A Comparative Study of Chinese-Thai Teochew Vocabulary in Narathiwat, Thailand

Abstract

Thai and Teochew languages had the long history in between. This up to date there are plenty of Thai vocabularies have been transliteration from Teochew languages due to the influences in culture and long stayed migrants. Narathiwat is the one province in Thailand where Chinese migrants have been migrated to. In the early day, Teochew language was one of the most important languages to communicate for dealing, living and so on. But later, in the modern years Teochew language have been gradually disappear day by day. In recently, its difficult to discover people who use the Teochew language to communicate due to number of people who origin from Chaozhou province have been decreasing within time. While the numbers of Chaozhou-Thai descents have been increasing gradually, but rarely to find this generation who actually speaks Teochew in present day. This article believes that if no one keeps this saying, it will definitely disappear slowly in the future, and even if you want to find it, you can't find it. This article examines the similarities and differences between the Teochew dialect spoken in China and the Teochew dialect of Narathiwat, Thailand. The analysis focuses on vocabulary, pronunciation, word forms, meanings, and everyday usage to draw meaningful conclusions about the evolution of the language. The analysis focuses on vocabulary, pronunciation, word forms, meanings, and everyday usage to draw meaningful conclusions about the evolution of the language.