Languages of Thailand
Province Khmer% in 1990 Khmer% in 2000
Buriram 0.3% 27.6%
Chanthaburi 0.6% 1.6%
Maha Sarakham 0.2% 0.3%
Roi Et 0.4% 0.5%
Sa Kaew N/A 1.9%
Sisaket 30.2% 26.2%
Surin 63.4% 47.2%
Trat 0.4% 2.1%
Ubon Ratchathani 0.8% 0.3%
Officially recognized languages -- Provincial breakdown
Thailand, and its neighbor Laos, are dominated by languages of the Southwestern Tai family. Karen languages are spoken along the border with Burma, Khmer is spoken near Cambodia and Malay in the south near Malaysia. The following table comprises all 62 ethnolinguistic groups recognised by the Royal Thai Government in the 2011 Country Report to the UN Committee responsible for the International Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, available from the Department of Rights and Liberties Promotion of the Thai Ministry of Justice. The following table shows all the language families of Northeast Thailand, as recognised in the same report. Note that population numbers are for the Northeast region only. Languages may have additional speakers outside the Northeast. The Thai hill tribes speak numerous small languages, many Chinese retain varieties of Chinese, and there are half a dozen sign languages. The Ethnologue reports 73 living languages are used in Thailand. The Royal Thai Government's 2011 Country Report to the Committee Responsible for the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, relying mainly on the 2005 Ethnolinguistic Maps of Thailand data, lists 62 languages.