text:
Thai language

Thai, or Central Thai (historically Siamese; ภาษาไทย), is a Tai language of the Kra–Dai language family spoken by the Central Thai, Mon, Lao Wiang, Phuan people in Central Thailand and the vast majority of Thai Chinese enclaves throughout the country. It is the sole official language of Thailand.

Thai is the most spoken of over 60 languages of Thailand by both number of native and overall speakers. Over half of its vocabulary is derived from or borrowed from Pali, Sanskrit, Mon and Old Khmer. It is a tonal and analytic language. Thai has a complex orthography and system of relational markers. Spoken Thai, depending on standard sociolinguistic factors such as age, gender, class, spatial proximity, and the urban/rural divide, is partly mutually intelligible with Lao, Isan, and some fellow Thai topolects. These languages are written with slightly different scripts, but are linguistically similar and effectively form a dialect continuum.

Thai language is spoken by over 69 million people (2020). Moreover, most Thais in the northern (Lanna) and the northeastern (Isan) parts of the country today are bilingual speakers of Central Thai and their respective regional dialects because (Central) Thai is the language of television, education, news reporting, and all forms of media. A recent research found that the speakers of the Northern Thai language (also known as Phasa Mueang or Kham Mueang) have become so few, as most people in northern Thailand now invariably speak Standard Thai, so that they are now using mostly Central Thai words and only seasoning their speech with the "Kham Mueang" accent. Standard Thai is based on the register of the educated classes by Central Thai and ethnic minorities in the area along the ring surrounding the Metropolis.

In addition to Central Thai, Thailand is home to other related Tai languages. Although most linguists classify these dialects as related but distinct languages, native speakers often identify them as regional variants or dialects of the "same" Thai language, or as "different kinds of Thai". As a dominant language in all aspects of society in Thailand, Thai initially saw gradual and later widespread adoption as a second language among the country's minority ethnic groups from the mid-late Ayutthaya period onward. Ethnic minorities today are predominantly bilingual, speaking Thai alongside their native language or dialect.

Classification
Standard Thai is classified as one of the Chiang Saen languages—others being Northern Thai, Southern Thai and numerous smaller languages, which together with the Northwestern Tai and Lao-Phutai languages, form the Southwestern branch of Tai languages. The Tai languages are a branch of the Kra–Dai language family, which encompasses a large number of indigenous languages spoken in an arc from Hainan and Guangxi south through Laos and Northern Vietnam to the Cambodian border.

Standard Thai is the principal language of education and government and spoken throughout Thailand. The standard is based on the dialect of the central Thai people, and it is written in the Thai script.

History
Thai has undergone various historical sound changes. Some of the most significant changes occurred during the evolution from Old Thai to modern Thai. The Thai writing system has an eight-century history and many of these changes, especially in consonants and tones, are evidenced in the modern orthography.

Early spread
According to a Chinese source, during the Ming dynasty, Yingya Shenglan (1405–1433), Ma Huan reported on the language of the Xiānluó (暹羅) or Ayutthaya kingdom, saying that it somewhat resembled the local patois as pronounced in Guangdong Ayutthaya, the old capital of Thailand from 1351 - 1767 A.D., was from the beginning a bilingual society, speaking Thai and Khmer. Bilingualism must have been strengthened and maintained for some time by the great number of Khmer-speaking captives the Thais took from Angkor Thom after their victories in 1369, 1388 and 1431. Gradually toward the end of the period, a language shift took place. Khmer fell out of use. Both Thai and Khmer descendants whose great-grand parents or earlier ancestors were bilingual came to use only Thai. In the process of language shift, an abundance of Khmer elements were transferred into Thai and permeated all aspects of the language. Consequently, the Thai of the late Ayutthaya Period which later became Ratanakosin or Bangkok Thai, was a thorough mixture of Thai and Khmer. There were more Khmer words in use than Tai cognates. Khmer grammatical rules were used actively to coin new disyllabic and polysyllabic words and phrases. Khmer expressions, sayings, and proverbs were expressed in Thai through transference.

Thais borrowed both the Royal vocabulary and rules to enlarge the vocabulary from Khmer. The Thais later developed the royal vocabulary according to their immediate environment. Thai and Pali, the latter from Theravada Buddhism, were added to the vocabulary. An investigation of the Ayutthaya Rajasap reveals that three languages, Thai, Khmer and Khmero-Indic were at work closely both in formulaic expressions and in normal discourse. In fact, Khmero-Indic may be classified in the same category as Khmer because Indic had been adapted to the Khmer system first before the Thai borrowed.

Old Thai
Old Thai had a three-way tone distinction on "live syllables" (those not ending in a stop), with no possible distinction on "dead syllables" (those ending in a stop, i.e. either or the glottal stop that automatically closes syllables otherwise ending in a short vowel).

There was a two-way voiced vs. voiceless distinction among all fricative and sonorant consonants, and up to a four-way distinction among stops and affricates. The maximal four-way occurred in labials and dentals ; the three-way distinction among velars  and palatals, with the glottalized member of each set apparently missing.

The major change between old and modern Thai was due to voicing distinction losses and the concomitant tone split. This may have happened between about 1300 and 1600 CE, possibly occurring at different times in different parts of the Thai-speaking area. All voiced–voiceless pairs of consonants lost the voicing distinction: However, in the process of these mergers, the former distinction of voice was transferred into a new set of tonal distinctions. In essence, every tone in Old Thai split into two new tones, with a lower-pitched tone corresponding to a syllable that formerly began with a voiced consonant, and a higher-pitched tone corresponding to a syllable that formerly began with a voiceless consonant (including glottalized stops). An additional complication is that formerly voiceless unaspirated stops/affricates (original ) also caused original tone 1 to lower, but had no such effect on original tones 2 or 3.
 * Plain voiced stops became voiceless aspirated stops.
 * Voiced fricatives became voiceless.
 * Voiceless sonorants became voiced.

The above consonant mergers and tone splits account for the complex relationship between spelling and sound in modern Thai. Modern "low"-class consonants were voiced in Old Thai, and the terminology "low" reflects the lower tone variants that resulted. Modern "mid"-class consonants were voiceless unaspirated stops or affricates in Old Thai—precisely the class that triggered lowering in original tone 1 but not tones 2 or 3. Modern "high"-class consonants were the remaining voiceless consonants in Old Thai (voiceless fricatives, voiceless sonorants, voiceless aspirated stops). The three most common tone "marks" (the lack of any tone mark, as well as the two marks termed mai ek and mai tho) represent the three tones of Old Thai, and the complex relationship between tone mark and actual tone is due to the various tonal changes since then. Since the tone split, the tones have changed in actual representation to the point that the former relationship between lower and higher tonal variants has been completely obscured. Furthermore, the six tones that resulted after the three tones of Old Thai were split have since merged into five in standard Thai, with the lower variant of former tone 2 merging with the higher variant of former tone 3, becoming the modern "falling" tone.

Early Old Thai
Early Old Thai also apparently had velar fricatives as distinct phonemes. These were represented by the now-obsolete letters ฃ kho khuat and ฅ kho khon, respectively. During the Old Thai period, these sounds merged into the corresponding stops, and as a result the use of these letters became unstable.

At some point in the history of Thai, a palatal nasal phoneme also existed, inherited from Proto-Tai. A letter ญ yo ying also exists, which is used to represent a palatal nasal in words borrowed from Sanskrit and Pali, and is currently pronounced at the beginning of a syllable but  at the end of a syllable. Most native Thai words that are reconstructed as beginning with are also pronounced  in modern Thai, but generally spelled with ย yo yak, which consistently represents. This suggests that >  in native words occurred in the pre-literary period. It is unclear whether Sanskrit and Pali words beginning with were borrowed directly with a, or whether a  was re-introduced, followed by a second change  >. The northeastern Thai dialect Isan and the Lao language still preserve the phoneme /ɲ/, which is represented in the Lao script by ຍ, such as in the word  ຍຸງ ([ɲúŋ], mosquito). This letter is distinct from the phoneme and its Lao letter ຢ, such as in the word  ຢາ ([jàː], medicine). The distinction in writing has been lost in the informal writing of the Isan language with the Thai script and both sounds are represented by ย (See: Comparison of Lao and Isan).

Proto-Tai also had a glottalized palatal sound, reconstructed as in Li Fang-Kuei (1977). Corresponding Thai words are generally spelled หย, which implies an Old Thai pronunciation of (or ), but a few such words are spelled อย, which implies a pronunciation of  and suggests that the glottalization may have persisted through to the early literary period.

Vowel developments
The vowel system of modern Thai contains nine pure vowels and three centering diphthongs, each of which can occur short or long. According to Li (1977), however, many Thai dialects have only one such short–long pair, and in general it is difficult or impossible to find minimal short–long pairs in Thai that involve vowels other than and where both members have frequent correspondences throughout the Tai languages. More specifically, he notes the following facts about Thai: Furthermore, the vowel that corresponds to short Thai has a different and often higher quality in many of the Tai languages compared with the vowel corresponding to Thai.
 * In open syllables, only long vowels occur. (This assumes that all apparent cases of short open syllables are better described as ending in a glottal stop. This makes sense from the lack of tonal distinctions in such syllables, and the glottal stop is also reconstructible across the Tai languages.)
 * In closed syllables, the long high vowels are rare, and cases that do exist typically have diphthongs in other Tai languages.
 * In closed syllables, both short and long mid and low  do occur.  However, generally, only words with short  and long  are reconstructible back to Proto-Tai.
 * Both of the mid back unrounded vowels are rare, and words with such sounds generally cannot be reconstructed back to Proto-Tai.

This leads Li to posit the following:
 * 1) Proto-Tai had a system of nine pure vowels with no length distinction, and possessing approximately the same qualities as in modern Thai: high, mid , low.
 * 2) All Proto-Tai vowels were lengthened in open syllables, and low vowels were also lengthened in closed syllables.
 * 3) Modern Thai largely preserved the original lengths and qualities, but lowered to, which became short  in closed syllables and created a phonemic length distinction .  Eventually, length in all other vowels became phonemic as well and a new  (both short and long) was introduced, through a combination of borrowing and sound change.  Li believes that the development of long  from diphthongs, and the lowering of  to  to create a length distinction , had occurred by the time of Proto-Southwestern-Tai, but the other missing modern Thai vowels had not yet developed.

Not all researchers agree with Li. Pittayaporn (2009), for example, reconstructs a similar system for Proto-Southwestern-Tai, but believes that there was also a mid back unrounded vowel (which he describes as ), occurring only before final velar. He also seems to believe that the Proto-Southwestern-Tai vowel length distinctions can be reconstructed back to similar distinctions in Proto-Tai.

Initials
Standard Thai distinguishes three voice-onset times among plosive and affricate consonants:
 * voiced
 * tenuis (unvoiced, unaspirated)
 * aspirated

Where English makes a distinction between voiced and unvoiced aspirated, Thai distinguishes a third sound – the unvoiced, unaspirated  that occurs in English only as an allophone of , for example after an  as in the sound of the p in "spin". There is similarly a laminal denti-alveolar, , triplet in Thai. In the velar series there is a, pair and in the postalveolar series a ,  pair, but the language lacks the corresponding voiced sounds  and. (In loanwords from English, English and  are borrowed as the tenuis stops  and .)

In each cell below, the first line indicates International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), the second indicates the Thai characters in initial position (several letters appearing in the same box have identical pronunciation). The letter ห, one of the two h letters, is also used to help write certain tones (described below).

Finals
Although the overall 44 Thai consonant letters provide 21 sounds in case of initials, the case for finals is different. For finals, only eight sounds, as well as no sound, called mātrā are used. To demonstrate, at the end of a syllable, บ and ด  are devoiced, becoming pronounced as  and  respectively. Additionally, all plosive sounds are unreleased. Hence, final, , and sounds are pronounced as , , and  respectively.

Of the consonant letters, excluding the disused ฃ and ฅ, six (ฉ ผ ฝ ห อ ฮ) cannot be used as a final and the other 36 are grouped as following.

Clusters
In Thai, each syllable in a word is articulated independently, so consonants from adjacent syllables (i.e. heterosyllabic) show no sign of articulation as a cluster. Thai has specific phonotactical patterns that describe its syllable structure, including tautosyllabic consonant clusters, and vowel sequences. In core Thai words (i.e. excluding loanwords), only clusters of two consonants occur, of which there are 11 combinations:
 * (กร), (กล),  (กว)
 * (ขร, คร), (ขล, คล),  (ขว, คว)
 * (ปร), (ปล)
 * (พร), (ผล, พล)
 * (ตร)

The number of clusters increases in loanwords such as (ทร) in  (, from Sanskrit indrā) or  (ฟร) in  (, from English free); however, these usually only occur in initial position, with either, , or  as the second consonant sound and not more than two sounds at a time.

Vowels
The vowel nuclei of the Thai language are given in the following table. The top entry in every cell is the symbol from the International Phonetic Alphabet, the second entry gives the spelling in the Thai script, where a dash (–) indicates the position of the initial consonant after which the vowel is pronounced. A second dash indicates that a final consonant follows.

Each vowel quality occurs in long-short pairs: these are distinct phonemes forming distinct words in Thai.

The long-short pairs are as follows:

There are also opening and closing diphthongs in Thai, which analyze as  and. For purposes of determining tone, those marked with an asterisk are sometimes classified as long:

Additionally, there are three triphthongs. For purposes of determining tone, those marked with an asterisk are sometimes classified as long:

Tones
There are five phonemic tones: mid, low, falling, high, and rising, sometimes referred to in older reference works as rectus, gravis, circumflexus, altus, and demissus, respectively. The table shows an example of both the phonemic tones and their phonetic realization, in the IPA. Moren & Zsiga (2006) and Zsiga & Nitisaroj (2007) provide phonetic and phonological analyses of Thai tone realization.

Notes:
 * 1) Five-level tone value: Mid [33], Low [21], Falling [43], High [44], Rising [323]. Traditionally, the high tone was recorded as either [44] or [45]. This remains true for the older generation, but the high tone is changing to [334] among youngsters.
 * 2) For the diachronic changes of tone value, please see Pittayaporn (2007).
 * 3) The full complement of tones exists only in so-called "live syllables", those that end in a long vowel or a sonorant.
 * 4) For "dead syllables", those that end in a plosive or in a short vowel, only three tonal distinctions are possible: low, high, and falling. Because syllables analyzed as ending in a short vowel may have a final glottal stop (especially in slower speech), all "dead syllables" are phonetically checked, and have the reduced tonal inventory characteristic of checked syllables.

Checked syllables
In some English loanwords, closed syllables with a long vowel ending in an obstruent sound have a high tone, and closed syllables with a short vowel ending in an obstruent sound have a falling tone.

Grammar
From the perspective of linguistic typology, Thai can be considered to be an analytic language. The word order is subject–verb–object, although the subject is often omitted. Additionally, Thai is an isolating language lacking any form of inflectional morphology whatsoever. Thai pronouns are selected according to the gender and relative status of speaker and audience.

Adjectives and adverbs
There is no morphological distinction between adverbs and adjectives. Many words can be used in either function. They follow the word they modify, which may be a noun, verb, or another adjective or adverb.

Comparatives take the form "A X กว่า B" (kwa, ), 'A is more X than B'. The superlative is expressed as "A X ที่สุด" (thi sut, ), 'A is most X'.

Adjectives in Thai can be used as complete predicates. Because of this, many words used to indicate tense in verbs (see Verbs:Tense below) may be used to describe adjectives.

 * Remark ฉันหิวแล้ว mostly means 'I am hungry right now' because normally, แล้ว marks the change of a state, but แล้ว has many other uses as well. For example, in the sentence, แล้วเธอจะไปไหน : 'So where are you going?', แล้ว  is used as a discourse particle.

Verbs
Verbs do not inflect. They do not change with person, tense, voice, mood, or number; nor are there any participles. The language being analytic and case-less, the relationship between subject, direct and indirect object is conveyed through word order and auxiliary verbs. Transitive verbs follow the pattern subject-verb-object.

In order to convey tense, aspect and mood (TAM), the Thai verbal system employs auxiliaries and verb serialization. TAM markers are however not obligatory and often left out in colloquial use. In such cases, the precise meaning is determined through context. This results in sentences lacking both TAM markers and overt context being ambiguous and subject to various interpretations.

The sentence chan kin thi nan can thus be interpreted as 'I am eating there', 'I eat there habitually', 'I will eat there' or 'I ate there'. Aspect markers in Thai have been divided into four distinct groups based on their usage. These markers could appear either before or after the verb. The following list describes some of the most commonly used aspect markers. A number of these aspect markers are also full verbs on their own and carry a distinct meaning. For example yu (อยู่) as a full verb means 'to stay, to live or to remain at'. However, as an auxiliary it can be described as a temporary aspect or continuative marker.

 * Imperfective
 * อยู่ yu
 * ไป pai
 * ยัง yang
 * กำลัง kamlang
 * เคย khoey
 * Perfective
 * ได้ dai
 * Perfect
 * แล้ว laeo
 * มา ma
 * Prospective/Future
 * จะ cha

The imperfective aspect marker กำลัง (kamlang,, currently) is used before the verb to denote an ongoing action (similar to the -ing suffix in English). Kamlang is commonly interpreted as a progressive aspect marker. Similarly, อยู่ (yu, ) is a post-verbal aspect marker which corresponds to the continuative or temporary aspect.

Comparably ยัง (yang,, still) which is used in an incompleted action, and usually cognates in phrase with yu (อยู่) or any other aspect markers in common use.

The marker ได้ (dai, ) is usually analyzed as a past tense marker when it occurs before the verb. As a full verb, dai means 'to get or receive'. However, when used after a verb, dai takes on a meaning of potentiality or successful outcome of the main verb.

แล้ว (laeo, ; 'already') is treated as a marker indicating the perfect aspect. That is to say, laeo marks the event as being completed at the time of reference. Laeo has to other meanings in addition to its use as a TAM marker. Laeo can either be a conjunction for sequential actions or an archaic word for 'to finish'.

Future can be indicated by จะ (cha, ; 'will') before the verb or by a time expression indicating the future. For example:

The passive voice is indicated by the insertion of ถูก (thuk, ) before the verb. For example:

 * This describes an action that is out of the receiver's control and, thus, conveys suffering.

Negation is indicated by placing ไม่ (mai, ; not) before the verb.
 * เขาไม่ตี, (khao mai ti) 'He is not hitting' or 'He doesn't hit'.

Thai exhibits serial verb constructions, where verbs are strung together. Some word combinations are common and may be considered set phrases.

Nouns
Nouns are uninflected and have no gender; there are no articles. Thai nouns are bare nouns and can be interpreted as singular, plural, definite or indefinite. Some specific nouns are reduplicated to form collectives: เด็ก (dek, 'child') is often repeated as เด็ก ๆ (dek dek) to refer to a group of children. The word พวก (phuak, ) may be used as a prefix of a noun or pronoun as a collective to pluralize or emphasise the following word. (พวกผม, phuak phom,, 'we', masculine; พวกเรา phuak rao, , emphasised 'we'; พวกหมา phuak ma, '(the) dogs'). Plurals are expressed by adding classifiers, used as measure words (ลักษณนาม), in the form of noun-number-classifier:

While in English, such classifiers are usually absent ("four chairs") or optional ("two bottles of beer" or "two beers"), a classifier is almost always used in Thai (hence "chair four item" and "beer two bottle").

Possession in Thai is indicated by adding the word ของ (khong) in front of the noun or pronoun, but it may often be omitted. For example:

Nominal phrases
Nominal phrases in Thai often use a special class of words classifiers. As previously mentioned, these classifiers are obligatory for noun phrases containing numerals e.g.

In the previous example khon (คน) acts as the classifier in the nominal phrase. This follows the form of noun-cardinal-classifier mentioned above. Classifiers are also required to form quantified noun phrases in Thai with some quantifiers such as ทุก ('all'), บาง ('some'). The examples below are demonstrated using the classifier khon, which is used for people.

However, classifiers are not utilized for negative quantification. Negative quantification is expressed by the pattern ไม่มี (mai mi, ) + NOUN. Classifiers are also used for demonstratives such as นี้ (ni, ; 'this/these') and นั่น (nan, ; 'that/those'). The syntax for demonstrative phrases, however, differ from that of cardinals and follow the pattern noun-classifier-demonstrative. For example, the noun phrase "this dog" would be expressed in Thai as หมาตัวนี้ (literally 'dog (classifier) this').

Pronouns
Subject pronouns are often omitted, with nicknames used where English would use a pronoun. See Thai name for more details. Pronouns, when used, are ranked in honorific registers, and may also make a T–V distinction in relation to kinship and social status. Specialised pronouns are used for royalty, and for Buddhist monks. The following are appropriate for conversational use:

The reflexive pronoun is ตัวเอง (tua eng), which can mean any of: myself, yourself, ourselves, himself, herself, themselves. This can be mixed with another pronoun to create an intensive pronoun, such as ตัวผมเอง (tua phom eng, lit: I myself) or ตัวคุณเอง (tua khun eng, lit: you yourself). Thai also does not have a separate possessive pronoun. Instead, possession is indicated by the particle ของ (khong). For example, "my mother" is แม่ของผม (mae khong phom, lit: mother of I). This particle is often implicit, so the phrase is shortened to แม่ผม (mae phom). Plural pronouns can be easily constructed by adding the word พวก (phuak) in front of a singular pronoun as in พวกเขา (phuak khao) meaning 'they' or พวกเธอ (phuak thoe) meaning the plural sense of 'you'. The only exception to this is เรา (rao), which can be used as singular (informal) or plural, but can also be used in the form of พวกเรา (phuak rao), which is only plural.

Thai has many more pronouns than those listed above. Their usage is full of nuances. For example:

 * "ผม เรา ฉัน ดิฉัน หนู กู ข้า กระผม ข้าพเจ้า กระหม่อม อาตมา กัน ข้าน้อย ข้าพระพุทธเจ้า อั๊ว เขา" all translate to "I", but each expresses a different gender, age, politeness, status, or relationship between speaker and listener.
 * เรา (rao) can be first person (I), second person (you), or both (we), depending on the context.
 * Children or younger female could use or being referred by word หนู (nu) when talking with older person. The word หนู could be both feminine first person (I) and feminine second person (you) and also neuter first and neuter second person for children.
 * หนู commonly means rat or mouse, though it also refers to small creatures in general.
 * The second person pronoun เธอ (thoe) (lit: you) is semi-feminine. It is used only when the speaker or the listener (or both) are female. Males usually do not address each other by this pronoun.
 * Both คุณ (khun) and เธอ (thoe) are polite neuter second person pronouns. However, คุณเธอ (khun thoe) is a feminine derogative third person.
 * Instead of a second person pronoun such as คุณ ('you'), it is much more common for unrelated strangers to call each other พี่ น้อง ลุง ป้า น้า อา ตา or ยาย (brother, sister, aunt, uncle, granny).
 * To express deference, the second person pronoun is sometimes replaced by a profession, similar to how, in English, presiding judges are always addressed as "your honor" rather than "you". In Thai, students always address their teachers by ครู, คุณครู or อาจารย์ (each meaning 'teacher') rather than คุณ ('you').  Teachers, monks, and doctors are almost always addressed this way.

Particles
The particles are often untranslatable words added to the end of a sentence to indicate respect, a request, encouragement or other moods (similar to the use of intonation in English), as well as varying the level of formality. They are not used in elegant (written) Thai. The most common particles indicating respect are ครับ (khrap,, with a high-rising tone) when the speaker is male, and ค่ะ (kha, , with a low-falling tone) when the speaker is female. Used in a question or a request, the particle ค่ะ (low-falling tone) is changed to a คะ (high-rising tone).

Other common particles are:

Register
Central Thai is composed of several distinct registers, forms for different social contexts:
 * Street or Common Thai (, phasa phut, spoken Thai): informal, without polite terms of address, as used between close relatives and friends.
 * Elegant or Formal Thai (, phasa khian, written Thai): official and written version, includes respectful terms of address; used in simplified form in newspapers.
 * Rhetorical Thai: used for public speaking.
 * Religious Thai: (heavily influenced by Sanskrit and Pāli) used when discussing Buddhism or addressing monks.
 * Royal Thai (ราชาศัพท์, racha sap): influenced by Khmer, this is used when addressing members of the royal family or describing their activities. (See .)

Most Thais can speak and understand all of these contexts. Street and Elegant Thai are the basis of all conversations. Rhetorical, religious, and royal Thai are taught in schools as part of the national curriculum.

As noted above, Thai has several registers, each having certain usages, such as colloquial, formal, literary, and poetic. Thus, the word 'eat' can be กิน (kin; common), แดก (daek; vulgar), ยัด (yat; vulgar), บริโภค (boriphok; formal), รับประทาน (rapprathan; formal), ฉัน (chan; religious), or เสวย (sawoei; royal), as illustrated below: Thailand also uses the distinctive Thai six-hour clock in addition to the 24-hour clock.

Vocabulary
Other than compound words and words of foreign origin, most words are monosyllabic.

Chinese-language influence was strong until the 13th century when the use of Chinese characters was abandoned, and replaced by Sanskrit and Pali scripts. However, the vocabulary of Thai retains many words borrowed from Middle Chinese.

Khmer was used as a prestige language in the early days of the Thai kingdoms which are believed to have been bilingual societies proficient in Thai and Khmer. There are over 2,500 Thai words derived from Khmer, surpassing the number of Tai cognates. These Khmer words span across all semantic fields. Thai scholar Uraisi Varasarin classified them into over 200 sub-categories. As a result, it is impossible for Thais, past and present, to engage in a conversation without incorporating Khmer loanwords in any given topic. The influence is particularly preponderant in regard to royal court terminology.

Later, most vocabulary was borrowed from Sanskrit and Pāli; Buddhist terminology is particularly indebted to these. Indic words have a more formal register, and may be compared to Latin and French borrowings in English. Since the beginning of the 20th century, however, the English language has had the greatest influence, especially for scientific, technical, international, and other modern terms.

Chinese-origin
From Middle Chinese or Teochew Chinese.

Khmer-origin
From Old Khmer

Portuguese-origin
The Portuguese were the first Western nation to arrive in what is modern-day Thailand in the 16th century during the Ayutthaya period. Their influence in trade, especially weaponry, allowed them to establish a community just outside the capital and practise their faith, as well as exposing and converting the locals to Christianity. Thus, Portuguese words involving trade and religion were introduced and used by the locals.

Writing system
Thai is written in the Thai script, an abugida written from left to right. The language and its script are closely related to the Lao language and script. Most literate Lao are able to read and understand Thai, as more than half of the Thai vocabulary, grammar, intonation, vowels and so forth are common with the Lao language.

The Thais adopted and modified the Khmer script to create their own writing system. While in Thai the pronunciation can largely be inferred from the script, the orthography is complex, with silent letters to preserve original spellings and many letters representing the same sound. While the oldest known inscription in the Khmer language dates from 611 CE, inscriptions in Thai writing began to appear around 1292 CE. Notable features include:

 * 1) It is an abugida script, in which the implicit vowel is a short in a syllable without final consonant and a short  in a syllable with final consonant.
 * 2) Tone markers, if present, are placed above the final onset consonant of the syllable.
 * 3) Vowels sounding after an initial consonant can be located before, after, above or below the consonant, or in a combination of these positions.

Transcription
There is no universally applied method for transcribing Thai into the Latin alphabet. For example, the name of the main airport is transcribed variably as Suvarnabhumi, Suwannaphum, or Suwunnapoom. Guide books, textbooks and dictionaries may each follow different systems. For this reason, many language courses recommend that learners master the Thai script.

Official standards are the Royal Thai General System of Transcription (RTGS), published by the Royal Institute of Thailand, and the almost identical ISO 11940-2 defined by the International Organization for Standardization. The RTGS system is increasingly used in Thailand by central and local governments, especially for road signs. Its main drawbacks are that it does not indicate tone or vowel length. As the system is based on pronunciation, not orthography, reconstruction of Thai spelling from RTGS romanisation is not possible.

Transliteration
The ISO published an international standard for the transliteration of Thai into Roman script in September 2005 (ISO 11940). By adding diacritics to the Latin letters it makes the transcription reversible, making it a true transliteration. Notably, this system is used by Google Translate, although it does not seem to appear in many other contexts, such as textbooks and other instructional media.

title: Thai language


text:
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is a fantasy novel written by British author J. K. Rowling. The first novel in the Harry Potter series and Rowling's debut novel follows Harry Potter, a young wizard who discovers his magical heritage on his eleventh birthday when he receives a letter of acceptance to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry makes close friends and a few enemies during his first year at the school. With the help of his friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, he faces an attempted comeback by the dark wizard Lord Voldemort, who killed Harry's parents but failed to kill Harry when he was just 15 months old.

The book was first published in the United Kingdom on 26 June 1997 by Bloomsbury. It was published in the United States the following year by Scholastic Corporation under the title Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. It won most of the British book awards that were judged by children and other awards in the US. The book reached the top of the New York Times list of best-selling fiction in August 1999, and stayed near the top of that list for much of 1999 and 2000. It has been translated into at least 73 other languages and made into a feature-length film of the same name, as have all six of its sequels. The novel has sold in excess of 120 million copies, making it the fourth best-selling book of all time.

Most reviews were very favourable, commenting on Rowling's imagination, humour, simple, direct style and clever plot construction, although a few complained that the final chapters seemed rushed. The writing has been compared to that of Jane Austen, one of Rowling's favourite authors; Roald Dahl, whose works dominated children's stories before the appearance of Harry Potter; and the ancient Greek story-teller Homer. While some commentators thought the book looked backward to Victorian and Edwardian boarding school stories, others thought it placed the genre firmly in the modern world by featuring contemporary ethical and social issues, as well as showing overcoming obstacles like bullying.

The Harry Potter series has been used as a source of object lessons in educational techniques, sociological analysis, and marketing.

Plot
Harry Potter lives with his neglectful uncle and aunt, Vernon and Petunia Dursley, and their bullying son, Dudley. On Harry's eleventh birthday, Rubeus Hagrid, a half-giant, delivers an acceptance letter from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, revealing that Harry's parents, James and Lily Potter, were wizards. When Harry was just a year old, a powerful but malevolent dark wizard named Lord Voldemort murdered his parents; Harry survived Voldemort's killing curse that rebounded and seemingly destroyed the Dark Lord, leaving a lightning bolt-shaped scar on Harry's forehead. Unknown to Harry, this act made him famous in the wizarding world.

Hagrid escorts Harry to Diagon Alley, the hidden wizard commerce and retail section in London. Harry's parents have left him a fortune kept in Gringotts Wizarding Bank, which he uses to buy school supplies and a wand from Ollivander's. The cores of Harry and Lord Voldemort's wands have feathers from the same phoenix bird, making them "brothers". Hagrid gifts Harry an owl, whom he names as Hedwig, as a birthday present. A month later, Harry boards the Hogwarts Express at King's Cross railway station's secret Platform $9 3/4$. En route to Hogwarts, Harry befriends fellow first year Ron Weasley and meets Hermione Granger, whom the two boys initially dislike.

Harry runs afoul of Draco Malfoy, the spoiled son of a prominent wizard. At Hogwarts, a magical Sorting Hat sorts the first years among four school Houses (Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin) that best suit their personalities and talents. Draco joins Slytherin, known for producing dark wizards, while Harry, Ron, and Hermione are sorted into Gryffindor.

Harry's broomstick flying ability earns him a place on the Gryffindor Quidditch team as the Seeker. Harry comes to dislike Potions master Severus Snape, who favours Slytherin while seeking to fail Harry. Malfoy tricks Harry and Ron into risking expulsion by leaving their common room after curfew. Hermione, unable to stop them, tags along. Realising Malfoy's ruse, they hide in a forbidden corridor and discover a gigantic three-headed dog guarding a trapdoor. Harry and Ron later save Hermione from a troll during a Halloween celebration and the three become best friends. Coupled with Snape's recent leg injury and suspicious behaviour, Harry, Ron, and Hermione believe he is attempting to enter the trapdoor.

During Harry's first Quidditch match, his broomstick attempts to buck him off. Snape's strange behaviour during the match convinces Hermione he jinxed Harry's broom. Harry receives an anonymous Christmas gift – his father's invisibility cloak. Using it to explore the school, he discovers the Mirror of Erised, which shows what the viewer most desires. Harry sees his parents.

A newspaper report later describes an attempted robbery at the same vault in Gringotts from which Hagrid retrieved an item for Hogwarts' headmaster Albus Dumbledore on the same day. The object beneath the trapdoor is the philosopher's stone, which grants its user immortality and the ability to turn any metal into pure gold. Firenze, a forest centaur, warns Harry that Voldemort is plotting to steal the stone to restore his body. When Dumbledore is lured from Hogwarts under false pretences, Harry, Hermione, and Ron fear the theft is imminent and descend through the trapdoor.

Various obstacles force Ron and Hermione to remain behind while Harry proceeds. Harry encounters Professor Quirrell, the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. He jinxed Harry's broom and let the troll into the school; Snape was protecting Harry. Voldemort, whose face has regrown on the back of Quirrell's head, is revealed to be the professor's secret master. Harry is forced to stand before the Mirror of Erised. It recognises Harry's lack of greed for the stone and deposits it into his pocket. Quirrell attempts to seize the stone, but his flesh burns upon contact with Harry. Harry's scar begins hurting, and he passes out.

Harry awakens in the school's infirmary. He survived Voldemort because his mother sacrificing her life for him left a magical protective charm. Quirrell's hatred and greed caused him to burn upon contact with Harry; Voldemort abandoned him to die. Dumbledore reveals he sent Harry the invisibility cloak, while the philosopher's stone, that had been keeping the long-lived Nicolas Flamel alive, has been destroyed with Flamel's consent to prevent its being stolen. During the school's year-end feast, Gryffindor is awarded the House Cup. Harry returns to the Dursleys at Privet Drive until the next school year.

Characters

 * Harry Potter is an orphan whom Rowling imagined as a "scrawny, black-haired, green eyed and bespectacled boy who didn't know he was a wizard." She developed the series' story and characters to explain how Harry came to be in this situation and how his life unfolded from there. Apart from the first chapter, the events of this book take place just before and in the year following Harry's eleventh birthday. Voldemort's attack left a lightning bolt-shaped scar on Harry's forehead, which produces stabbing pains whenever Voldemort is present. Harry has a natural talent for Quidditch and became the first person in a century to get on their team in their first year.
 * Ron Weasley is Harry's age, and Rowling describes him as the ultimate best friend "always there when you need him". He is freckled, red-haired, and quite tall. He grew up in a fairly large pure-blood family as the sixth born of seven children. Although his family is quite poor, they still live comfortably and happily. His loyalty and bravery in the face of a game of Wizard Chess plays a vital part in finding the Philosopher's Stone.
 * Hermione Granger, the daughter of an all-Muggle family, is a bossy girl who has apparently memorised most of the textbooks before the start of term. Rowling described Hermione as a "very logical, upright and good" character with "a lot of insecurity and a great fear of failure beneath her swottiness". Despite her nagging efforts to keep Harry and Ron out of trouble, she becomes a close friend of the two boys after they save her from a troll and her magical and analytical skills play an important role in finding the Philosopher's Stone. She has bushy brown hair and rather large front teeth.
 * Neville Longbottom is a plump, diffident boy, so forgetful that his grandmother gives him a Remembrall, to remind him if he forgets something. Neville's magical abilities are weak and appeared just in time to save his life when he was eight. Despite his timidity, Neville will fight anyone after some encouragement or if he thinks it is right and important.
 * Rubeus Hagrid, a half-giant nearly 12 ft tall, with tangled black hair and beard, who was expelled from Hogwarts and his wand was snapped in half (resulting in him never to use a wand again), though Professor Dumbledore let him stay on as the school's gamekeeper, a job which enables him to give lavish affection, care and even pet names (such as Norbert the dragon) on even the most dangerous of magical creatures. Hagrid is fiercely loyal to Dumbledore and quickly becomes a close friend of Harry, Ron and, later, Hermione, but his carelessness makes him unreliable.
 * Professor Albus Dumbledore, a tall, thin man who wears half-moon spectacles and has silver hair and a beard that tucks into his belt, is the headmaster of Hogwarts, and thought to be the only wizard Voldemort fears. Dumbledore, while renowned for his achievements in magic, shrugs off praise, though he is aware of his own brilliance. Rowling described him as the "epitome of goodness".
 * Professor Minerva McGonagall, a tall, severe-looking woman with black hair tied in a tight bun, teaches Transfiguration and is able to transform herself into a cat. She is Deputy Headmistress and Head of Gryffindor House.
 * Petunia Dursley, the sister of Harry's mother Lily, is a thin woman with a long neck that she uses for spying on the neighbours. As a Muggle, she regards her magical sister as a freak and tries to pretend that she never existed.
 * Vernon Dursley, the husband of Petunia Dursley, is a heavily built man whose irascible bluster covers a narrow mind and a fear of anything unusual.
 * Dudley Dursley is an overweight, spoilt bully and Harry's cousin.
 * Draco Malfoy is a slim, pale boy who speaks in a bored drawl. He is arrogant about his skill in Quidditch, and despises anyone who is not a pure-blood wizard and wizards who do not share his views. His parents had supported Voldemort, but changed sides after the dark wizard's disappearance, claiming they had been bewitched. Draco avoids direct confrontations and tries to get Harry and his friends into trouble.
 * Oliver Wood is Harry's Quidditch captain and keeper for the Gryffindor Quidditch team.
 * Professor Quirrell is a twitching, stammering, and nervous man who teaches Defence Against the Dark Arts. Reputedly he was a brilliant scholar, but his nerve was shattered by an encounter with vampires. Quirrell wears a turban to conceal the fact that he is voluntarily possessed by Voldemort, whose face appears on the back of Quirrell's head.
 * Professor Severus Snape, who has a hooked nose, sallow complexion, and greasy black hair, teaches Potions, but would prefer to teach Defence Against the Dark Arts. Snape favours pupils in Slytherin, his own House and seizes every opportunity to humiliate others, especially Harry. Several incidents, beginning with the shooting pain in Harry's scar during the start-of-term feast, lead Harry and his friends to think Snape is aiding Voldemort.
 * Argus Filch, the school caretaker who knows the school's secret passages better than anyone else except, perhaps, the Weasley twins. His cat, Mrs. Norris, aids his constant hunt for misbehaving pupils.

Other members of staff include: the dumpy Herbology teacher and Head of Hufflepuff House Professor Sprout, Professor Flitwick, the tiny and excitable Charms teacher and Head of Ravenclaw House, the soporific History of magic teacher, Professor Binns, a ghost who does not seem to have noticed his own death, and Madam Hooch, the Quidditch coach, who is strict, but a considerate and methodical teacher. The poltergeist Peeves wanders around the castle causing trouble wherever he can.

In the book, Rowling introduces an eclectic cast of characters. The first character to be introduced is Vernon Dursley, Harry's uncle. Most of the actions centre on the eponymous hero, Harry Potter, an orphan who escapes his miserable childhood with the Dursley family. Rowling imagined him as a "scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled boy who didn't know he was a wizard" and says she transferred part of her pain about losing her mother to him. During the book, Harry makes two close friends, Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger. Ron is described by Rowling as the ultimate best friend, "always there when you need him". Rowling has described Hermione as a "very logical, upright and good" character with "a lot of insecurity and a great fear of failure beneath her swottiness".

Rowling also imagined a supporting cast of adults. The headmaster of Hogwarts is the powerful, but kind wizard Albus Dumbledore, who becomes Harry's confidant. Rowling described him as "the epitome of goodness". His right hand is severe Minerva McGonagall, the friendly half-giant Rubeus Hagrid, who saved Harry from the Dursley family and the sinister Severus Snape. Professor Quirrell is also featured in the novel.

The main antagonists are Draco Malfoy, an elitist, bullying classmate, and Lord Voldemort, the most powerful evil wizard who becomes disembodied when he tries to kill baby Harry. According to a 1999 interview with Rowling, the character of Voldemort was created as a literary foil for Harry and his backstory was intentionally not fleshed-out at first:

"The basic idea... Harry, I saw Harry very very very clearly. Very vividly. And I knew he didn't know he was a wizard. ... And so then I kind of worked backwards from that position to find out how that could be, that he wouldn't know what he was. ... When he was one year old, the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years attempted to kill him. He killed Harry's parents, and then he tried to kill Harry—he tried to curse him. ... And—so—but for some mysterious reason, the curse didn't work on Harry. So he's left with this lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead and the curse rebounded upon the evil wizard, who has been in hiding ever since."

Development
The book, which was Rowling's debut novel, was written between approximately June 1990 and some time in 1995. In 1990, Jo Rowling, as she preferred to be known, wanted to move with her boyfriend to a flat in Manchester and in her words, "One weekend after flat hunting, I took the train back to London on my own and the idea for Harry Potter fell into my head... A scrawny, little, black-haired, bespectacled boy became more and more of a wizard to me... I began to write Philosopher's Stone that very evening. Although, the first couple of pages look nothing like the finished product." Then, Rowling's mother died and, to cope with her pain, Rowling transferred her own anguish to the orphan Harry. Rowling spent six years working on Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and after it was accepted by Bloomsbury, she obtained a grant of £8,000 from the Scottish Arts Council, which enabled her to plan the sequels. She sent the book to a literary agent and a publisher and then the second agent she approached spent a year trying to sell the book to publishers, most of whom thought it was too long at about 90,000 words. Barry Cunningham, who was building a portfolio of distinctive fantasies by new authors for Bloomsbury Children's Books, recommended accepting the book and the eight-year-old daughter of Bloomsbury's chief executive said it was "so much better than anything else".

Publication and reception in the United Kingdom

Bloomsbury accepted the book, paying Rowling a £2,500 advance and Cunningham sent proof copies to carefully chosen authors, critics and booksellers in order to obtain comments that could be quoted when the book was launched. He was less concerned about the book's length than about its author's name, since the title sounded like a boys' book to him and he believed boys preferred books by male authors. Rowling therefore adopted the pen name J. K. Rowling just before publication.

In June 1997, Bloomsbury published Philosopher's Stone with an initial print run of 500 copies in hardback, three hundred of which were distributed to libraries. Her original name, "Joanne Rowling", can be found on the copyright page of all British editions until September 1999. (The 1998 first American edition would remove reference to "Joanne" completely.) The short initial print run was standard for first novels and Cunningham hoped booksellers would read the book and recommend it to customers. Examples from this initial print run have sold for as much as US$471,000 in a 2021 Heritage auction. Thomas Taylor created the cover for the first edition.

Lindsey Fraser, who had previously supplied one of the blurb comments, wrote what is thought to be the first published review, in The Scotsman on 28 June 1997. She described Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone as "a hugely entertaining thriller" and Rowling as "a first-rate writer for children". Another early review, in The Herald, said: "I have yet to find a child who can put it down." Newspapers outside Scotland started to notice the book, with glowing reviews in The Guardian and The Sunday Times and in September 1997 Books for Keeps, a magazine that specialised in children's books, gave the novel four stars out of five. Sunday Times said: "comparisons to Dahl are, this time, justified", while The Guardian called it "a richly textured novel given lift-off by an inventive wit" and The Scotsman said it had "all the makings of a classic".

In 1997 the UK edition won a National Book Award and a gold medal in the 9- to 11-year-olds category of the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize. The Smarties award, which is voted for by children, made the book well known within six months of publication, while most children's books have to wait for years. The following year, Philosopher's Stone won almost all the other major British awards that were decided by children. It was also shortlisted for children's books awards adjudicated by adults, but did not win. Sandra Beckett commented that books that were popular with children were regarded as undemanding and as not of the highest literary standards – for example, the literary establishment disdained the works of Dahl, an overwhelming favourite of children before the appearance of Rowling's books. In 2003, the novel was listed at number 22 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone won two publishing industry awards given for sales rather than literary merit, the British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year and the Booksellers' Association / Bookseller Author of the Year. By March 1999 UK editions had sold just over 300,000 copies and the story was still the UK's best-selling title in December 2001. A Braille edition was published in May 1998 by the Scottish Braille Press.

Platform $9 3/4$, from which the Hogwarts Express left London, was commemorated in the real-life King's Cross railway station with a sign and a trolley apparently passing through the wall.

US publication and reception
Scholastic Corporation bought the US rights at the Bologna Book Fair in April 1997 for US$105,000, an unusually high sum for a children's book. Scholastic's Arthur Levine thought that "philosopher" sounded too archaic for readers and after some discussion (including the proposed title "Harry Potter and the School of Magic" ), the American edition was published in September 1998 under the title Rowling suggested, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Rowling later said that she regretted this change and would have fought it if she had been in a stronger position at the time. Philip Nel has pointed out that the change lost the connection with alchemy and some other changes lost the meaning of other terms changed in translation, for example from "crumpet" to "muffin". While Rowling accepted the change from both the British English "mum" and Seamus Finnigan's Irish variant "mam" to the American variant "mom" in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, she vetoed this change in the later books, which was then reversed in later editions of Philosopher's Stone. However, Nel considered that Scholastic's translations were considerably more sensitive than most of those imposed on British English books of the time and that some other changes could be regarded as useful copyedits. Since the UK editions of early titles in the series were published months prior to the American versions, some American readers became familiar with the British English versions owing to having bought them from online retailers.

On BookBrowse, a site that aggregates book reviews such as media reviews, the book received a from "Critics' Opinion". At first the most prestigious reviewers ignored the book, leaving it to book trade and library publications such as Kirkus Reviews and Booklist, which examined it only by the entertainment-oriented criteria of children's fiction. However, more penetrating specialist reviews (such as one by Cooperative Children's Book Center Choices, which noted complexity, depth and consistency in the world that Rowling had built) attracted the attention of reviewers in major newspapers. Although The Boston Globe and Michael Winerip in The New York Times complained that the final chapters were the weakest part of the book, they and most other American reviewers gave glowing praise. A year later, the US edition was selected as an American Library Association Notable Book, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 1998 and a New York Public Library 1998 Best Book of the Year and won Parenting Magazine Book of the Year Award for 1998, the School Library Journal Best Book of the Year and the American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults. In 2012 it was ranked number 3 on a list of the top 100 children's novels published by School Library Journal.

In August 1999, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone topped the New York Times list of best-selling fiction and stayed near the top of the list for much of 1999 and 2000, until the New York Times split its list into children's and adult sections under pressure from other publishers who were eager to see their books given higher placings. Publishers Weekly report in December 2001 on cumulative sales of children's fiction placed Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone 19th among hardbacks (over 5 million copies) and 7th among paperbacks (over 6.6 million copies).

In May 2008, Scholastic announced the creation of a 10th Anniversary Edition of the book that was released on 1 October 2008 to mark the tenth anniversary of the original American release. For the fifteenth anniversary of the books, Scholastic re-released Sorcerer's Stone, along with the other six novels in the series, with new cover art by Kazu Kibuishi in 2013.

Translations
By mid-2008, official translations of the book had been published in 67 languages. By November 2017, the book had been translated into 80 languages, the 80th being Lowland Scots. Bloomsbury have published translations in Latin and in Ancient Greek, with the latter being described as "one of the most important pieces of Ancient Greek prose written in many centuries".

Style and themes
Philip Nel highlighted the influence of Jane Austen, whom Rowling has greatly admired since the age of twelve. Both novelists greatly encourage re-reading, because details that look insignificant foreshadow important events or characters much later in the story-line – for example Sirius Black is briefly mentioned near the beginning of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, and then becomes a major character in the third to fifth books. Like Austen's heroines, Harry often has to re-examine his ideas near the ends of books. Some social behaviour in the Harry Potter books is reminiscent of Austen, for example the excited communal reading of letters. Both authors satirise social behaviour and give characters names that express their personalities. However, in Nel's opinion Rowling's humour is more based on caricature and the names she invents are more like those found in Charles Dickens's stories, and Amanda Cockrell noted that many of these express their owners' traits through allusions that run from ancient Roman mythology to eighteenth-century German literature. Rowling, like the Narnia series' author C. S. Lewis, thinks there is no rigid distinction between stories for children and for adults. Nel also noted that, like many good writers for children, Rowling combines literary genres—fantasy, young adult fiction, boarding school stories, Bildungsroman and many others.

Some reviewers compared Philosopher's Stone to the stories of Roald Dahl, who died in 1990. Many writers since the 1970s had been hailed as his successor, but none had attained anything near his popularity with children and, in a poll conducted shortly after the launch of Philosopher's Stone, seven of the ten most popular children's books were by Dahl, including the one in top place. The only other really popular children's author of the late 1990s was an American, R. L. Stine. Some of the story elements in Philosopher's Stone resembled parts of Dahl's stories. For example, the hero of James and the Giant Peach lost his parents and had to live with a pair of unpleasant aunts—one fat and one thin rather like Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, who treated Harry as a servant. However Harry Potter was a distinctive creation, able to take on the responsibilities of an adult while remaining a child inside.

Librarian Nancy Knapp and marketing professor Stephen Brown noted the liveliness and detail of descriptions, especially of shop scenes such as Diagon Alley. Tad Brennan commented that Rowling's writing resembles that of Homer: "rapid, plain, and direct in expression". Stephen King admired "the sort of playful details of which only British fantasists seem capable" and concluded that they worked because Rowling enjoys a quick giggle and then moves briskly forward.

Nicholas Tucker described the early Harry Potter books as looking back to Victorian and Edwardian children's stories: Hogwarts was an old-style boarding school in which the teachers addressed pupils formally by their surnames and were most concerned with the reputations of the houses with which they were associated; characters' personalities were plainly shown by their appearances, starting with the Dursleys; evil or malicious characters were to be crushed rather than reformed, including Argus Filch's cat Mrs Norris; and the hero, a mistreated orphan who found his true place in life, was charismatic and good at sports, but considerate and protective towards the weak. Several other commentators have stated that the books present a highly stratified society including many social stereotypes. However Karin Westerman drew parallels with 1990s Britain: a class system that was breaking down but defended by those whose power and status it upheld; the multi-ethnic composition of Hogwarts' students; the racial tensions between the various intelligent species; and school bullying.

Susan Hall wrote that there is no rule of law in the books, as the actions of Ministry of Magic officials are unconstrained by laws, accountability or any kind of legal challenge. This provides an opportunity for Voldemort to offer his own horrific version of order. As a side-effect Harry and Hermione, who were brought up in the highly regulated Muggle world, find solutions by thinking in ways unfamiliar to wizards. For example, Hermione notes that one obstacle to finding the Philosopher's Stone is a test of logic rather than magical power, and that most wizards have no chance of solving it.

Nel suggested that the unflattering characterisation of the extremely conventional, status-conscious, materialistic Dursleys was Rowling's reaction to the family policies of the British government in the early 1990s, which treated the married heterosexual couple as the "preferred norm", while the author was a single mother. Harry's relationships with adult and juvenile wizards are based on affection and loyalty. This is reflected in his happiness whenever he is a temporary member of the Weasley family throughout the series, and in his treatment of first Rubeus Hagrid and later Remus Lupin and Sirius Black as father-figures.

Sequels
The second book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, was originally published in the UK on 2 July 1998 and later, in the US on 2 June 1999. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was then published a year later in the UK on 8 July 1999 and in the US on 8 September 1999. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was published on 8 July 2000 at the same time by Bloomsbury and Scholastic. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the longest book in the series at 766 pages in the UK version and 870 pages in the US version. It was published worldwide in English on 21 June 2003. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was published on 16 July 2005 and sold 11 million copies in the first 24 hours of its worldwide release. The seventh and final novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was published on 21 July 2007. The book sold 11 million copies within 24 hours of its release: 2.7 million copies in the UK and 8.3 million in the US.

Illustrated version
An illustrated version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was released on 6 October 2015, with illustrations by Jim Kay. The book carries over 100 illustrations and will be followed by illustrated versions of all seven books from the series by the same artist.

Podcast version
In May 2020, a reading podcast by Spotify was created and entitled Harry Potter at Home: Readings. Each chapter is narrated by a celebrity guest from the Harry Potter and Wizarding World franchises.

Film adaptation
In 1999, Rowling sold the film rights of the first two Harry Potter books to Warner Bros. for a reported £1 million. Rowling demanded that the principal cast be kept strictly British, but allowed for the casting of Irish actors such as Richard Harris as Dumbledore and of foreign actors as characters of the same nationalities in later books. After extensive casting, filming began in September 2000 at Leavesden Film Studios and in London, with production ending in July 2001. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was released in London on 14 November 2001. Reviewers' comments were positive, as reflected by an 81% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and by a score of 65% at Metacritic, representing "generally favourable reviews".

Video games
Five unique video games by different developers were released between 2001 and 2003 by Electronic Arts, that were loosely based on the film and book:

Uses in education and business
Writers on education and business subjects have used the book as an. Writing about clinical teaching in medical schools, Jennifer Conn contrasted Snape's technical expertise with his intimidating behaviour towards students. Quidditch coach Madam Hooch on the other hand illustrated useful techniques in the teaching of physical skills, including breaking down complex actions into sequences of simple ones and helping students to avoid common errors. Joyce Fields wrote that the books illustrate four of the five main topics in a typical first-year sociology class: "sociological concepts including culture, society, and socialisation; stratification and social inequality; social institutions; and social theory".

Stephen Brown noted that the early Harry Potter books, especially Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, were a runaway success despite inadequate and poorly organised marketing. Brown advised marketing executives to be less preoccupied with rigorous statistical analyses and the "analysis, planning, implementation, and control" model of management. Instead he recommended that they should treat the stories as "a marketing masterclass", full of enticing products and brand names. For example, a real-world analogue of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans was introduced under licence in 2000 by toymaker Hasbro.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Fritigern

Fritigern (fl. 370s) was a Thervingian Gothic chieftain whose decisive victory at Adrianople during the Gothic War (376–382) led to favourable terms for the Goths when peace was made with Gratian and Theodosius I in 382.

Name
Fritigern appears in the Latinized form Fritigernus. The Gothic name is reconstructed as *Frithugairns "desiring peace". The Germanized name under which Fritigern is honored in the Walhalla temple (1842) is Friediger.

Conflicts against Athanaric
The earliest references to Fritigern concern the period between the attack on the Thervingi by Valens (367/9) and the Hunnic raids on the Thervingi (ca. 376). In this time, a civil war may have broken out between Fritigern and Athanaric, a prominent Therving ruler. The conflict between Fritigern and Athanaric is mentioned by Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomen, and Zosimus, but not by Ammianus Marcellinus and Philostorgius. Before or during this civil war, Fritigern converted to Arian Christianity. Athanaric's persecution of Christians mentioned by Sozomen, falls into this period. Athanaric seems to have won this war, as he later led the Thervingi in battle against the Huns in 376.

According to Socrates, Fritigern and Athanaric were rival leaders of the (Therving) Goths. As this rivalry grew into warfare, Athanaric gained the advantage, and Fritigern asked for Roman aid. The Emperor Valens and the Thracian field army intervened, Valens and Fritigern defeated Athanaric, and Fritigern converted to Christianity, following the same teachings as Valens. Sozomen follows Socrates' account. According to Zosimus, Athanaric (Athomaricus) was the king of the Goths (Scythians). Sometime after their victory at Adrianople, and after the accession of Theodosius, Fritigern, Alatheus, and Saphrax moved north of the Danube and defeated Athanaric, before returning south of the Danube.

Danube crossing
In 376, the Thervings came under increasing pressure from the Huns, who had already conquered their kinsmen, the Greuthungi. Fritigern asked Valens to allow the Thervingi to cross the northern Roman border and settle in Moesia or Thracia, with the Danube River and Roman frontier forts protecting them from the Huns. Valens agreed to permit Fritigern's followers to enter the empire. In return, they would be subject to military service, but would be treated the same as other Roman subjects. As it turned out, neither happened. Meanwhile, Athanaric and many of his followers retreated to Caucaland ("the Highlands", presumably the Eastern Carpathians and Transylvania).

During the autumn of 376, the Romans helped Alavivus and Fritigern's people cross the Danube and settle in the province of Moesia. In the winter of 376/7, a famine hit the areas settled by the Thervingi and their appeals for help went unanswered. The Roman governors of the area, Lupicinus and Maximus, treated them badly. They sold them food only at extremely high prices, which forced many Goths to sell their children as slaves. They invited several Thervingi leaders to a feast, in which they killed some and took others hostage. Alavivus most likely remained a hostage, but Fritigern was able to escape and he became leader of the Thervingi. Soon he declared war on the Roman Empire.

War against Valens
Fritigen decisively defeated Lupicinus at the Battle of Marcianople in 376. The Goths went on to pillage Moesia, and by 377 had gained control over most of the neighboring, richer province of Thracia. Valens, recognizing the severity of the situation, sent his general Traianus and asked for the aid of Western emperor Gratian, who sent Richomeres and Frigeridus to contain the Goths east of the Haemus. At the Battle of the Willows, combined troops of the Western and Eastern Empire barely withstood a larger number of Goths, forcing Fritigern to withdraw into a wagon fort to recuperate. Valens now sent Saturninus to support Traianus. Saturninus and Traianus built a number of fortifications to contain the Gothic camp, hoping to starve them out during the winter of 377/8 and to force them into an open field battle. Fritigern refused to abandon his fort, and instead managed to enlist the support of Hunnic and Alanic cavalry. Saturninus could no longer maintain his blockade and was forced to retreat, returning freedom of movement to Fritigern who again took to pillaging the countryside. In the summer of 377, the Goths had regained access to the Hellespont and the Black Sea. They sacked Dibaltum and Augusta Trajana, forcing Frigiderus to retreat to Illyria. The Goths now threatened Constantinople itself, and Valens was forced to extract significant forces from the Persian front, granting considerable concessions to the Sassanids. According to Socrates Scholasticus, the citizens of the capital accused Valens of neglecting their defense, urging him to confront the invaders. Valens moved his army to Melantias on 12 June, and sent Sebastianus with an advance force to engage Gothic raiding parties. Sebastianus successfully destroyed a number of raiding parties, forcing Fritigern to consolidate his forces in the area of Cabyle. Gratian was detained in the north in his campaign against the Alemanni (Battle of Argentovaria), and unable to support Valens, who had been waiting to engage the Goths throughout June and July. When Valens heard that the Goths were moving towards Adrianople, he decamped and marched to meet them. Around 7 August, Richomeres returned from the Western campaign with the message that Gratian was now approaching. According to Ammianus, Victor cautioned Valens to wait for Gratian, while Sebastianus urged for an immediate assault. Fritigern sent envoys with two letters on the night of 8 August. The first letter offered peace and a military alliance in exchange for territory in Thrace. The second letter, addressed privately to Valens, assured that he wished for peace, but asked Valens to remain mobilized so that he, Fritigern, could convince his own people of maintaining the peace. Valens rejected the proposal and marched to engage the Goths on the following day. Fritigern won a respite by further peace negotiations allowing his allied Greuthungi cavalry to draw near. In the ensuing Battle of Adrianople, the Goths won a decisive victory. The Roman army was routed and suffered heavy losses. Valens himself was killed in the aftermath of the battle. Fritigern besieged the city of Adrianople itself, without success.

The Goths retook control of much of the Balkan peninsula in the aftermath of the battle. The Eastern empire, now without an emperor, feared that the Gothic populations would ally themselves with Fritigern leading to widespread insurgence. Julius, successor to Lupicinus, ordered the massacre of all Goths living near the frontier. By 379, word of the massacres reached the Goths living in the interior provinces, leading to riots in Asia Minor. The Romans reacted by massacring the Goths in the interior provinces as well.

Fritigern continued the war for two years, with mixed success. Theodosius I succeeded Valens as emperor on 19 January 379. Gratian did acknowledge Theodosius as his co-emperor and granted him control over the imperial dioceses of Dacia and Macedonia, but he  promptly returned to his northern front to deal with the Alemanni, leaving Theodosius to deal with the Gothic problem.

Theodosius drafted a new army from farmers and mercenaries. Many attempted to avoid the draft, some mutilating their own thumbs to avoid military service, and Theodosius responded with harsh punishments for deserters, forcing even those who had mutilated themselves into service. Theodosius' general Modares, a Goth himself, won a minor victory against Fritigern.

It appears that at this point, the Greuthungi split off the Gothic army and went to Illyricum. The Thervingi under Fritigern moved towards Greece, into Macedonia and Thessaly. Theodosius moved to intercept them, but his army disintegrated from desertions at Thessalonica, many of the barbarian mercenaries joining Fritigern. At this point, Gratian was once again willing to come to aid, and his generals Arbogast and Bauto successfully drove the Gothis back into Thrace by the summer of 381. Peace negotiations were opened, with Richomeres and Saturninus conducting the negotiations for the Romans. Peace was declared on 3 October 382. Fritigern is not mentioned again in any source after 381, and his fate is uncertain, he may have been killed in the Greek campaign, or he may have been deposed as a condition for peace.

title: Fritigern


text:
Victor Lustig

Victor Lustig (January 4, 1890 – March 11, 1947) was a highly skilled con artist from Austria-Hungary, who undertook a criminal career that involved conducting scams across Europe and the United States during the early 20th century. Lustig is widely regarded as one of the most notorious con artists of his time, and is infamous for being "the man who sold the Eiffel Tower twice" and for conducting the "Rumanian Box" scam.

Early life
Lustig was born in Hostinné, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary. He learned easily throughout his youth, becoming a quick-study, which also proved to be a source of trouble. At the age of 19, while taking a break from his studies in Paris, Lustig took to gambling. During this time he also sustained a defining scar on the left side of his face from the jealous boyfriend of a woman he consorted with. Upon leaving school, Lustig applied both his quick wit and sizing up of a situation and his fluency in several languages to embark on a life of crime, eventually focusing on conducting a variety of scams and cons that provided him with property and money, and which transformed him into a professional con man.

Many of Lustig's initial cons were committed on ocean liners sailing between the Atlantic ports of France and New York City; amongst the schemes he pulled on rich travellers included one in which he posed as a musical producer who sought investment in a non-existent Broadway production. When the services of Trans-Atlantic liners were suspended in the wake of World War I, Lustig found himself in search of new territory to make an income from, and opted to travel to the United States. By this time, he began to earn a level of infamy amongst various law enforcement agencies for the scams he committed, including one he conducted in 1922 in which he conned a bank into giving him money for a portion of bonds he was offering for a repossessed property, only to use sleight of hand to escape with both the money and the bonds.

Eiffel Tower scam
In 1925, Lustig traveled back to France. While staying in Paris, he chanced upon a newspaper article discussing the problems faced with maintaining the Eiffel Tower, which gave him inspiration for a new con. At the time, the monument had begun to fall into disrepair, and the city was finding it increasingly expensive to maintain and repaint it. Part of the article made a passing comment that overall public opinion on the monument would move towards calls for its removal, which was the key to convincing Lustig that using it as part of his next con would be lucrative. After researching what he needed to help him utilize the information from the article, Lustig set to work preparing the scam, which included hiring a forger to produce fake government stationery for him.

Once he was ready, Lustig invited a small group of scrap metal dealers to a confidential meeting at an expensive hotel, whereupon he identified himself to them as the Deputy Director-General of the Ministère de Postes et Télégraphes (Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs). In the meeting, he convinced the men that the upkeep of the Eiffel Tower was becoming too much for Paris and that the French government wished to sell it for scrap, but that because such a deal would be controversial and likely spark public outcry, nothing could be disclosed until all the details were thought out. Lustig revealed that he was in charge of selecting the dealer who would receive ownership of the structure, claiming that the group had been selected carefully because of their reputations as "honest businessmen". His speech included genuine insight about the monument's place in the city and how it did not fit in with the city's other great monuments like the Gothic cathedrals or the Arc de Triomphe.

During his time with the dealers, Lustig kept watch on who would be the most likely to fall for his scam and found his mark in André Poisson—an insecure man who wished to rise up amongst the inner circles of the Parisian business community. As Poisson showed the keenest interest in purchasing the monument, Lustig decided to focus on him once the dealers sent their bids to him. Arranging a private meeting with Poisson, Lustig convinced him that he was a corrupt official, claiming that his government position did not give him a generous salary for the lifestyle he wished to enjoy. Believing the sale of the Eiffel Tower would secure him a place amongst the top businessmen, Poisson agreed to pay a large bribe to secure ownership of the Eiffel Tower. However, once Lustig received his bribe and the funds for the monument's "sale" (around 70,000 francs), he soon fled to Austria.

Lustig suspected that when Poisson found out he had been conned, he would be too ashamed and embarrassed to inform the French police of what he had been caught up in, yet despite this belief, he maintained a check on newspapers while in Austria. His suspicions soon proved to be correct when he could find no reference of his con within their pages, and thus he decided to return to Paris later that year to pull off the scheme once more. However, when Lustig attempted to con another group of dealers and had managed to find a mark among them willing to buy the Eiffel Tower, the police were informed about the scam and he fled to the U.S. to evade arrest.

Rumanian Box scam
One of Lustig's most notable scams involved selling unsuspecting marks a box that he claimed was a machine that could duplicate any currency bills that were inserted into it, with the only catch being that the device needed six hours to print an identical copy. Referred to as the "money box" or "Rumanian Box", the scam involved a specially designed mahogany box, roughly the size of a steamer trunk. The box's design featured two small slots designed to take in bills and the paper to "print" the duplicate on, and a compartment containing a false arrangement of levers and mechanisms that had to be "operated" to make the duplicates.

In order to convince the mark it truly worked, Lustig would ask them to give him a specific denomination of bill (e.g. $100), insert it into his device along with the paper, and then wait with them until the duplicate was made. When it had, Lustig would take the mark with him to a bank to authenticate the note. In reality, Lustig had concealed a genuine note within the device; the choice of the denomination was influenced by what he put into the box beforehand. Once the mark was convinced, Lustig would refuse to sell them the box until they offered him a high price for it. Before it was sold, Lustig would pack the box with additional genuine notes, to buy him time to make a clean escape, before his mark realized they had been conned.

One of Lustig's most infamous uses of the device was upon a Texas sheriff, whom he convinced to buy it for thousands of dollars. Upon realizing he had been tricked, the sheriff pursued Lustig to Chicago. Upon meeting him again, the sheriff was conned into believing that he was not operating the device correctly, and was handed a large sum of cash as compensation, unaware that the money was counterfeit. This counterfeiting would eventually lead to Lustig's arrest by American law enforcement officers.

Later years, capture, and death
When the Great Depression hit, Lustig concocted a risky scam aimed at Al Capone, knowing that he faced certain death if his mark realized he was being conned. For Lustig, the scam was not a straight-out con, but one designed to get his target to part with a relatively small amount of cash. Lustig asked Capone to invest $50,000 in a crooked scheme, then kept the money given to him in a safe deposit box for two months before returning it, claiming the deal had fallen through. Capone got the impression that he was dealing with an honest man. At this point, Lustig told Capone that the failure of the deal meant he had lost all means of supporting himself. He then convinced Capone to give him $5,000 ($1,000, according to other sources ) to "tide him over", as Lustig had originally planned.

In 1930, Lustig went into a partnership with two men from Nebraska—pharmacist William Watts and chemist Tom Shaw—to conduct a large scale counterfeiting operation. Watts and Shaw engraved the plates that would be used to print the counterfeit dollar bills, while Lustig organised a ring of couriers to distribute the forgeries, ensuring that they were kept in the dark regarding the production of the counterfeits. The operation managed to inject thousands of dollars of counterfeit money (nicknamed "Lustig money") to the U.S. economy each month for the next five years, though the increasing amount entering circulation eventually drew the attention of federal agents.

When Lustig's mistress, Billy May, learned that he was betraying her for a younger woman, she decided to take revenge and placed an anonymous phone call to the federal authorities. On 10 May 1935, Lustig was arrested in New York and charged with counterfeiting. Although he openly admitted to his partners' involvement in the operation, he himself feigned ignorance in the matter. However, Lustig's refusal to disclose information on a key found in his possession proved to be his undoing, as it was later found to open a locker in the Times Square subway station containing $51,000 in counterfeit bills and the plates with which they had been printed.

The day before his trial, Lustig managed to escape from the Federal House of Detention in New York City by faking illness and using a specially made rope to climb out of the building, but he was recaptured 27 days later in Pittsburgh. Lustig pleaded guilty at his trial and was sentenced to fifteen years in prison on Alcatraz Island, California for his original charge, with a further five years for his prison escape. On 9 March 1947, Lustig contracted pneumonia and died two days later at the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri. On his death certificate his occupation was listed as apprentice salesman.

Ten Commandments
A set of instructions known as the "Ten Commandments for Con Men" has been attributed to Lustig:

 * Be a patient listener (it is this, not fast talking, that gets a con man his coups).
 * Never look bored.
 * Wait for the other person to reveal any political opinions, then agree with them.
 * Let the other person reveal religious views, then have the same ones.
 * Hint at sex talk, but don't follow it up unless the other person shows a strong interest.
 * Never discuss illness, unless some special concern is shown.
 * Never pry into a person's personal circumstances (they'll tell you all eventually).
 * Never boast – just let your importance be quietly obvious.
 * Never be untidy.
 * Never get drunk.

title: Victor Lustig


text:
Albert Abrams

Albert Abrams (December 8, 1863 – January 13, 1924) was a fraudulent American physician, well known during his life for inventing machines, such as the "Oscilloclast" and the "Radioclast", which he falsely claimed could diagnose and cure almost any disease. These claims were challenged from the outset. Towards the end of his life, and again shortly after his death, many of his machines and conclusions were demonstrated to be intentionally deceptive or false.

Biography
Albert Abrams was born in San Francisco on December 8, 1863, to Marcus Abrams and Rachel Leavey, although other dates have also been reported. On October 8, 1878, he inscribed at Medical College of the Pacific, worked as an assistant of Prof. Douglass and Prof. Hirschfelder, and got a medical degree on October 30, 1881. Then he went to Heidelberg, Germany, and graduated there in November 1882 before undertaking further studies in London, Berlin, Vienna, and Paris.

According to Wilson, Abrams was awarded an M.D. by the Cooper College in 1883. He served on the teaching staff of the College for a total of fourteen years: five years (1885–1889) as Demonstrator of Pathology; four years (1890–1893) as Adjunct to the Chair of Clinical Medicine and Demonstrator of Pathology; and five years (1894–1898) as Professor of Pathology.

He was described by one Jewish newspaper as “our talented young professor.” He was elected vice-president of the California State Medical Society in 1889 and was made president of the San Francisco Medico-Chirurgical Society in 1893. In the beginning of the 1900s he had become a respected expert in neurology. From 1904 he was president of the Emanuel Polyclinic in San Francisco.

Abrams published numerous books from 1891 to 1923.

He died January 13, 1924, from a broncho-pneumonia in San Francisco.

Heidelberg doctorate claim
Abrams was accused of fraudulently claiming a medical qualification from the University of Heidelberg; however, documents from Archive of University Heidelberg confirm that Albert Abrams received a medical degree there on 21 November 1882.

In Abrams' view, American medicine was dominated by physicians with excessive admiration for German doctors and researchers. In earlier writings, he insulted physicians by calling them "Dr. Hades" or "Dr. Inferior", by comparing their looks to typhoid and other germs, and by making fun of various abstruse therapies that at the time were considered "scientific" by the medical establishment. In a poem that he wrote on balloon therapy, for instance, the doctors take their patients up in the air but do not know how to bring the balloon down again. The poem ends with the lines: "But they never came back. That's why we confess / Aëronautic therapy is not a success."

Spondylotherapy
Abrams developed a medical technique called spondylotherapy, which was inspired by chiropractic and osteopathic ideas. The basic principle is the stimulation of nerves originating from the spinal cord, which can trigger reflex actions on viscera or inner organs. The stimulation is performed by controlled concussion with a plexor / pleximeter combination directly on the spinous processes, by sinusoidal electric currents or by application of ice. Abrams published the book Spondylotherapy in several editions between 1910 and 1918. A simplified version of spondylotherapy was first published by Alva Emeey Gregory, M.D. in 1914.

Electronic Reactions of Abrams
Abrams promoted an idea that electrons were the basic element of all life. He called this ERA, for Electronic Reactions of Abrams, and introduced a number of different machines which he claimed were based on these principles.

The machines
The Dynomizer looked something like a radio, and Abrams claimed it could diagnose any known disease from a single drop of blood or alternatively the subject's handwriting. He performed diagnoses on dried blood samples sent to him on pieces of paper in envelopes through the mail. Apparently Abrams even claimed he could conduct medical practice over the telephone with his machines, and that he could determine personality characteristics.

The Dynomizer was big business; by 1918, courses in spondylotherapy and ERA cost $200 (about the same purchasing power as $3,150 in 2014); equipment was leased at about $200 with a monthly $5 charge thereafter. The lessee had to sign a contract stating the device would never be opened. Abrams explained that this would disrupt their delicate adjustment, but the rule also served to prevent the Abrams devices from being examined. He then widened his claims to treating the diagnosed diseases. Abrams came up with new and even more impressive gadgets, the "Oscilloclast" and the "Radioclast", which came with tables of frequencies that were designed to "attack" specific diseases. Clients were told cures required repeated treatments.

Dynomizer operators tended to give alarming diagnoses, involving combinations of such maladies as cancer, diabetes and syphilis. Abrams often included a disease called "bovine syphilis", unknown to other medical practitioners. He claimed the Oscilloclast was capable of defeating most of these diseases, most of the time.

By 1921, there were claimed to be 3,500 practitioners using ERA technology. Conventional medical practitioners were extremely suspicious. When people opened Abrams's boxes, they found "simple wiring, a few resistors, a small motor that only made a humming noise, and nothing that could in any way perform a diagnosis or 'broadcast' or even produce radio waves."

In the 1970s, Bob DeVries, a product designer for Hewlett-Packard, had a chance to repair an old Oscilloclast (1934). It was owned by a lady whose father had been a president of Abrams' Electronic Medical Foundation and improver of their devices; she had several such devices and believed that electric therapy to be beneficial, from her own experience. DeVries not only restored the old oscilloclast to working order, but also developed a transistorized version for his client, which they called a "Pulsed Oscillator".

Investigation
The dispute between Abrams and his followers and the American Medical Association (AMA) was intensified. Defenders included American radical author Upton Sinclair and the famously credulous Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Resolution of the dispute through the intervention of a scientifically respected third party was pursued. Scientific American magazine decided to investigate Dr. Abrams' claims. Scientific American was interested in the matter as readers were writing letters to the editor saying that Abrams' revolutionary machines were one of the greatest inventions of the century and so needed to be discussed in the pages of the magazine.

Scientific American assembled a team of investigators who worked with a senior Abrams associate given the pseudonym "Doctor X". The investigators developed a series of tests and the magazine asked readers to suggest their own tests. The investigators asked Doctor X to identify six vials containing unknown pathogens. It seems likely that Doctor X honestly believed in his Abrams machines; in fact, he allowed the Scientific American investigators to observe his procedure. Doctor X got the contents of all six vials completely wrong. He examined the vials and pointed out that they had labels in red ink, which produced vibrations that confounded the instruments. The investigators gave him the vials again with less offensive labels, and he got the contents wrong again.

The results were published in Scientific American, and investigators continued their work. Abrams offered to "cooperate" with the investigators, but always failed to do so on various pretexts. Abrams never actually participated in the investigation, and in ERA publications asserted he was a victim of unjust persecution.

Debunking
An AMA member claimed to have sent a blood sample to an Abrams practitioner, and got back a diagnosis that the patient had malaria, diabetes, cancer and syphilis. The AMA member then claimed the blood sample was in fact from a Plymouth Rock rooster. The AMA member failed to document or provide witnesses for this claim.

Similar samples were sent to other Abrams practitioners, and a few found themselves facing fraud charges in court. In a case in Jonesboro, Arkansas, Abrams was called to be a witness, but he died of pneumonia at age 60 shortly before the trial began in January 1924. After his death, investigators with the Food and Drug Administration opened some of the doctor's boxes. One produced a magnetic field, similar to a doorbell; another was a low-powered radio wave transmitter.

Psychologist Donovan Rawcliffe claimed that Abrams' devices had no scientific validity but his successors had "founded a good many special clinics in the United States and their number has by no means diminished in the ensuing years."

Selected publications

 * Abrams, Albert (1895). Transactions of the Antiseptic Club . New York: E. B. Treat. [A fictional comedic work on the state of the medical profession]

title: Albert Abrams