Thai is the official language of Thailand, spoken as a first or second language by the great majority of the country's roughly 70 million people. It belongs to the Kra-Dai family, not to the Chinese or Indic groups despite borrowings from both, and it is tonal, with five tones in the standard language. The Thai script developed in the thirteenth century from Khmer models and is written left to right without spaces between words. Standard Thai is based on the speech of Bangkok and the central plains; the north, northeast and south of the country have their own related varieties, and the Isan speech of the northeast is close to Lao. Vocabulary for formal and royal contexts draws heavily on Sanskrit, Pali and Khmer.
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