Thai vs Chinese
How to tell Thai from Chinese
Thai and Chinese are unrelated, but both are tonal and analytic with subject-verb-object order. Thai has borrowed some words from Teochew and other southern Chinese varieties, but its learned vocabulary comes from Pali and Sanskrit.
The short answer
Thai script is curly and looped, with vowel marks above and below the line and no spaces between words (ภาษาไทย). Chinese characters are square and blocky. In speech, Thai has five tones and long versus short vowels, while Mandarin has four tones and retroflex sounds like zh and sh.
The verdict
Loopy letters with no spaces between words mean Thai; square characters mean Chinese.
Closeness score
6 / 30
Mutually intelligible?
no
Shared vocabulary
Small: mostly Teochew loans for food, kinship and trade
Which first?
No strong order effect; pick by where you live.
Kungfucius says: Both sing; they just learnt different songs.
Side by side
phasa thai中文
ZhōngwénThai uses an abugida derived from the Khmer script, written left to right with no spaces between words.