Language
Nearly all ethnic Chinese in Thailand speak only Thai, but an extremely small number (mostly elders) are also conversant in Chinese with varying degrees of fluency. The Teochew dialect of Chinese is used as a commercial lingua franca among a very few elderly Chinese business circles, principally in Chinatown of Bangkok. The proficiency of the Thai language among the ethnic Chinese is attributed to the fact that Thai is a compulsory subject in all schools, while students from a handful of Chinese-medium schools (fewer than 0.1% of all schools) are more proficient in Chinese than those from other schools in general.
Read more about this topic: Thai Chinese
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content ... it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble and from babble to confusion.”
—René Daumal (1908–1944)
“There is ... in every child a painstaking teacher, so skilful that he obtains identical results in all children in all parts of the world. The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one can teach them anything!”
—Maria Montessori (1870–1952)
“The writer’s language is to some degree the product of his own action; he is both the historian and the agent of his own language.”
—Paul De Man (1919–1983)