Saek
Saek is a member of the Tai family of languages, which are spoken across a wide area of northern Southeast Asia, from northern Vietnam and Southern China in the east to Assam in the west. The family includes Thai and Lao, the national languages of Thailand and Laos, as well as dozens of languages with speakers varying in numbers from a few thousand to several million.
The Saek people are believed to have originated in Vietnam and to have migrated into Laos and Thailand at least two hundred years ago. Today, Saek is spoken in Muang, Na Wa, and Si Songkhram districts of Nakhon Phanom Province in northeast Thailand near the border with Laos, and also on the opposite side of the Mekong River in Laos itself. There are no reliable statistics about the size of the Saek-speaking population, but one estimate puts it at thousands rather than tens of thousands. Schliesinger reports an estimated total population of Saek to be about 25,000 including both those in Laos and Thailand. The 1995 official Lao census placed the number of Saek at 2,745.
In culture, Saek people are indistinguishable from other Thai and Lao people in northeast Thailand and adjacent Laos. Most Saek speakers in Thailand speak not only their own language but also the local northeastern Thai dialect and standard central Thai. The future of the language is precarious. Thirty years ago it was noted that children understood the Saek spoken by their parents and grandparents yet usually answered in Isan (Thailand) or Lao (Laos) when spoken to. Since then, increasing migration to urban areas in search of a better life, and marriage outside the Saekspeaking community, have taken a further toll.
Saek is of particular interest to scholars interested in the history of the Thai language, because its differences from other Tai languages in Thailand set it apart. This is because it belongs to the northern branch of Tai languages, spoken mainly in southern China, unlike the majority of Tai languages in Thailand and Laos, which belong to the southwestern branch of the family.
Although Saek does not differ from Thai in syntax, the languages are not mutually intelligible. Saek has six tones and a vowel system similar to Thai, but a number of initial consonant clusters that are so strange to average Standard Thai speakers' ears that, on hearing Saek spoken, they will often assume that the language must be Cambodian.
For linguists perhaps the most curious feature of the Saek sound system is the final l, which is not found in any other Tai language. Possible theories are that it is evidence of contact with Mon-Khmer languages, such as Cambodian, which do have final l, that it is preserving an otherwise lost feature of Proto-Tai, the parent language of all present-day Tai languages, or that it reflects some wider affiliation between the Tai and Malayo-Polynesian languages. This, and the more general question of how and why Saek came to be separated from other northern Tai languages, still remain to be answered.
Further Reading
Chamberlain, James R. (1998) "The Origin of the Saek: Implications for Tai and Vietnamese History." Journal of the Siam Society 86, 1 and 2: 27–48.
Chazee, Laurent. (1999) The People of Laos: Rural and Ethnic Diversities. Bangkok, Thailand: White Lotus Press.
Gedney, William J. (1970) "The Saek Language of Nakorn Pathom Province." Journal of the Siam Society 58, 1: 67–87.
Schliesinger, Joachim. "Saek." In Tai Groups of Thailand: Profile of the Existing Groups. Bangkok, Thailand: White Lotus Press, 2: 96–102.
Smalley, William A. (1994) Linguistic Diversity and National Unity: Language Ecology in Thailand. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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