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Thailand is located at the meeting point
of the two great cultural systems of
Asia, Chinese and Indian. In everyday
life, Chinese culture has mixed very
well with the Thai, whereas in Thai
court culture, which has been based
mainly on Buddhism and Brahmanism, India
has exerted a strong influence. Thai
culture can be divided into 3 aspects:
linguistic culture, court culture, and
traditional culture.
The Thai language, or Phasa Thai,
basically consists of monosyllable words,
whose meanings are complete by
themselves. Its alphabet was created by
King Ramkhamhaeng the Great in 1283 by
modelling it on the ancient Indian
alphabets of Sanskrit and Pali through
the medium of the old Khmer characters.
After a history of over 700 years, the
Thai alphabet today comprises 44 letters
(including 2 obsolete ones),
representing 20 consonant phonemes, and
15 vowel signs, denoting 22 vowels,
diphthongs and triphthongs.
As Thai is a tonal language with five
different tones, it often confuses
foreigners who are unused to this kind
of language. For example, they have
difficulty in distinguishing these 3
words from each other : "suea" with a
rising tone, "suea" low tone and "suea"
falling tone which means a tiger, a mat
and clothes respectively.
Like most languages of the world, the
Thai language is a complicated mixture
of several sources. Many Thai words used
today were derived from Pali, Sanskrit,
Khmer, Malay, English and Chinese.
By traditional culture we mean customs
concerning agriculture and human
relations, and the art of making daily
necessities such as utensils, clothing
and basketry. The basis of the Thai
customs and traditions lies in the
family, whose structure is of bilateral
descent. Like the Chinese and some other
Asian peoples, the young are taught to
pay respect to and follow the
admonitions of parents, elders, teachers
and Buddhist monks who, in the old days,
formed a highly educated class.
When speaking about traditional Thai
culture, what cannot be left unmentioned
is the wat or Buddhist temple and
monastery combined. After Buddhism had
been spread throughout Thailand for
hundreds of years, the primitive animist
belief of the Thai people was
assimilated by the Buddhist one. The wat
became the centre of the village. It was
the place where people received
education, attended rites and ceremonies,
and observed feasts and festivals all
the year round.
Nowadays, due to the rapid advancement
of technology, the traditional Thai way
of living, especially in the big cities,
has inevitably changed. However, it is
still preserved to a large extent in the
faraway rural areas where modern
civilization has failed to penetrate. |
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