Abstract
This paper focuses on the unique development of Ngou Yim 五音, a newly created hybrid Chinese used in chanting, and its literacy in Thailand. Since Ngou Yim is an artificial mixture of various Chinese dialects, it has no native speaker. The esoteric knowledge of Ngou Yim had been maintained exclusively in Mahayana monasteries in an idiosyncratic manner before one of the Bangkok-based publishers started to supply new texts with Thai alphabets in the 1980s. As a result, the reading of specific Ngou Yim texts has been fixed, has become open to wider lay audience, and has become dependent on Thai literacy. Nevertheless, even after the 1980s, Ngou Yim is still fluid. The idiosyncratic nature of Ngou Yim pronunciation is reflected in various versions of the same text, each of which shows different sets of mixture of dialects according to individual monks who order the publication of their own texts.
