Offered By	Faculty of Asian Studies
Academic Contact	Ms Chintana Sandilands

With over sixty million speakers, Thai is the national language of Thailand and has a literary heritage extending back some 700 years. Lao is closely related; with about twenty million speakers it is spoken both in Laos and in north-eastern Thailand. The languages use similar writing systems.

The major in Thai consists of eight Asian Language courses including (for beginners) Thai 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, 3A and one of the following: Reading Thai Sources; Modern Thai Prose; or Traditional Thai Literature. This sequence develops conversational fluency and leads to proficiency in written forms of Thai. A course in Lao is available to students with intermediate proficiency in Thai. Burmese 1A, which is offered every second year, may also be counted towards a Thai major. Bachelor of Asian Studies students are free to complement a Thai language sequence with courses relating to both South and Southeast Asia.

The National Thai Studies Centre, based in the Faculty of Asian Studies is an Australia-wide Centre for the study of Thailand, with extensive research in anthropology, economics, environment, demography, geography, history, linguistics and other fields. Library holdings are outstanding in these areas. Students of the Thai language may pursue advanced study through the reading of Thai-language texts in these disciplines.

Students enrolled in the Bachelor of Asian Studies (Thai) will take advanced language and disciplinary study at a selected Thai university, normally in the third year of their degree. Occasionally the option to study in a Lao university may be available.

Requirements

The Asian Language major (Thai) may comprise courses from the Summary of Courses page and must include Thai 3A and either THAI3003 or THAI3006.

The information published on the Study at ANU 2009 website applies to the 2009 academic year only. All information provided on this website replaces the information contained in the Study at ANU 2008 website.