Thai vs Chinese
Is Thai similar to Chinese? How close are they?
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
Not closely: Thai is a Kra-Dai language with its own script, while Chinese is Sino-Tibetan written in characters. They share typology, being tonal, analytic and mostly subject-verb-object, and Thai has borrowed some words from southern Chinese varieties such as Teochew.
The verdict
Both tonal, analytic, with classifiers and sentence-final particles. Vocabulary overlap is small (mainly food and trade words from Teochew).
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.