Isan Language (Northeastern Thai)

Isan is the everyday language of อีสาน (Isan, also spelled Isaan or Esan), the high, dry plateau of northeastern Thailand between the Mekong and the Phetchabun mountains; the name comes from Sanskrit īśāna, 'northeast'. People call their speech ภาษาอีสาน (phasa isan), in formal and academic usage ภาษาไทยถิ่นอีสาน, 'the Thai of the northeastern region', and linguists give it its own code, tts. It is closely related to Lao within a dialect continuum: the lands west of the Mekong were Lao country for centuries, came under Siam in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and stayed in Thailand when the river became the border with French Laos in 1893. Speakers from Khon Kaen and Vientiane can generally understand each other.

There is no separate Isan alphabet in daily use. Isan speakers learn standard Thai at school and read and write it at work and in the news, and when they write Isan in songs, comedy, shop signs, chat and social media, they commonly use Thai letters, though spellings vary and do not consistently mark Isan tones. This page shows Thai letters commonly used for Isan, though it does not give one standardized spelling for every Isan word or tone. Lao in Laos is written in the Lao alphabet, which has its own collection.

Isan language vs Thai: everyday Isan words and phrases

Much of the basic vocabulary of Isan differs from standard Thai. 'Not' is บ่ (bo) instead of ไม่, so 'no problem' is บ่เป็นหยัง rather than ไม่เป็นไร, and 'how are you?' is สบายดีบ่. To speak is เว้า (wao) instead of พูด, to do is เฮ็ด (het) instead of ทำ, to look is เบิ่ง (boeng) instead of ดู, 'where?' is ไส (sai), so ไปไส is 'where are you going?', 'I' is ข้อย (khoi) and a polite 'you' is เจ้า (chao). Delicious is แซบ (saep) instead of อร่อย, very is หลาย (lai), and 'really' is อีหลี (ili), so แซบหลาย and แซบอีหลี are the praise every Isan cook wants. The friendly particle เด้อ (doe) softens a sentence, as in คิดฮอดเด้อ, 'I miss you'.

Some differences are regular sound changes. In many cognates, Thai r corresponds to Isan h or l, written ฮ or ล: to love is ฮัก (hak, Thai รัก) and a house is เฮือน (huean). In many words, Thai ch corresponds to Isan s, written ซ: an elephant is ซ้าง (sang, Thai ช้าง). Isan also keeps the ny sound of Lao, which Thai lacks, so a word like ใหญ่, big, is said nyai. Isan is tonal like Thai, usually described with five or six tones that vary from province to province, but Thai-script Isan spelling is not standardized and may leave tone distinctions unmarked, so a word can look standard yet sound Isan.

Tai Noi, Tham and Thai letters: how Isan has been written

Before Thai schooling reached the northeast in the early twentieth century, Isan was written in two scripts, Tai Noi and Tham. ไทน้อย (Tai Noi, 'little Tai') was used for letters, records and folk poetry; it is the ancestor of the modern Lao alphabet, and it has no Unicode block of its own. ตัวธรรม (tua tham, 'Dhamma letters'), the Lao form of the Tai Tham script, was used for Buddhist texts on palm leaves in temple libraries; it belongs to the same family as the Lanna script of Northern Thai, whose letters are in Unicode and gathered in the Northern Thai collection.

Today both are seen mostly on temple murals, palm-leaf manuscripts and museum labels, and in the work of teachers and monks who keep them alive, while everyday Isan is written in Thai letters. Thai spelling keeps silent letters and several letters for one sound, while Lao spelling writes words more nearly as they are said, so the same word can look different on the two banks of the Mekong even when it sounds the same; short words such as Isan ฮัก and Lao ຮັກ mean love, but use different script characters.

The Thai alphabet as Isan uses it

The Thai script is an abugida: each consonant carries a vowel of its own, and other vowels are added as signs around it. It has 44 consonant letters, of which two, ฃ and ฅ, are obsolete but still recited in the alphabet. Several letters stand for the same sound because they were made to spell Sanskrit and Pali words letter for letter: ท ธ ฑ ฒ ถ ฐ all sound th, and ส ศ ษ ซ all sound s. The consonants are sorted into three classes, middle (ก จ ด ต บ ป อ …), high (ข ฉ ถ ผ ฝ ส ห …) and low (ค ง ช น พ ม ย ร ล ว …), and the class, the vowel length, the final sound and the tone mark together decide a syllable's tone. Lao letters are sorted into the same three classes, which is one reason Thai spelling suits Isan so well.

Vowel signs are drawn before the consonant (เ แ โ ใ ไ), after it (ะ า ำ), above it (ิ ี ึ ื ั) or below it (ุ ู). The four tone marks ่ ้ ๊ ๋ sit above the consonant, ์ thanthakhat silences a letter in loanwords, and อ represents the glottal onset of a vowel-initial syllable. Thai writes no spaces between words, only between phrases and sentences. Its own punctuation is small: ๆ repeats the word before it (ม่วนๆ, 'fun, fun'), ฯ abbreviates a long name (กรุงเทพฯ), and ฯลฯ means 'and so on'. Thai digits ๐ ๑ ๒ ๓ ๔ ๕ ๖ ๗ ๘ ๙ work like 0–9 and appear on official papers and temple signs, though Western digits are more common in daily life.

How to type Isan in Thai letters, and copy and paste them

The easiest way is to click or tap a letter in the grid to copy it. To type Isan yourself, add the Thai keyboard: on Windows in Settings, Time & language, Language & region, Add a language, Thai, then switch layouts with Win+Space; on a Mac in System Settings, Keyboard, Input Sources, where both the standard Kedmanee layout and the newer Pattachote layout are offered; on Android (Gboard) and iPhone by adding Thai under keyboard languages, then the globe key switches. Kedmanee is what people in Thailand learn, and it writes Isan too, since the letters are the same.

Type in the order Thai is stored: a front vowel if there is one, then the consonant, then the vowel sign above or below, then the tone mark. So แซบ is แ + ซ + บ, บ่ is บ + ่, and เว้า is เ + ว + ้ + า. The Thai block has been in Unicode since version 1.0 (1991), at U+0E00–U+0E7F, so Unicode-capable software can encode them; display still needs a Thai-capable font. In HTML each one can be written by its number: ก is ก, ฿ is the baht sign ฿.

Where the Isan language is spoken

CLDR lists language-population estimates of about 17 million for Northeastern Thai in Thailand 🇹🇭 and 5.5 million for Lao in Laos; these figures do not establish that most Lao speakers live in Thailand. Isan is spoken across the twenty provinces of the northeast, from Nong Khai and Nakhon Phanom on the Mekong to Khorat (Nakhon Ratchasima), Khon Kaen, Udon Thani and Ubon Ratchathani, and by the many Isan people who work in Bangkok, where it is heard on building sites, in taxis and at food stalls. In the southern provinces of Surin, Buriram and Sisaket many people also speak Northern Khmer or Kuy at home.

Isan lives in its culture: หมอลำ mor lam singing to the bamboo mouth organ แคน khaen 🎶, the ผีตาโขน Phi Ta Khon masked festival of Dan Sai in Loei 🎭, the บุญบั้งไฟ Bun Bang Fai rocket festival of Yasothon that calls the rain in May 🚀, the candle festival of Ubon Ratchathani at the start of Buddhist Lent 🕯️, the elephant round-up of Surin 🐘, and above all its food, eaten everywhere in Thailand: ส้มตำ som tam, called ตำบักหุ่ง in Isan, ลาบ larb, ไก่ย่าง kai yang, ปลาแดก pla daek and ข้าวเหนียว sticky rice 🍚🌶️🍗. For the standard Thai alphabet see the Thai collection, for the flag and the emoji of the country the Thailand collection, for the Lao alphabet the Lao collection, and for the other regional languages the Northern Thai (Lanna script) and Southern Thai collections; the Northern Khmer and Khmer collections cover the neighbours to the south.