Making Out in Thai. Michael Golding

are replaced with time words, often given at the start or finish of the phrase, while future is simple: add ca before the verb to mean "will." Thai also has a relatively simple grammar that's similar to English: subject, verb, and object/predicate. But note that an adjective follows the noun it describes (khon sŭay means a beautiful person)—this isn't hard when you use the phrases given here.

      There's also no need to bother with "a" and "the" as you don't really need them in Thai. Thais will often omit subjects such as "I" or "you" and just use a verb and an object—where this is the case, we have shown the words that can be omitted in parentheses ( ).

      You will hear Thais using khráp and khâ/khá at the end of sentences (as well as several other words!) These are called polite particles that will help you if you get used to using them all the time. They can be used with nearly every sentence in this book, so use them often. If you do, Thais will see you as a person with manners, even speaking the everyday language here—and yes, it does sound like "crap" but you want to get (it) on with Thais don't you? Males use khráp, and females khâ at the end of statements, and khráp and khá after questions. You'll see men have it easy! In this book, male words are shown with

and female ones with

when necessary, although most of the time the particles are left out to save space. Just add them when you can.

      Here are a couple of examples:

(khun) Ca pai năi khráp ? [male to female]	Where are you going?
(chán ) Ca pai súeh khăwng khâ [female to male]	I'm going shopping.

      khráp

/khâ

is the easiest way to say "yes" in reply to the question:

Ca pai dûai mái (khráp /khá ) khráp?/khâ?

Wanna go too? Sure.

      Another word that varies according to gender is the first-person pronoun (I or me). Men use phŏm

and women chán

or, more nicely, dichán

.

      TONE TIPS

      As you've seen, Thai has five tones: mid, low, falling, high and rising. In this book we've used a simple but general system to show them as marks above the words. Have another look at the examples above in INFORMATION to get an idea. Let's use an example—if we take the word maa (to come), the tones would be written as:

      mid—maa (the level or plain tone—no mark)

      low—màa (the mark points low:

)

      falling—mâa (the mark shows you throwing a stone over a cliff

)

      high—máa (the mark points high:

)

      rising—măa (the mark shows you scooping water out of a well

)

      Ask a Thai friend to give you some "tone practice." Be careful if you can, because máa maa means a horse is coming, but măa maa means a dog is coming (and Thais think dogs are low life!) Still, in context you won't have too many problems.

      PRONUNCIATION TIPS

      Vowels