The general arrangement of a simple Thai sentence is Subject-Verb-Object as in English.

There are no Articles for use with nouns.

There is no inflection of nouns, pronouns or verbs; case, gender, number, tense etc. being indicated where considered necessary by the addition of other words.

Possession may be indicated by adding the word KORNG “of” “belonging to” in front of the noun or pronoun but this is often omitted.

Plurality if not indicated by the text of a sentence may be indicated by adding numeral words.

Inanimate objects have no gender and where it is necessary to indicate gender in relation to animate objects this is usually done by the addition of extra words.

Adjectives come after the noun they modify.

Affirmative and interrogative sentences are of the same form; the interrogative sentence being indicated by the addition of an interrogative word, usually at the end of a sentence.

The word MY expressed in a rising tone at the end of a sentence is probably the most common interrogative word and denotes a question. Its use is analogous to that of the English word “No?” as often used by Latin peoples at the end of a sentence in English to denote a question.

“You will come tomorrow, No?” = Will you come tomorrow? When an interrogative sentence contains words such as “who”, “why”, “when”, “where” etc. no other interrogative word is needed.

In colloquial Thai and also to a lesser extent in writing it is customary to leave out pronouns, prepositions and other words provided that the intention of the sentence appears to be otherwise adequately expressed. On the other hand words which have little or no meaning in the context in which they are being used and are often quite incapable of translation are frequently inserted in a sentence to make it sound more complete and euphonious.

Words which may be omitted are shown in brackets in the examples.

Generated by Lyndon Hill on Thu Jul 20 18:40:31 BST 2006.

Copyright remains with the original authors.