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Isan (or Isaan or Esarn) is the language of the Isan region of Thailand. It is a tonal language of the Tai family, and is closely related to Lao, but has also been much influenced by Thai. Phonology and the rules for determining tones vary in each dialect, but are generally similar to Lao. The vocabulary is largely the same as in Lao, except for the use of Thai loan words and neologisms. It was previously written using the Tua Tham script also used in Laos and northern Thailand, but since the introduction of Thai language schooling in the 1920s it has been written in the Thai script.


Isan (ภาษาอีสาน [phasa isan])
Spoken in: Thailand
Region: Isan
Total speakers: 23 Million
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GeneticLanguages Most languages are known to belong to language families ("families" hereforth). An accurately identified family is a phylogenetic unit, i. all its members derive from a common ancestor. The ancestor is very seldom known to us directly, since mos
classificationLanguages Most languages are known to belong to language families ("families" hereforth). An accurately identified family is a phylogenetic unit, i. all its members derive from a common ancestor. The ancestor is very seldom known to us directly, since mos:
Tai-KadaiThe Tai-Kadai languages are a language family found in Southeast Asia and southern China. They were formerly considered to be part of the Sino-Tibetan family, but are now classified independently as the Tai-Kadai family. They may be related to the Austron

  Kam-Tai
   Be-Tai
    Tai-Sek
     Tai
      Southwestern
       East Central
        Lao-Phutai
        Isan

Official status
Official language of: --
Regulated by: --
Language codes
ISO 639ISO 639 is one of several international standards that lists short codes for language names. ISO 639 consists of different parts, of which two parts are currently published. The other parts are works in progress. Parts of ISO 639 There are two items for I-1--
ISO 639-2tai
SILTTS


1 Phonology

Isan has no r sound; where this sound occurs in Thai, it is replaced in Isan by an l or a h. When writing Isan in the Thai script, ร is normally used to represent an l, while อ indicates an h.

The other main differences from Thai are: the pronunciation of ช as s rather than ch; the common palatalisation of ย; and the absence of consonant clusters (where a consonant cluster occurs in Thai, the equivalent word in Isan retains only the first consonant).



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