Chinese And Thai Appellation Comparative Study

Addressing terms have always been a special part of a lexical system as they represent the historical and national ethnicity of humanity, especially in kinship, which looks back upon great differences in every language. According to that, the concept of addressing terms is frequently used in the anthropological and linguistic methods in order to identify the system and structure of words.In the historical Chinese records, it is mentioned that since the period of the Huns, which is almost 2,000 years ago from today, the Chinese language has become an important language with a big influence on others in Southeast Asia, including Thai.In the case of Thai language, the influence of Chinese had started before "Tai" moved to the south. At that period of time, "Tai" still used Dong Tai that was one branch of Chinese languages. Moreover, in the past 200 years, there were many Chinese people, mainly from the states of Chao Zhou and Hai Nan, moving to Thailand and bringing languages such as "Tae Jiw". With the large Chinese population in Thailand, Chinese and Thai languages were integrated and became today's Thai language, especially with regard to addressing terms.However, although both Thai and Chinese languages stem from Sino-Tibetan, and Thai addressing terms were affected by Chinese in many perspectives in the past, the developments of Thai and Chinese were independent from each other. Today Thai and Chinese include the similarities and differences of either language, which are the most interesting characteristics for researchers who plan to utilize addressing terms in Chinese and Thai languages especially for education purposes.Therefore, these are the topics that a comparative study of addressing terms in Chinese and Thai language systems, will need to cover。 Thesis consist of kinship terms ,social addressing terms,Chinese and Thai cognate addressing terms along with the use of addressing terms, and the factors influencing the use of addressing terms. The outcome of this research will not only be useful for people who are interested in Thai-Chinese language studies but also for China-Thai or Thai-China translators who are in need of clear translation methods against a general background of language, culture, belief, politics, and religion.In our conclusion, we found that sex, age and relationship are the three main factors that influence both Thai and Chinese addressing terms. Moreover, the addressing terms for groups of kinship, with their respective pronouns, share the same natural characteristics as all languages in Southeast Asia.