Yet, if one were to ask someone at the Education Ministry about the number of languages spoken in Thailand, the answer would probably be 10. Obviously, the person asked must be thinking of the different versions of Thai spoken in the four regions, several Chinese dialects as well as the ethnic languages in the North and West, such as Hmong and Karen.
In reality though, Thailand is far more linguistically diverse than commonly thought. In the 1990s, Mahidol University, with support from the Culture Ministry, undertook a language-mapping project showing where approximately 70 different languages were spoken in Thailand. The map, which can be found at www.ethnologue.com/map/TH_n, shows 69 different languages being spoken in Thailand, not including Chinese dialects such as Teochiew, Hokkien, Hainanese, to name a few.