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 effectively naturalized. To distinguish between them is moreover absolutely impossible in the absence of any early records of Thăi speech. But the groups in the scheme above are not mutually exclusive. Eleven words of group 1 and six words of group 2 seem thoroughly naturalized. After making the necessary changes the result appears as follows:—

The Thăi element, that is, amounts to 83 per cent of the whole. Surprising as the figure is, it would have been higher yet, had the count been made as is usual in such cases; namely, a count, regardless of repetition, of all words as they actually occur in the text, instead of counting each word but once, as has been done here.

Almost equally surprising is the very small number of

words in the Thăi group that have dropped out of current Siamese during the six centuries that have elapsed. As I count them, I find but twenty-one that seem really obsolete, that is, a trifle over 6 per cent.

Of the dialectal color of the Sŭkhothăi speech it is impossible

to speak in percentages. Of the twenty-one Thăi words accounted as not current now in Siamese speech, I have marked but six as known to me to exist in Lao. No doubt there are others as well, of whose use I am ignorant. To answer the question quantitatively, one would have to know also how many words out of this whole vocabulary are not—or rather were not—current in Lao. And even so, mere vocabulary does not by any means cover the whole ground of dialectal divergence, which consists quite