Geographic Distribution
Isan is primarily spoken in the 19 provinces that make up Northeastern Thailand, an area is roughly the size of England and Wales combined. It is also spoken in large parts of Uttaradit and Phitsanulok provinces and the upper portions of Eastern Thailand.
There are also small villages and pockets of Lao speakers to be found in northern and central Thailand, the legacy of forced Lao settlement from the 18th and 19th centuries. Due to internal and seasonal migration from Isan to Bangkok, there are several million Lao speakers in the Thai capital,as well as other major cities. It can also be assumed that many of the Thai citizens living abroad are Isan speakers.
Read more about this topic: Isan Language
Famous quotes containing the word distribution:
“The man who pretends that the distribution of income in this country reflects the distribution of ability or character is an ignoramus. The man who says that it could by any possible political device be made to do so is an unpractical visionary. But the man who says that it ought to do so is something worse than an ignoramous and more disastrous than a visionary: he is, in the profoundest Scriptural sense of the word, a fool.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)