Thai is the official language of Thailand, with around 60 million native speakers and another 20 million using it as a second language. In the United States the Thai-American community is around 300,000, concentrated in Los Angeles (Thai Town), the Bay Area, Las Vegas, Houston, and Chicago. Translation work is split between civil documents — Thai birth certificates, marriage records, and household-registration papers for USCIS — and business content tied to the Thai hospitality and restaurant industry that anchors much of the diaspora. Thai is tonal with five tones and uses its own script, an abugida derived from Old Khmer.