Related languages?

[themechanic]

If one can speak and read/write Thai, what other languages would be easier to learn?

[Jdietz]

Finnish and Hungarian. Together they form the so-called Heavenly group of languages because they all take an eternity to learn.

But on a more serious note, Khmer (Cambodian) and Laotian come to mind.

[SlyAnimal]

Yeah Khmer (Cambodian) and Laotian are based on the same writing system as Thai, so learning to read/write these languages would be a little easier.

Laotian also has similar origins to Thai, and so the speaking would be easy to adjust to.

Sanskrit and Pali would also be easier, as many Thai words originate from these languages, although they've changed over the years so might not necessarily be recognisable unless you were a native speaker (In much the same way as English is pretty far from Latin these days lol).

Actually many of the Asian languages would be a little easier to learn, as you'd have your head around how tones work (You'd need to learn new tones for the new language, but you'd have the concept already within your head), likewise the use of classifiers, which many Asian languages use, would be easier to adjust to as well.

Although in general, having trained your vocal chords to make the sounds in Thai, as well as English, and having the experience of learning a language you'd likely fare a bit better with any new language than you would have with just 1x language under your belt.

[Johpa]

Apart from some academic research that suggests that learning one foreign language gives one an advantage in gaining a proficiency in a second foreign language, the only major languages related to Thai would be Lao (Isaan), Northern Thai, Southern Thai, Shan, or a Dai language spoken up in Yunnan. Yes, you might have some minor vocabulary transfer from words borrowed from Pali to the same loan words in Khmer or languages in South Asia. And there is some transference of tone skills to say Chinese. But those advantages are relatively minor as the languages remain unrelated to the Tai languages.

[CaptHaddock]

Yeah Khmer (Cambodian) and Laotian are based on the same writing system as Thai, so learning to read/write these languages would be a little easier.

Laotian also has similar origins to Thai, and so the speaking would be easy to adjust to.

Sanskrit and Pali would also be easier, as many Thai words originate from these languages, although they've changed over the years so might not necessarily be recognisable unless you were a native speaker (In much the same way as English is pretty far from Latin these days lol).

Actually many of the Asian languages would be a little easier to learn, as you'd have your head around how tones work (You'd need to learn new tones for the new language, but you'd have the concept already within your head), likewise the use of classifiers, which many Asian languages use, would be easier to adjust to as well.

Although in general, having trained your vocal chords to make the sounds in Thai, as well as English, and having the experience of learning a language you'd likely fare a bit better with any new language than you would have with just 1x language under your belt.

Unfortunately, I don't think any of this is true. Khmer and Thai languages are not closely related. Khmer, for instance, does not have tones. The writing system is not the same, even though they have common antecedents, but even they were the a common writing system is not much of an advantage in learning a dissimilar language. Learning Finnish for a native English speaker is still very hard despite the common Roman alphabet. Thai has taken loan words from Khmer, but that advantage would be slight also. It's well understood that people can add words to their vocabulary much more readily than learning new phonemes or grammar.

I haven't seen research on the subject, but it seems doubtful that learning one tonal language offers a significant advantage in learning another, unless the tones used are substantially the same. In my earlyThai classes at Chula there were two very diligent Chinese students, a Fujianese and a Yunanese. The Fujianese picked up the Thai tones quickly, but the Yunanese didn't do any better than the Western students. They themselves thought so, too. When I asked them why this was, they attributed it to the similarity of tones between Thai and Fujianese and the dissimilarity with Yunanese.

The use of classifiers is not very difficult for English speakers to learn. Other differences between Asian languages and English would dominate the learning task, such as the very different sentence structure between Japanese and either Thai or English, which are resemble each other in that respect, to say nothing, of the vast difficulties presented by learning the ideogram system of either Chinese or Japanese compared to any alphabetic system.

The only languages for which learning Thai would be a real advantage are other Thai dialects, such as Laotian and others in the Tai-Kadai group.

[Mole]

Yes, this is an unfortunate situation for Thai language which belongs to the so called Tai-Kadai language family, which is not really related to any other languages.

It's similar situation with Finnish, which is related to Estonian, and distantly related to Sami, and probably as much similar to Hungarian as English is to Hindi. But if you know Finnish, it's pretty much only useful in Finland and won't really help you in learning any other languages, and the same goes for Thai.

Claiming that knowing Thai, you'll be able to learn other tonal languages easier is like saying knowing Russian, you'll be able to learn Finnish easier because both have grammatical cases.

Or claiming that it'll be easier to learn Khmer because both scripts has same origins is like saying knowing Greek, you'll learn Turkish easier because both alphabets has same origins.

Saying it'll be easier to learn Sanskrit and Pali, is like saying knowing Greek and you'll be able to learn Hungarian easier because of the some common cultural origins of words.

Despite being neighbouring countries, Thai, Khmer, Burmese and Malay all belong to completely different language families. They share some common words which have same origins especially words related to religion, but so does languages such as Georgian, Hungarian, Greek and Turkish share common words. At least Hungarian and Turkish share same alphabet, while all those Asian languages have different scripts.

(Thai probably being Asian's equivalent to Georgian in Europe)

The only languages you'll definitely be able to learn easier will be Lao and Shan and of course the other regional Thai dialects, which technically are separated languages in their own right and not just mere dialects. But Lao and Shan use completely different characters, so it'll still be a challenge to learn.

Edited September 24, 2014 by Mole

[Richard W]

The only languages you'll definitely be able to learn easier will be Lao and Shan and of course the other regional Thai dialects, which technically are separated languages in their own right and not just mere dialects. But Lao and Shan use completely different characters, so it'll still be a challenge to learn.

That's far from true for the Lao script - it would have been quite feasible for Unicode to have encoded a single Thai/Lao script. Also, Lao has the same basic system as Thai. Learning Shan consonants starting from Thai is rather like learning the Greek script starting from the Roman script.

[Mole]

The OP's question is which languages would be easiest to learn if you know Thai, so compared to every other languages in the world those would be "easiest" to learn, but as I said, still challenging task.

I presume somebody proficient in Thai should be able to learn Lao easier than Lao learning Thai, due to the much less complex Lao script and phonetic spelling and no need to worry which สศษ to use and no karan. You can compare it to a Dutch who want to learn Afrikaans, which is easier than for an Afrikaner to learn Dutch.

But in this age, many people in the Tai diaspora gets exposed to Thai through satellite TVs, so they most likely are able to understand Thai, but not really speak it. I've asked many of my Shan friends from Burma about if it was difficult for them to learn Thai, and they said they already understood Thai from watching TV, but of course only spoke Tai, so it wasn't really hard to learn to speak the Thai language after they came to Thailand.

[Smurkster]

The only languages you'll definitely be able to learn easier will be Lao and Shan and of course the other regional Thai dialects, which technically are separated languages in their own right and not just mere dialects. But Lao and Shan use completely different characters, so it'll still be a challenge to learn.

That's far from true for the Lao script - it would have been quite feasible for Unicode to have encoded a single Thai/Lao script. Also, Lao has the same basic system as Thai. Learning Shan consonants starting from Thai is rather like learning the Greek script starting from the Roman script.

as people mentioned before: Lao, Southern Thai, Lanna, all these part of the Southwestern Tai Branch of the Tai-Kadai family would probably be relatively easy to learn.

I studied Lao before I started studying Thai (I have never actually had any formal education in Thai, only in Lao) this became a handicap I think and should have done in the other way around as the Lao alphabet is about half the size of the Thai...Also the Lao language has less formality and a less variance for sex of speakers and just a few other things I have noticed that make it the easier of the two...

[Mosha]

Yeah Khmer (Cambodian) and Laotian are based on the same writing system as Thai, so learning to read/write these languages would be a little easier.

Laotian also has similar origins to Thai, and so the speaking would be easy to adjust to.

Sanskrit and Pali would also be easier, as many Thai words originate from these languages, although they've changed over the years so might not necessarily be recognisable unless you were a native speaker (In much the same way as English is pretty far from Latin these days lol).

Actually many of the Asian languages would be a little easier to learn, as you'd have your head around how tones work (You'd need to learn new tones for the new language, but you'd have the concept already within your head), likewise the use of classifiers, which many Asian languages use, would be easier to adjust to as well.

Although in general, having trained your vocal chords to make the sounds in Thai, as well as English, and having the experience of learning a language you'd likely fare a bit better with any new language than you would have with just 1x language under your belt.

English is a West Germanic Language now't to do with Latin

[Richard W]

Sanskrit and Pali would also be easier, as many Thai words originate from these languages, although they've changed over the years so might not necessarily be recognisable unless you were a native speaker (In much the same way as English is pretty far from Latin these days lol).

English is a West Germanic Language now't to do with Latin

And Thai is a Tai-Kadai language, 'nothing' to do with Sanskrit or Pali, even less than English with Latin. However, just as English has borrowed many words from Latin, Thai has borrowed many words from Sanskrit and Pali. Edited October 10, 2014 by Richard W