Thai Language Blog

Karen
The Karen tribe is the largest of the hill tribes in Thailand, while world-wide they consist of over 7 million people (about the same population as Hong Kong and Switzerland). They have their own flag, and is the only tribe in Thailand with their own written language. If you would like to see what their written language looks like, check out this Karen news website for an example. To the untrained eye, it looks very similar to Burmese and Mon . . . which makes sense, considering their related history.

The famous ‘giraffe’ women are a small subset of the Karen tribe. The heavy rings around their neck push the shoulder bones down, making the neck appear long (but it is not actually stretched). They believe a long neck is a sign of beauty, but also is considered a must-do tradition. Their villages are often described as ‘human zoos’ due to the strong negative influence of tourism on their lives. Tourist operators and government officials often ban the women from leaving the villages.

As there are no real stereotypical Karen outfits, there is no easy way to identify the typical Karen. So I have no pictures for you.

Hmong
The Hmong is the second largest hill tribe group in Thailand. Most of the Hmong in Thailand are refugees from communist Laos during the cold war. Some have been forced into refugee camps and later force-repatriated by the Thai government ( source).

Although most Hmong gave up their traditional outfits by the 90’s, there are several stereotypical outfits that the women occasionally wear that can help you identify them. The most common one you’ll find in Thailand is as shown in this image:

image: Hmong women wearing traditional outfits made from modern materials

Occasionally you’ll see very young children at popular tourist destinations wearing these outfits, singing and dancing all day every day. They’ll take pictures with you in exchange for 10 baht and some candy, and seem to enjoy their ‘job’. Their mothers aren’t far away, watching for their safety.

Google offers many more pictures of traditional Hmong outfits. And this site has more Hmong pics.

This is one of my favorite Hmong songs. As you can see they’ve modernized quite a bit!

There are many different hill tribes in Thailand, so the purpose of the next series of posts is to help you learn how to identify each. The below chart lists the names of several major tribes in order of population in Thailand. Most Thai’s do not know the names of each, nor the difference between each, of the various hill tribe groups. So this would only be useful information if you found yourself in a conversation about them.

The listed population is that of only in Thailand, where as world population of the various tribes is often significantly higher. As there is no population census conducted for these tribes, you’ll find various differing estimates on the web. The below estimated population figures are not to be considered definitive in any sense. This is only a short list, whereas there are many other tribes located in Thailand. Some even number less than a thousand.

The different groups each have their own traditional outfits, helping you to distinguish between them. However, most only wear these outfits for special occasions like weddings, holidays, and tourist photos, while choosing to wear more western clothing for day-to-day activities. Even within the individual tribes there are sub-tribes that dress very differently, too. As such, this guide will not be all-inclusive. Images linked from other sites do not belong to me, while images served/linked here do. Also, note that google image search mixes up the tribes, so do not use it as a guide unless I specify otherwise.

to be continued…

One of our guides told us of her story, of why she was doing what she was doing. She said she ran away from her mom in the city because she liked working with the Akha tribe. Her mom apparently wasn’t very happy that, as a result, she wouldn’t get a university education. One of the organizers, which we met at ‘base camp’ before we took that long hike to the remote village, was an American guy. He got a masters degree in engineering, but didn’t want to work in engineering. So he moved to Thailand to help with the NGO. He also seemed to speak intermediate level Thai. His job was to teach the children how to use computers (really old computers with flaky slow as molasses internet speeds).

Anyway, later that day we walked to a little school house to teach the village children. It was actually in that little school house in the middle of no-where that I first learned the very basics of how to write Thai. As part of a government and NGO initiative, teaching Thai and teaching about Thailand is a means to help the tribal people integrate into Thai society. As the tribes aren’t ‘Thai’, and have no central authority, they are a powerless minority that’s been historically abused by native Thais and the Thai government. They aren’t allowed to own land, and many don’t have citizenship, and so people who want their land occasionally evict them by force. As the tribes crossed into Thailand illegally, they are often considered illegal immigrants. We asked the tribe why did they come to Thailand. They said their last home was overrun by dangerous drug gangs/smugglers, and had to flee for safety about 25 years ago.

This reminds me of a story they told me. NGO’s been working on filling out the paperwork for years to give the hill tribe people official Thai citizenship. They would ask for names, and then create a Thai spelling of the name to go on the citizenship paperwork. However, one particular boy had a very unfortunate name. It was the sound of a tongue click. No one knew how to spell that one . . .

I don’t know if tongue clicking is an actual word or not in the Akha language, but I heard it occasionally in the village. For example, they’d use it to scornfully scare the dog out of the hut. Then one day, when their 20-something year old son came into the hut, they used it on him until he left, too . . .

image: Photo taken on the last day of the trip. The man and woman in the center are hill-tribesmen. I looked much younger back then . . .

 vocabulary: