Written by A. Phonlachand
Translated by Peera Songkünnatham
Illustrated by Adrian Beyer
[คลิกที่นี่เพื่ออ่าน “ความเกี่ยวข้องของภาสามลายูไนภาสาไทย” ไนต้นฉบับภาสาไทย]
This 1944 article is the first piece of writing about the Malay peninsula by Atsani Balachandra, a Thai man of letters who spent two years during World War II in Pattani Province as a public prosecutor. After leaving Pattani, he would go on to write more than a dozen articles, opinion pieces, and short stories that either explained Islam, Malay culture, and current affairs in the decolonizing Malay world to Buddhist Thai readers, or dramatized various encounters between a revolutionary Fatimah and a lovestruck Kulit from Bangkok. This article, a philological investigation into Malay influences in Thai, may not seem like an obvious candidate for an archive of common[er] feelings. However, the significance of this article lies majorly in the place and time it was published: in Wannakhadisan, a government-endorsed literary journal spanning the height of Thai fascism.
In August 1942, Wannakhadisan opened its inaugural issue with none other than Prime Minister P. Phibunsongkhram who—on the basis of his full-body ecstatic reaction—likened the journal’s establishment to the recent Thai annexations of Battambang and Kengtung:
I confess that that same feeling of ecstasy (sāpsān) came up for the fourth time [in my life] while reading the invitation letter from the editor. It was due to the thrill (plāpplüm) of seeing Thai literature take its first roots solidly and permanently in our land, such that the publication Wannakhadisan, a testament to the flourishing of this project, will stand as sure evidence of the victory of the Thai language, the authentic language of our mothers, over this homeland. Phasa Thai is about to spread far and wide, an expansion of the country towards limitless glory. Wherever Phasa Thai has a presence, the Thai nation will prove to grow influential there. Nation and language naturally go hand in hand; they are each other’s shadow.
Also in the inaugural issue, a poem titled “Three Warfares” thematizes a triple threat to Thai sovereignty: territorial loss, economic dependency, and cultural conversion. Of the last, the civil servant Choey Sunthornphiphit wrote:
Thirdly, the culture warfare:
We have long fallen for it;
Imprinted by love of the foreign,
We Thai, so welcoming, forget
What’s Thai. Once aware,
You must together make war.[ประการสาม สงคราม วัธนธัม
เราถลำ เข้าลึก มาแต่ไหน
ความนิยม ต่างด้าว เข้าฝังไจ
เราเปนไทย ลืมไทย เพราะไจดี
เมื่อรู้สึก แล้วจงร่วม กันทำสึก]
The last quoted line in the original must be one of the only instances in Thai literature where feeling/awareness (rusük) literally spells war (sük), taking poetic advantage of the period’s simplified orthography which collapsed three letters for the /s/ sound into one. And yet, the line before that jumps out of time: faulting fellow Thais for being “too kind” to foreigners and foreign ideas has seen an astonishing resurgence during the 2025 Thailand-Cambodia border war.
[Read more about the 1940s language reform in “Thai Universal Pronouns: A Failed Fascist Experiment and Its Queer Attraction” on an earlier issue of Sanam Ratsadon.]
[Read more about Atsani Balachandra’s opposition to war and subsequent revolutionary life with the Communist Party of Thailand in “Writing from Berlin: Letter to Uncle Kwa Kyi” on an earlier issue of Sanam Ratsadon.]
Phibunsongkhram’s expansionist Thai nationalism was anything but expansive when it came to who belonged to the Thai nation. Wartime tensions with France led to the persecutions and killings of Catholics in the Northeast; Malay Muslims in the South were severely regimented by the ratthaniyom cultural mandates about what to wear, what to eat, what to worship, what language to speak in public, etc. In short, the Thai supremacist regime decreed that there was no place for any kind of hyphenated ethnic or religious identity in the Buddhist land of the Thais.
In this context, the appearance of “Entanglements of Bahasa Melayu in Phasa Thai (Initial Part)” in Wannakhadisan (Vol. 2:10, May 1944, edited by Prince Wan Waithayakon) under the author’s simplified name A. Phonlachand implies both an acceptance of the nationalist project and a subversion of it. While the article falls in with the new spelling and furthers the project of propagating the national language, it is not easy to discern how the author really feels about the language reform. Already in the first paragraph, we find:
…even a matter as rudimentary in the knowledge of language and literary studies as spelling is indispensable; someone who, being ill-informed, makes spelling mistakes can in no way be called well-educated. For this reason, the changes we have made to simplify Thai orthography to the nth degree, are aimed to facilitate our becoming well-educated.
Later, less ambiguously, Atsani takes a jab at people from the capital city who don’t use the /ñ/ sound: “Bangkokians often say that country folk from the rural north, northeast, and south don’t speak clearly. Actually it is the Bangkokians who don’t know how to speak Thai.”
By working from the borderlands between Thai and Malay, Atsani makes a case for a more demotic understanding of language. And considering that at the time, a global war was in full swing, there was no Malaysia, Singapore was renamed Syonan by Japan, and the Thai government refused to acknowledge Malay ethnicity, to be an outsider who invested his time into learning Bahasa Melayu and then creating knowledge about it on a government-endorsed platform was remarkable indeed.
Entanglements of Bahasa Melayu in Phasa Thai
(Initial Part)
Our Thai language learning is aimed, first and foremost, to create qualified persons in the sense of being knowledgeable. And according to one of the six pillars of the well-educated, a person worthy of the designation must be “versed in the means and meanings of language,” as N.M.S. put it in verse. Grammar books, that is, textbooks of language studies which bears a relation to literary studies, go into more detail: even a matter as rudimentary in the knowledge of language and literary studies as spelling is indispensable; someone who, being ill-informed, makes spelling mistakes can in no way be called well-educated. For this reason, the changes we have made to simplify Thai orthography to the nth degree, are aimed to facilitate our becoming well-educated. More advanced studies of our language, which go hand in hand with studies of Thai letters, are aimed to fortify the mind’s intelligence, so as to adorn the Thai nation with a wealth of literary flavors. For the writing of poetry and verses necessarily relies on one’s expertise in the use of the language out of which one’s creative work is born. If we don’t know Thai well, we naturally will struggle to write Thai poems. Our Thai language learning at this time remains narrowly limited due to our disinterest in more serious study; for the most part, we learn the language just enough for it to serve as a ladder up to the study of other tongues which we glorify as civilized languages. Furthermore, we can see that our examination of Thai words is but a superficial, cursory glance; we do not penetrate into the substance of the words in question. For example, when we hear the word kin we take it to mean the introduction of food or not-food into the body via the mouth (whereas kin lom and kin akat are new idioms that extend the meaning of the word); we do not ponder further to the questions of why that action is called kin, why other actions are not called kin, whether kin can be referred to otherwise, and is that other way appropriate or inappropriate. Besides, we have only studied the question of what language does Thai take after. Nowadays, for example, Pali is cited. In multiple ancient periods, we considered Sanskrit the most exquisite garb for the Thai language. We studied the Sanskrit language inside and out, and adopted it as an actual garb for the Thai language, for example in the writing of Yuan Phai or the idea some had to establish in the country a printing press with devanagari script, that is, Sanskrit letters. Ideas about Sanskrit came initially from religion, where Buddhism and Brahmanism spread into Thai lands in the form of Sanskrit. Subsequently, our religion and our Brahmanic cult, which were absolutely instrumental in a number of transformations in Thailand, spread here in the form of Pali. Thus, Sanskrit and Pali were vying for supremacy in the territory of the Thai language, up until the current government made a final resolution to uphold Pali as the highest-ranking language in Thai.
True, we do teach in universities and in schools that Thai also comes from languages other than Pali and Sanskrit, but we do not study them as seriously as we do Pali or Sanskrit. Yes, we have had good students of Khmer, but we do not have outstanding students of Bama, Mon, Yuan, Melayu, Java, Chinese, or Ancient Thai. To us it is accepted knowledge that, second to Pali-Sanskrit, Khmer and Chinese have many traces in Thai, while other languages take up small fragments. So much so that when we want to identify the provenance of a Thai word, we methodically look first into Pali and Sanskrit, and when it turns out not to be Pali or Sanskrit, then we look into Khmer; if not there in Khmer, then we turn to old languages we passed through like Ahom. We completely forget to think of the language that almost became ours: Chinese. We forget even to think of the existence of Bama, Mon, Yuan, Java, Melayu, among others. When we cannot prove that the word in question is Pali, Sanskrit, Khmer, or Ahom, we often conclude that it is Thai, as can and will be seen in the pages of both the soon-to-be-obsolete dictionary of the Education Department and its soon-to-be-completed re-edition.
In fact, it’s not the case that words derived from the likes of Bama, Mon, Yuan, Java, Melayu, etc. are so few as to not merit consideration. A thorough examination will reveal that such tongues as Melayu have found their way into the mix of Thai and morphed into quite a few Thai words.
Of Bahasa Melayu specifically, not only are words like panan or burong found in Phasa Thai, but many other words in Malay also match those in Thai. Only recently has this key fact come into our awareness. The honorable Sri Sathirakoses has taken pains to show the way to his progeny by writing an article on the Java-Melayu language family in Wannakhadisan [“The Unfolding of Thai Words, Part 6” (Vol. 2:1, August 1943), pp. 29-43 —trans.]. I was so inspired seeing it.
To buttress the praiseworthy endeavor of the matchless Sri Sathirakoses, I have decided to go a little bit into the entanglements between Bahasa Melayu and Phasa Thai, in the following.
Bahasa Melayu makes its appearance in Phasa Thai via two channels of entry: one through port cities around the Gulf of Thailand, the other through the borderlands of the Seven States. The first group can be called the direct entries; the second group, the indirect entries. The direct entries appear in unadulterated Melayu form, such as burong, bunga, chanis. The indirect entries first go through a transformation in the Seven States; by the time they arrive at the Thai heartland their changed form is barely recognizable, such as cha-ngae, müng, ku, praw. The existence of these two channels is due to the fact that Bahasa Melayu is in use in the Malay peninsula and the archipelago to its south, that is to say, from the Bay of Bengal all the way to Borneo and the Philippines. The language can therefore simply tag along on ships and cross the seas to us, or it can enter by foot. The seafaring ones, unless they first make stops somewhere south of the linguistic dividing line of Bang Saphan Yai, arrive on land once and that’s it. The ones on foot, in contrast, must first pass through the borderlands of the Seven States; having absorbed enough of the culture in the Seven States region, they end up changing their appearance before making their way further north. If they make more stops north of the Seven States, they may also be transformed, but not by much, since the culture of the language there is not as intense as that of the Seven States region.
Of both the direct and the indirect groups, no single standard governs the language. As mentioned before, Bahasa Melayu is in use over a vast region. Local variants that by their original core reveal they are one and the same language diverge in pronunciation and meaning. In our country, the language in rural places differs even from one tambon to another. The language in Bangkok isn’t the same as the language in the Northeast or the North, or the Phetchaburi tongue, or the Southern tongue from Chumphon on down. Simply look at Bang Saphan Yai, where to its north is one dialect, to its south is another, and inside the language-dividing tambon itself (i.e., Bang Saphan Yai) is an indeterminable mixture. This doesn’t include the chaos of languages that jumble together in an unidentifiable mess like that of the Phuket City Market, which features Melayu, Chinese, Southern Thai, Farang, etc. There, one sentence may be made of a Thai subject, a Farang verb, a Melayu object, and a Chinese conjunction. In China, innumerable dialects exist because of its vast expanse. We may find it odd to see two Chinese people fail to understand each other by speech but communicate successfully by writing–it is fortunate that all of China has a common writing system. In Bharatavarsha, with every six thousand bows’ distance* the spoken language changes. Therefore, Bahasa Melayu dialects can differ greatly from one another. Saiburi [Kedah], Trengganu, Pahang, Pattani all have vastly distinctive accents. The dialect in Penang sometimes won’t be understood in Melaka and Syonan. Within Perak, when someone speaks Melayu, people will know exactly where the speaker hails from. Unadulterated Bahasa Melayu can only be found in places where locals don’t speak any other language. In truth, Bahasa Melayu is not a national language; it is but a people’s language scattered along the Malay peninsula and to the east of the Bay of Bengal as already mentioned. It is held that the correct language is the one spoken in the states of Saiburi [Kedah] and Perak.
* Equal to 12 krosa. One krosa [a call’s distance] is variously defined as 500 bows or 400 bows or 4000 elbows. Their bows are approximately 2 wingspans long; their archers are probably quite large in stature.
Bahasa Melayu may be categorized by speech community into four major orders:
- language of the palace (bahasa dalam)
- language of the nobility (bahasa bangsawan)
- language of the tradesmen (bahasa dagang)
- hybrid language (bahasa kacaukan)
These orders differ in style. Bahasa dalam is analogous to our rachasap, that is to say, reserved for use with royals and masters. It also has a similar origin to our rachasap. For example, they use the words putera and puteri to refer to the sons and daughters of a sultan or raja even if in Sanskrit they are ordinary words, the way we use ordinary Khmer words such as banthom and prathap in our royal language. Bahasa bangsawan is the polite language spoken among the highly-educated or the high-class, same as our phudi language. But our noble language is so cultured that it finds certain kinds of words repulsive. E’rom, for example, must be called nang rom, and bang khwai must become bang kabü (kabü, which translates to water buffalo, is a Melayu term transformed by the Seven States region) for the speaker to count as truly noble. But such users of a noble register wreak havoc on the language; they make us ignorant of the reason why that shellfish is called nang rom, and now that it’s unintelligible, the word will be rewritten nang rom(ya) to make it make sense in some way. Bahasa dagang is used specifically in the world of trade, where technical terms usually arise and foreign languages come into the mix. Bahasa kacaukan, meanwhile, is a hybrid with slang or language of the marketplace where the mixing is more extreme than trade language. It is used by commoners and uneducated people. The word taw’ for example (from Melayu as transformed in the Seven States, originally minta) to us means ask for something coyly (say, from a woman); its original meaning, however, is to ask for something in a normal way. Such a colloquialism throws a wrench into a well-ordered language, destroying it just as the overly noble variety destroys it. The word pranam for example which translates to ‘salute with great deference’ subsequently takes on the sense of ‘to drive out,’ since in colloquial usage the word means ‘condemn.’
Truth is, compared to Phasa Thai, Bahasa Melayu is even more of a linguistic mixture, featuring both the direct adoption of foreign words and their indirect transformation. In general terms, Bahasa Melayu comes from three sources:
1. Via original indigenous languages. That is, the language of the Melayu from earliest times. The Original Melayu are said to have come from the mixing of a khaek race in Africa and the khaek in Bharatavarsha. Later, the Tibetans and with the Yuan who migrated down the Irrawaddy were added to the mix. But before Tibetan and Yuan languages could spread and take root firmly, the more highly civilized Sanskrit language arrived in droves. The original language consists mostly of monosyllabic words, and each syllable corresponds to a definite meaning. When a given word is taken up to denote a different but related meaning, then that monosyllabic word is combined with another, the way we combine mae ‘mother’ and nam ‘water’ to form maenam ‘river.’ When a Malay speaker wants to refer to something round or roundish, then the word bu is put in the compound, where the sound bu is subject to changing in accordance with the word next to it, similar to the use of prefixes in Pali-Sanskrit. For instance:
| moon | = | bu | – | lan | |
| round | = | bu | – | lat | |
| fruit | = | bu | – | ah | |
| node | = | bu | – | yong | |
| mountain | = | bu | – | kit | (Phuket) |
| termite mound | = | bu | – | sut | |
| pregnant | = | bun | – | ting | |
| buttock | = | bun | – | tut | |
| hunchback | = | bung | – | kok |
In the language of the semang, who are said to be the original people of Melayu, the word for hand is called tang; anything to do with hands, therefore, almost always features the word tang in the compound, including
| hand | = | tang | – | ngan |
| catch | = | tang | – | kap |
| support | = | tang | – | gung |
| detach | = | tang | – | gal |
| walking stick | = | tong | – | kat |
These original languages belonged to people who were not yet advanced, so the words arose mostly to refer to concrete things which were intimate and essential to persons living in wild places, such as those related to food, shelter, family life, foraging, fishing, and small-scale gardening. There was no rice farming on a large scale; there were no plows either, as we can see the word for plow (tenggala) is not indigenous, but a later import from Sanskrit.
2. Via Sanskrit. Subsequently, the khaek in Bharatavarsha began migrating to join the original inhabitants of Melayu, bringing with them their high-level civilization including language. Thus the Melayu language came to be influenced by Sanskrit just as Thai did. In other words, Sanskrit managed to capture the top spot in Bahasa Melayu. We can see how Malay, like Thai, is chock full of Sanskrit words. An average Thai sentence from a Thai person contains 60% or more Sanskrit; correspondingly, an average Malay sentence from a Malay person contains a similar amount of Sanskrit. A major literati once said, if one’s writing contains 80% or more Sanskrit, then the writer must be a literati; if the writing doesn’t reach that number but clears 60%, then the writer is a commoner; if it is lower than 60%, then the writer is considered a well-nigh uneducated person, that is to say a low-class person who doesn’t know anything. The Melayu adhere to Islam across the board, and Islam is stricter than any other religion. The language of Islam is Arabic, equivalent to Pali being the language of Buddhism. Even so, the language of Islam has not been able to erase Sanskrit in Melayu, just as Pali has not been able to erase Sanskrit in Thai. Not only does Sanskrit exist as individual words in the Malay lexicon; it also finds its way into much of the grammar of Bahasa Melayu, for example as prepositions; as modifying parts like verb conjugations, suffixes, and prefixes; or as part of compounds by way of sandhi. Sanskrit words spread into every category of words in Malay, no matter in commerce, in the sciences, in household objects, in flora and fauna, etc. For instance, yang meaning ‘which’ comes from the Sanskrit y, ys, yt; sudah meaning ‘already’ comes from the Sanskrit suddh. Common -ap verb endings in Malay (cakap=speak, tangkap=catch, hisap=suck) come from the Sanskrit ap. The ending –gal conveying an act of detaching also comes from the Sanskrit gl (tanggal=detach, tinggal=abandon, tunggal=solitary). With Sanskrit imports, Bahasa Melayu became more advanced, thanks to the words expressing inner feelings, opinion, morality, good and evil, as well as Brahmanism. For example, the Sanskrit hari for the sun led to the Malay hari for day and matahari forthe sun (mata means eye). Even though Sanskrit is also spoken, it is mostly used in written language rather than oral language. Much of it was adopted secondhand from stories in the Javanese language, as Sanskrit along with Brahmanism had become widespread in Java.
3. Via Arabic. After Sanskrit, Arabic comes to Bahasa Melayu via Islam, which is practiced by all Melayu people. For the most part, words related to Islamic custom form its basis, and there are quite a few: nafsu for lust, mana [makna] for meaning, shaer [syair] for poem, among others.
Apart from these three major sources, other languages that contributed to Bahasa Melayu are those such as Chinese and Farang languages that came into contact with it (just like with others around the world) mainly via trade relations, due to the adjacency to the sea of some Malay population centers. Spoken language, like all things, is better off as a result of intermixing. If our Thai language lacked the mixture of other languages, then its flavor and texture would scarcely leave an impression. Any dish that consists of a single ingredient is not appetizing, for a flavorful and inviting dish only comes together as a result of combining multiple ingredients and flavors together. Such is the case with language. Thus, linguistic intermixing is not an evil, whether in Phasa Thai, Bahasa Melayu, or any other language; if one is discerning in what to take and how to transform it into Thai so that both its body and its mind are compatible with the quirks of our language, then our lexicon will grow richer–a boon to language, in fact, or a watthanatham (becoming-cultured) of language as we call it nowadays. Besides, the languages and the words we speak are subject to the rules of worldly existence: birth, aging, sickness, and death are reserved for them as a matter of course. And the samsara of languages is naturally more clearly evident than the samsara of living beings. What distinguishes the samsara of languages is its eternal quality: it is unable to achieve non-existence, the ultimate ideal of nirvana. Language is born every day, as it ages and dies every day. Our Thai language has died innumerable deaths, as it has risen in countless rebirths. When a word we encounter is said to be authentically Thai but is unknown to us, it is either the corpse of a long-dead word from hundreds or thousands of years ago, or the body of a newborn with which we are not yet familiar. All living beings such as humanity are in pursuit of an ideal state, one of which is eternal life, and another of which is the cessation of life called nirvana. These two ideas are opposite: the pursuit of one necessarily forgoes the other; no one can possess both. The ideal of eternal life is an earthbound concern, whereas the pursuit of life’s cessation is a path leading beyond the world, to the end of all attachment to the world. Language belongs to the world; therefore, it only seeks to exist in perpetuity, and its occasional death only leads to rebirth in the samsara of languages. Nevertheless, language death is regrettable, while language birth is a necessity but not an object to seek after. One who neglects a language and lets it die or decay has done wrong. One who seeks a language birth in excess of the language’s own needs has likewise done wrong. But since language must go through death, we must make an effort to revitalize it with the mantra of reanimation, i.e, with the wisdom of each individual nation. For if don’t make an effort to keep alive an old language and let it die off, leaving only an unknown corpse, that decay will also befall the nation, because we will forget our past once and for all. There is no merit to causing language birth since the birth will take place whether or not we cause it, as it is a demerit not to revive a dead language or rejuvenate an old one or keep it alive indefinitely, because such an inaction is tantamount to destruction.
As Bahasa Melayu includes a mix of many other tongues, our consideration of an adopted word from Malay requires a more in-depth inquiry into whether that word has previously undergone a transformation into the mold of Bahasa Melayu. If not, and if its original form also independently arrived into Thai, then we shouldn’t at all count it as a Malay word, be it Chinese, Sanskrit, or Arabic. Arabic words for the most part don’t take on a different guise in Bahasa Melayu but retain their original form. The same applies to Chinese words, which are only slightly altered due to the Malay tongue. Many Sanskrit words, however, undergo a major transformation by Malay linguistic quirks. And we also adopt Sanskrit words directly from the source. To judge whether we adopted a given Sanskrit word directly from the source or indirectly by way of Malay is therefore a complicated affair. For example, the Thai word phasa was taken directly from Sanskrit, but the Malay bahasa was likewise taken from Sanskrit without formal alterations under Malay’s influence. We must therefore consider phasa not to be derived from Malay.
To survey the adoption of Malay words in Thai, we may employ two different methods corresponding to the two modes of entry into Thai lands, i.e., the direct and the indirect. We may survey the direct entries by word type and characteristics which will tell us whether a given word is originally Malay or Arabic or Sanskrit, and how it has been transformed in the Malay tongue by way of its overarching prefixes, suffixes, and inflections, for instance bertidoran (ber+tidor+an) or terlalu (ter+lalu) or bermainmain (ber+main+main). Or we may notice words in their language that bear a resemblance to those in our language, for instance buak or potong or pintu. The direct entries usually retain their original Melayu form in Thai, so they are easy to detect. The other kind which undergo major transformations in the Seven States, meanwhile, end up so far removed that they aren’t recognizable by their original form. We must therefore make careful observations based on the criteria of the tongue of people of the Seven States.
The Bahasa Melayu spoken among people of the Seven States is like a “backwater language” for the Melayu at large, due to its very heavy accent. In Pattani Province especially, it is a vernacular almost equivalent to a Prakrit language in relation to Sanskrit. Put in our terms, they speak the language of the capital city or the official language with a slurred twang. The twang is caused by the Seven States tongue’s proximity to Thai, including Thai cultural traditions, social conventions, and personality traits. Accordingly, Malay speech morphs into a variant separate from an authentic one. It may be said that Melayu people in Syonan and Melayu speakers in Pattani cannot understand each other, from the level of grammar down to the words in use.
The transformations of Bahasa Melayu in the Seven States involve the following operations:
1. Grammatical styles
A. Follow Thai word order, which can be the reverse of Malay word order. Example: ‘cows eats rice’ in Bahasa Melayu is padi dimakan lembu (‘rice is eaten by cows’); in the Seven States it turns into limu makæ padi (‘cows eat rice’) like a Thai sentence.
B. Cut out inessential prefixes. Example: ‘walk’ in Bahasa Melayu is berjalan; in the Seven States it is jalae.
C. Make simple words widely applicable. Example: the word for ‘eat’ in the Seven States applies to the consumption of food, water, as well as tobacco; in Bahasa Melayu it is ungrammatical to liberally use makan that way when it comes to water, which goes with minum (‘drink’), and tobacco, which goes with hisap (‘smoke’).
D. Abridge polysyllabic words into mostly monosyllabic ones, Examples: ‘want’ in Melayu is hendak; in the Seven States it is abridged to nak. ‘Ask (for something)’ in Melayu is minta; in the Seven States it is abridged to tok. Ibrahim is abridged to Braheng or Heng.
E. Use lowly or common language. Examples: ‘male person’ in Melayu is laki-laki, while ‘male animal’ is jantan; ‘female person’ is perempuan, while ‘female animal’ is betina; in the Seven States, however, the same words apply whether referring to people or to animals, with jatæ for the males and tino for the females, while laki-laki and perempuan are not in use.
F. Create calques from Thai. Examples: nam pla (‘fish sauce’) becomes ai ikæ; tham na (‘grow rice’) becomes wabü næ.
2. Pronunciation changes
A. A consonant that succeeds a nasal final consonant disappears, leaving that nasal final consonant to be the new initial consonant. Examples:
| Thai | Melayu | In the Seven States | |
|---|---|---|---|
| wua ‘cow’ | lembu | limu | } } } } nasal m } } |
| phae ‘goat’ | kembing | kameng | |
| chompu, farang ‘guava’ | jambu | jamu | |
| ao ‘take’ | ambil | amek | |
| du ‘watch’ | pandang | panae | } } } } nasal n } } |
| lamchiak ‘padanus’ | pandan (panan) | panae | |
| cha ‘will’ | hendak | nok | |
| chalat, samat ‘clever’ | pandai | pana | |
| riak ‘call’ | panggil | pa-nge | nasal ng |
Some exceptions include sampai ‘arrive’ which becomes sapa in the Seven States.
The nasal ny rarely appears as a final consonant. Both y and ny exist in Bahasa Melayu, and they sound distinct from each other just like in Phasa Thai. The letter y is a semi-vowel, that is, it can function as a consonant or as a vowel. As a vowel it is typically pronounced i but can morph into e, é, or ai. Sometimes in the Thai north, northeast, and south, ย (y) has a different sound than ญฺ (ny) unlike in the central region which shifts the latter’s pronunciation into the adjacent y sound. In Pattani, the pronunciation in the word ไหญฺ่ is very nasal and is clearly distinct from that in the word หยิบ. Bangkokians often say that country folk from the rural north, northeast, and south don’t speak clearly. Actually it is the Bangkokians who don’t know how to speak Thai.
B. The Seven States pronunciation of the letter ร (r) hardens like the French r sound (like in the word garçon) into almost resembling the Sanskrit ค (g) or the English g. Therefore:
| Thai | Melayu | In the Seven States |
|---|---|---|
| ma ‘come’ | mari | magi |
| khong ‘object’ | barang | baræ |
| khon ‘person’ | orang | awgæ |
C. The letter ช (j) takes on the y sound in every instance
| Thai | Melayu | In the Seven States |
|---|---|---|
| phrajao phaendin ‘king’ | raja | rayo |
| chanit ‘kind’ | jenis | yüni |
| chompu ‘guava’ | jambu | yamu |
| ratchakan ‘government’ | kerajaan | kriy-æ |
D. The nasal m and n tend to be pronounced ng
| Thai | Melayu | In the Seven States |
|---|---|---|
| tulakan ‘judge’ | hakim | hakeng |
| long ‘descend’ | turon | turong, tugong |
| a person’s name | Ibrahim | Büraheng, Waheng, Heng |
| tonmai ‘tree’ | pohon | phong |
E. The vowel sound i at the end of words tend to become the nasal ng
| Thai | Melayu | In the Seven States |
|---|---|---|
| thini ‘here’ | sini | sining |
| kæ ‘sheep’ | biribiri | biring |
| mia ‘wife’ | bini | bining |
F. The cluster br tends to be pronounced w
| Thai | Melayu | In the Seven States |
|---|---|---|
| a person’s name | Ibrahim | Waheng |
| kla ‘brave’ | berani | wani, waning |
G. The letter p tends to be pronounced ph when followed by h, or sometimes even without a succeeding h
| Thai | Melayu | In the Seven States |
|---|---|---|
| tonmai ‘tree’ | pohon | phong |
| liangdu ‘take care’ | pelihara | phægo |
| tonkha ‘thigh’ | paha | pho, phoho |
| phuak ‘clan’ | puak | phuak |
| nimitburut ‘male member’ | pelir | phlæ |
H. The sound of the letter h tends to disappear
| Thai | Melayu | In the Seven States |
|---|---|---|
| dam ‘black’ | hitam | itæ |
| pa ‘forest’ | hutan | utæ |
| fon ‘rain’ | hujan | uyæ |
I. The vowel sound a followed by a nasal consonant turns into æ
| Thai | Melayu | In the Seven States |
|---|---|---|
| kai ‘chicken’ | ayam | ayæ |
| dam ‘black’ | hitam | itæ |
| khang-na ‘in front’ | dihadapan | dapæ |
| khang-lang ‘behind’ | belakang | blakæ |
| singkhong ‘object’ | barang | bagæ |
| fak trongkham ‘across’ | seberang | sbügæ |
| kluay ‘banana’ | pisang | pisæ |
| tukkata ‘puppet’ | anakan | anok-kæ* |
| fon ‘rain’ | hujan | uyæ |
* Anakan is a big puppet or a traditional actor’s mask or masquerade costume. In the Kitab Hikayat or Tale of Panji Semirang, their theatrical portrayals are identical to Thai theater’s, including the masked heads called anakan. But puppets or dolls that are children’s toys are called anak-anakan, or a child of a puppet. Any small object that has a bigger counterpart is always referred to as a child of that bigger object. Thus, anak kayu refers to a small tree, not a fruit; the Thai counterpart lūk mai which means fighting maneuver in our sword-and-stick martial arts is also derived from this sense.
J. The vowel sound a followed by h is pronounced ok
| Thai | Melayu | In the Seven States |
|---|---|---|
| ban ‘home’ | rumah | ramok, umok |
| luk ‘child’ | anakh | anok |
| suk ‘ripe’ | masakh | masok |
| krot ‘angry’ | marah | marok, magok |
| Saiburi | Kedah | Küdok |
K. The vowel a without a final consonant is sometimes pronounced ok
| Thai | Melayu | In the Seven States |
|---|---|---|
| pha ‘bring’ | bawa | bowok |
| khaw ‘ask for’ | minta | mintok |
| phaw ‘dad’ | bapa | pok, bapok |
L. The sound ai in the final position is often pronounced a or æ*
* Subregions of the Seven States linguistically influenced by Kedah will pronounce æ. In Betong, for example, a canal or river is called sungæ, whereas in Pattani it is called sunga. This is because the linguistic culture of Kedah crossed over easily to Betong, having to pass only a narrow area of Perak. Pattani, however, was directly linguistically influenced by Kelantan. Thus, the pronunciation in each subregion corresponds to the source of its linguistic culture: Kelantan or Kedah.
| Thai | Melayu | In the Seven States |
|---|---|---|
| talat ‘market’ | kedai | keda, kedæ |
| thüng ‘until’ | sampai | sapa, sapæ |
| chai ‘use’ | pakai | paka, pakæ |
| kæng ‘curry’ | gulai | gula, gulæ |
| khlong ‘canal’ | sungai | sunga, sungæ |
| bua ‘lotus’ | teratai | tratæ, trata |
M. The sound a in the final position all becomes o
| Thai | Melayu | In the Seven States |
|---|---|---|
| titfai ‘ignite’ | nyala | nyalo |
| thi-nai ‘where’ | mana | mano |
| kæ ‘old’ | tua | thuwo |
| phicharana ‘discuss’ | bicara | bicaro, bicago |
| dawkmai ‘flower’ | bunga | bungo |
N. The sound t becomes th in some words
| Thai | Melayu | In the Seven States |
|---|---|---|
| kæ ‘old’ | tua | thuwo |
| pi ‘year’ | tahon | thawen |
O. The vowel ai when followed by the nasal n becomes the nasal ng
| Thai | Melayu | In the Seven States |
|---|---|---|
| len ‘play’ | main | mæng |
| pha ‘cloth’ | kain | kaheng |
| ün ‘other’ | lain | laheng |
P. The vowel ik/i can often be e/æ
| Thai | Melayu | In the Seven States |
|---|---|---|
| rak ‘love’ | kasih | kaseh |
| ao ‘take’ | ambil | amek |
| phæ ‘goat’ | kambing | kameng |
| choen ‘please’ | sila | sælo |
Q. Letters without vowel markers take on vowel sounds
| Thai | Melayu | In the Seven States |
|---|---|---|
| khaojai ‘understand’ | erti | iti |
| a person’s name | (I)brahim | Büraheng |
| ngan ‘work’ | kerja | kriyo |
| thi-nawn ‘sleeping’ | pertidoran | pirtidoran |
| wua ‘cow’ | lembu | limu |
| khwai ‘buffalo’ | kerbau | kurba |
Modified words such as these are already part of Bahasa Melayu, however. For example, stri ‘woman’ in Sanskrit becomes the Malay isteri; sthana from Sanskrit becomes istana ‘palace.’ Such is the principle of svarabhakti, or the use of a sound as an anchor.
R. The sound au in the final position tends to be pronounced a
| Thai | Melayu | In the Seven States |
|---|---|---|
| mit ‘knife’ | pisau | pisa |
| khwai ‘buffalo’ | kerbau | kerba |
S. Short vowel sounds with a final consonant often lose the final consonant
| Thai | Melayu | In the Seven States |
|---|---|---|
| lek ‘small’ | kecil | kecik |
| kiat-khran ‘lazy’ | malas | malak |
| khaosan ‘rice’ | beras | bürak, bügak |
| nak ‘heavy’ | berat | bürak, bügak |
| rawn ‘hot’ | panas | panak |
| wan ‘sweet’ | manis | manik |
| mot ‘finished’ | habis | hanik |
| rabu | cabut | cabuk |
| tham ‘do/make’ | buat | buak, wak |
| a person’s name | Mahammad | Mamak, Mak |
| chut ‘pull’ | tarekh | tarek, tagek |
| awk ’emerge/be issued’ | terbit | tubek |
T. The sound ua can become o
| Thai | Melayu | In the Seven States |
|---|---|---|
| name of a religious vow | puasa | poso |
| thangmot ‘all’ | semua | semo |
U. The sounds i~y blend into ia
| Thai | Melayu | In the Seven States |
|---|---|---|
| thuk-thuk ‘each’ | tiyap-tiyap | tiap-tiap |
| ning ‘still/silent’ | diyam | diam |
| Thai | Siyam | Siam |
This blending has already happened in Malay, however. But the sounds i-y are still noticeable, whereas in the Seven States the diphthong is so definite its parts aren’t noticeable.
V. The sounds a~i blend into æ
| Thai | Melayu | In the Seven States |
|---|---|---|
| khræ ‘bench’ | gerai | gigæ |
W. The sounds i~a become a or æ
| Thai | Melayu | In the Seven States |
|---|---|---|
| khrai ‘who’ | siapa | sapo |
| khoey ‘usual’ | biasa | bæso |
X. The initial sound r often disappears when combined with the vowel u
| Thai | Melayu | In the Seven States |
|---|---|---|
| ban ‘home’ | rumah | umok |
| ya ‘grass’ | rumput | upuk |
In addition, the language in the Seven States is used in an abbreviated fashion, where both sounds and words are clipped. The clipped sounds are many, for example saudara is clipped to sdago, so amat saudara is clipped to mok sadago. The clipped words are many as well, for example amat is clipped to mok, datok to tok, aku to ku (‘I’ in Thai as well), kamu to mu (müng ‘you’ in Thai). This way, tulang rahang ‘jawbone’ is clipped and elided into tulægæng which resembles the Thai word talængkæng ‘gallows.’
Besides, the language in the Seven States also switches sounds in a word. While uncommon, it shows up here and there, for example ‘why’ or apa sebab in Melayu becomes bapo (abbreviated from sebab apo) in the Seven States, cakap becomes kæcæk in the Seven States. This transposition of sounds occurs in virtually every language, including Thai: for example, sangayana becomes sangayanay. Pali, too, switches the sounds of Sanskrit, for example ‘tongue’ in Sanskrit is jihva but is jivha in Pali, ‘mosquito in Sanskrit is masaka but is makasa in Pali.
Once Bahasa Melayu undergoes the aforesaid transformations in the Seven States, the result flows into Phasa Thai, at times as such, but at times through yet another layer of transformation, such as balai ‘reception hall’ which turns into phalai in Thai.
Bahasa Melayu is a language in which a word’s appearance changes when it’s a verb. In a sentence, a verb must contain one of the three prefixes: per, ter, and ber. For example, anak ‘child’ and beranak ‘give birth’; cengang (the Thai jang-ngang) ‘astonished’ and tercengang ‘be astonished’; isteri ‘woman [wife]’ and beristerikan ‘make into a woman [marry].’ Sometimes sounds are added to a lone initial consonant, for example pegang ‘grab’ becomes memegang, suroh ‘order’ becomes menyaroh, tari ‘dance’ becomes menarikan, nyanyi ‘sing’ becomes menyanyikan, tangis ‘cry’ becomes menangis. The addition of sounds at the initial consonant leads to formal changes similar to the method in Pali and Sanskrit where, for instance, abhi-antara becomes abbhantara, ati- becomes acca-, etc. At any rate, this use of prefixes, especially per- and ter-, appears in many Thai words—perhaps we took it from Bahasa Melayu? For example, talawd ‘thorough’might translate to causing lawd ‘pass through’; talād ‘market’ might translate to causing lād ‘slope’; tralōng might translate to causing lōng ‘clear’; plot ‘shed’might translate to causing lot ‘decreased’; pluk ‘rouse’ might translate to causing luk ‘rise’; plong ‘put down’ might translate to causing long ‘descend’; prōng ‘airy’ might translate to causing lōng ‘clear’ (r and l are interchangeable); prāp might translate to causing rāb ‘flat’; palād ‘odd’ does not translate to causing lād, however, since palād might instead be a corruption or akkharavirudh of the Sanskrit prahlād which means ‘delight.’ Initially, palād was used to refer only to the kind of oddness that is tinged with delight, but subsequent meanings drifted very far from there, causing us confusion in the present. There is also the addition of k- which modifies the meaning in yet another way, for example krāb ‘prostrate’ translates to kaw rāb ‘as a result, flat’; klua ‘fear’ translates to kaw rua ‘as a result, tremor’; krēng ‘dread’ translates to kaw lēng ‘as a result, fix on’; but that kreng translates to ‘skinny’ is because it comes from the Malay kering ‘dry.’ The addition of ph- has a similar effect: for example, phliang ‘blunder’translates to phaw liang ‘somewhat avoidable’; phrāi ‘agleam’ translates to phaw rāi ‘somewhat lined up’; phrāng ‘camouflage’ translates to phaw rāng ‘somewhat hazy’; phlao ‘lighten’ translates to phaw lao ‘just the outline.’ The letter พ (ph)was used in ancient times as an abbreviation of phaw ‘father’ as in khaphajao ‘I’from khaphawjao ‘your father’s servant’and phanahuajaothan ‘Your Excellency’from phawnahuajaothan. Kha (ข้า) means ‘person’; playing cards with six kha (ขา ‘leg’)means playing cards with six people—we don’t divide the number by two and take it to mean three players. So kha (ข้า) is not a vulgar term. The letter ท (th)is short for than ‘respected one’: thanāi ‘lawyer’ means respected one who is the nāi or master. The letter ต (t) is at times short for tua ‘body,’ such as taklaewtahān ‘brave one’from tua klaew tua hān; at times it is short for taw ‘stump,’ such as tapān ‘bridge’ from tawpān—then we altered it to sapān so it ceased to make sense. These formulations aren’t immutable rules but must be considered on a case by case basis, since language is a delicate and highly civilized thing—we can’t just bend it to our will. But to claim that it has no underlying principles is also incorrect. Language is thus an art and a science, not just an art or a science. What I have formulated is but a proposition; may the experts be so kind as to point out what’s right and what’s wrong to further our philological knowledge.
In sum, the presence of Bahasa Melayu in Phasa Thai consists of
- Pure Bahasa Melayu via direct entry in the central region rather than passing through the south
- Transformed Bahasa Melayu via the Seven States
- Transformed Bahasa Melayu via the Seven States and then Thai-ified once again
The examination of Bahasa Melayu words in Thai is therefore a very complicated matter that requires a great deal of scrutiny. One cannot set about looking into chests and caskets the way we do with words from other languages. Even in other languages, the examination of words should be done in depth on the basis of their constituent elements and grammatical constructs and with the theoretical support of philology. We may make mistakes, but that’s quite unlikely. Nonetheless, one key thing to keep in mind is that in order to understand the meaning of a word, one must try saying it out loud and letting one’s mind be carried along with it. Poets in the moment of composing a poem are typically carried away by emotions of the mind. A mental image arises, which they express in words that resonate with their feelings, and then they transfer those deeply-felt words to the nib of the pen. They don’t have to fuss about touching up their poems, for their choice of words naturally follows those words that arise in their feeling minds. That is why poets have their own private language, and yet it is correct language. It has never been the case that any poet would refer to a dictionary as the basis for the work they penned. As a pleasing saying goes, “With a dictionary near at hands [sic] he becomes a mad poet.”
Sanam Ratsadon 