Thai, especially in more developed and urbanized areas of Northern Thailand, whereas exclusive use of Northern Thai remains prevalent in more remote areas.

Dialects

Thanajirawat classifies Tai Yuan into five major dialect groups based on tonal split and merger patterns.

most Tai Yuan varieties in Thailand, Laos and Myanmar
Bokeo Province, Laos
Mae Chaem District, Chiang Mai Province and Laplae District, Uttaradit Province, Thailand
Tha Pla District, Uttaradit Province and Xayaburi Province, Laos
Ratchaburi Province, Thailand
Phonology

Consonants

Initial consonants

Northern Thai consonant inventory is similar to that of Lao ; both languages have the sound and lack.

Initial consonant clusters

There are two relatively common consonant clusters:

/kw/
/kʰw/

There are also several other, less frequent clusters recorded, though apparently in the process of being lost:

/ŋw/
/tɕw/
/sw/
/tw/
/tʰw/
/nw/
/ɲw/
/jw/
/lw/
/ʔw/
Final consonants

All plosive sounds are unreleased. Hence, final,, and sounds are pronounced as,, and respectively.

	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	ม	ญ, ณ, น, ร, ล, ฬ		ง
Plosive	บ, ป, พ, ฟ, ภ	จ, ช, ซ, ฌ, ฎ, ฏ, ฐ, ฑ, ฒ,ด, ต, ถ, ท, ธ, ศ, ษ, ส		ก, ข, ค, ฆ
Approximant	ว		ย

Vowels

The basic vowels of the Northern Thai language are similar to those of Standard Thai. They, from front to back and close to open, are given in the following table. The top entry in every cell is the symbol from the International Phonetic Alphabet, the second entry gives the spelling in the Thai 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 in long-short pairs: these are distinct phonemes forming unrelated words in Northern Thai, but usually transliterated the same: เขา means "they/them", while ขาว means "white".
The long-short pairs are as follows:
The basic vowels can be combined into diphthongs. For purposes of determining tone, those marked with an asterisk are sometimes classified as long:
Additionally, there are three triphthongs, For purposes of determining tone, those marked with an asterisk are sometimes classified as long:

Thai script	IPA
เ–ียว*
–วย*
เ–ือย*

Allophones

The following section largely concerns the Nan dialect of Northern Thai.

Phoneme	Allophone	Context	Example	Example	IPA	Gloss
		onset		บ่า		shoulder
		onset		ดอย		mountain
		onset		ป่า		forest
		coda		อาบ		bath
		coda, emphasised		บ่หลับ		don't sleep!
		onset		ตา		eye
		coda		เปิด		open
		coda, emphasised		บ่เผ็ด		not spicy!
		onset		กา		crow
		coda		ปีก		wing
		coda, emphasised		บ่สุก		not ripe!
		before non-front vowels		แขก		guest
		before front vowels		ฅิง		you
		onset		ซาว		twenty
		under emphasis		สาทุ		surely
		non-intervocalic		ห้า		five
		intervocalic		ใผมาหา		who come find
		after bilabial stop		ฅืบนึ่ง		span one
		after alveolar stop		แถมขวดนึ่ง		more bottle one
		after velar stop		แถมดอกนึ่ง		more flower one