Learning Thai with Bart: Lesson23 – Phone Number

How to ask someone’s phone number?

Thohrasap = phone
Ber = number (pronounced B”er” like in “After”)
Arai = what

- Ber Thohrasap Khun, ber arai khap = What is your phone number? (phone number you, number what?)

- Ber Thohrasap Phom, ber 08 89 84 94 43 = my phone number is: 08… (phone number me, number: 08…).

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More Thai lessons here.

Learning Thai with Bart: Lesson5 – Greetings

Is it because the gender can quickly change in Thailand that they have decided to specify whether the person who speaks is a male or a female?

I don’t know. But the thing is that if you are a man you will use “Phom” for “I” or “me” and if you are a woman you will use “Dichan”. Men can use also “Dichan” in some cases but I am not really sure when (and not only when they feel like a woman).

From there, here is a Greetings situation where a boy meets a girl:

(Boy) – Sawadee Khrap (Hello) (Khrap being the polite form here)

(Girl) – Sawadee Kha (Hello) (Kha being the polite form here)

(Boy) – Khun sabaidee mai Khrap (How are you?) (sabaidee = I am ok ; mai = question)

(Girl) – Dichan sabaidee Kha (I am fine). KhawpKhun Kha (Thank you). Khun la Kha (And you?)

(Boy) – Phom sabaidee khrap (I am fine).

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More Thai lessons here.

Learning Thai with Bart: Lesson1 – Transliteration

As I am not able to learn Thai by myself, I will try to learn it with you

This is the first lesson of a new category: learn Thai with Bart. This is to get the basics, not to become fluent!

Let’s start with a difficulty of learning Thai (beside the 5 tones): The absence of official transliteration from Thai alphabet to Roman alphabet. This means that there is no universal method to write a thai word in roman alphabet. Therefore people use phonetic. Therefore the same thai word may be written in different ways depending on who writes it.

Even a simple word like hello can be written Sawadee or Sawat dii or in any other slightly different versions.

This makes it difficult to recognize a word from one thai lesson book to the other. Therefore, lesson number one will be: choose one lesson book and stick to it! And don’t be surprised to see the same word written in very different ways.