what language do they speak in thai?
Tai–Kadai languages
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 Common American versions include : 

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 ( English ) English subtitled ( Closed Captions ) scene from the " Dien Bien Phu " docudrama by Schoendoerffer ( 1992 ) 

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 Khmer / kmɛər / or Cambodian ( natively ភាសាខ ្ មែរ [ pʰiːəsaː kʰmaːe ] , or more formally ខេមរភាសា [ kʰeɛmaʔraʔ pʰiːəsaː ] ) is the language of the Khmer people and the official language of Cambodia . With approximately 16 million speakers , it is the second most widely spoken Austroasiatic language ( after Vietnamese ) . Khmer has been influenced considerably by Sanskrit and Pali , especially in the royal and religious registers , through Hinduism and Buddhism . The more colloquial registers have influenced , and have been influenced by , Thai , Lao , Vietnamese , and Cham , all of which , due to geographical proximity and long @-@ term cultural contact , form a sprachbund in peninsular Southeast Asia . It is also the earliest recorded and earliest written language of the Mon – Khmer family , predating Mon and by a significant margin Vietnamese , due to Old Khmer being the language of the historical empires of Chenla , Angkor and , presumably , their earlier predecessor state , Funan . 

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 Some language study programs use the IPA to teach pronunciation . For example , in Russia ( and earlier in the Soviet Union ) and mainland China , textbooks for children and adults for studying English and French consistently use the IPA . English teachers and textbooks in Taiwan tend to use the Kenyon and Knott system , a slight typographical variant of the IPA . 

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 Languages not indigenous to the islands are also taught in select schools . Mandarin is used in Chinese schools catering to the Chinese Filipino community . Islamic schools in Mindanao teach Modern Standard Arabic in their curriculum . French , German , Japanese , Korean , Spanish are taught with the help of foreign linguistic institutions . The Department of Education began teaching the Malay languages of Indonesian and Malaysian in 2013 . 
