What are your favorite Thai dishes? Pittayawat Pittayaporn shared a historical linguistic perspective on Thai food as part of Food Forum at Chiang Mai Design Week 2021, organized by the International Gastronomic Tourism Centre (iGTC), School of Tourism Development, Maejo University. After summarizing how food terms in Thai can be dated and their origins determined, he showed that Thai food terms form multiple layers, the oldest of which can be dated back to Han or Tang periods in Chinese history. He also showed that Thai food terms came from numerous sources, including earlier stages of Chinese, Khmer, Sanskrit, Persian, and most interestingly from indigenous languages of Latin America. Pittayawat was joined by Dr. Pasuree Luesakul from the Latin American Studies Center, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University, who talked about how new world food items were localized as part of Thai cuisine.
The online talk was broadcast on December 11, 2021 and is now available at https://mjuigtc.com/training/cmdw2021/foodforum/.