Thailand ETHNICITY, REGIONALISM, AND LANGUAGE
Lisu tribespeople in northern Thailand
Courtesy United Nations
Unavailable
Figure 10. Distribution of Selected Ethnolinguistic and Regional
Groups.
Laboratory technician at Rubber Research Center in
southern Thailand
Courtesy United Nations
Although the population was relatively homogeneous in the
1980s--an estimated 85 percent or more spoke a language of the
Tai family and shared other cultural features, such as adherence
to Theravada Buddhism--regionalism and ethnic differences were
socially and politically significant. Moreover, these differences
affected the access of specific groups and regions to economic
and other resources, which in turn heightened ethnic or regional
consciousness.
Perhaps the principal fact of regional and ethnic relations
was the social, linguistic, and political dominance of the
Central Thai, who were descendants of the subjects of the
premodern kingdoms of the Chao Phraya floodplain. The Central
Thai were defined as those who considered central Thailand their
birthplace or the Central Thai (Standard Thai) dialect their
first language. With the advent of increased migration, modern
communication, and education, however, it was becoming
increasingly difficult to use language to determine place of
origin.
The Central Thai constituted but one of the regionally
defined categories that made up the majority of Thai--the core
Thai. The number of persons belonging to groups other than the
core Thai was difficult to specify precisely, whether membership
in those groups was defined by language, by other features of
culture, or by an individual's self-identification. Part of the
problem was the Thai government's policy of promoting
assimilation but not encouraging the active collection of data on
Thai ethnicity. Government statistics on aliens, tribal
minorities, and refugees were more readily available, although
sometimes disputed by both scholars and the groups in question.
Despite the inadequacy of the data, it was possible to make
some rough estimates of the ethnic composition of the minority
sector of the Thai population in 1987. Among the largest minority
groups, Chinese constituted about 11 percent of the population,
Malay about 3 percent, and long-term resident (as opposed to
refugee) Khmer less than 1 percent. The remaining minority groups
ranged in number from a few hundred to more than 100,000. Of
these, the largest group was the Karen, estimated at about
250,000 in the 1980s. Some of the minority groups spoke languages
of the Tai family but differed in several ways from the core
Thai.
Data as of September 1987
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