The Asia-Pacific region is known for its linguistic diversity, thanks to the different tongues used in countries such as Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and East Timor. However, Thailand has not been included in this list given its near universal use of standard Thai nationwide.
Mahidol University professor and researcher Suwilai Premsrirat said: "Thailand thinks of itself as being essentially monolingual."