SOME OF THE LANGUAGE CHARACTERISTICS OF KING CHULALONGKORN’S ROYAL TRAVEL WRITING, KLAI BAN

Abstract

This article has a focus on linguistic features in royal Travel writing, Klai Ban which was written by King Chulalongkorn. The study found that language characteristics in royal writing, Klai Ban were classified into 4 aspects: 1. orthography, 2. word characteristics, 3. phrase and sentence characteristics and 4. idiom characteristics. They can be divided into sub-characteristics: 1. Orthography, including consonants , vowels, tone marks and marks, 2. word characteristics, including English loanwords, word composition and words that had the same meaning and belonged to the same word category with different forms, 3. phrase and sentence characteristics, including changes in word orders in a phrase and changes in word orders in a sentence, and 4. idiom characteristics, including idioms that were used in the same meaning both in the past and in the present and idioms that had the same meaning in the past and in the present but had only one different component. This study will benefit Thais who have the opportunity to read writings by the king, klai ban. These people will understand the differences in language characteristics and be able to study more deeply.