BIDAH (บิดา) and MAHNDAH (มารดา) are “polite” words and should always be used when referring to your own father or mother or your friend’s father or mother.

As an alternative to this however you can use KOON POR and KOON MAA which are also quite “polite”.

POR (พ่อ) and MAA (แม่) used alone are rather rough speech but none the less you will hear them used quite a lot by Thai themselves.

Note the combination MAA NUM (Mother of water) meaning “a river”.

The MAA NUM JOW PRAYAH or Chow Phya River on which Bangkok stands is commonly referred to by foreigners as the MAA NUM. This only means “River”.

DEK (เด็ก) and LOOK (ลูก) both mean “child” but are used in different ways, and it is important for you to use them correctly.

DEK is used when referring to a child or children in general whereas LOOK is used when referring to children in specific relationship to someone.

	DEK PY NY Where has the child gone? Where have the children gone? เด็กไปไหน
	DEK YING YOO KA DEK CHAI PY LAAW The girl is here, the boy has gone away (already). เด็กหญิงอยู่ค่ะ เด็กชายไปแล้ว
	LOOK CHAI KORNG KOON PY NY Where has your little boy gone? ลูกชายของคุณไปไหน
	DEK NUN PEN LOOK KORNG KRY KA Whose child is that? (That child is the child of who?) เด็กนั่นเป็นลูกของใครคะ

LOOK is also used when referring to the young of animals.

	LOOK MAAW	ลูกแมว	A kitten.
	LOOK NUM	ลูกน้ำ	Mosquito larvae. (Children of the water)

PERM (เพิ่ม) is a transitive verb meaning “to increase”. When it is followed by KEUN “up” the combination is an intransitive verb meaning “to be increasing”.

NUM PERM KEUN

น้ำเพิ่มขึ้น

The water is increasing.

KEUN (ขึ้น) “up” may be either an adverb or a verb. As an adverb it always follows the word it qualifies and carries the idea of “to a higher degree”.

	POOT KEUN	พูดขึ้น	To speak up.
	DEE KEUN	ดีขึ้น	Better. (good up)

As a verb it means “to come or go up”.

	NUM KEUN	น้ำขึ้น	The water is rising.
	KEUN DTON MY	ขึ้นต้นไม้	Climb a tree. (Go up a tree)

In both these forms KEUN is used in a large number of compound words of which the meaning is very idiomatic.

LOT (ลด) is a transitive verb meaning “to decrease”, the opposite of PERM. When followed by LONG “down” it means “to be decreasing”.

LONG (ลง) “down” may also be either an adverb or a verb, and is the opposite to KEUN. As an adverb it gives the idea of “to a lesser degree”.

NOY LONG

น้อยลง

Fewer. (Few down)

As a verb it has the meaning of “to come down”, “to go down”, “to put down” etc.

	NUM LONG	น้ำลง	The tide is falling.
	LONG NUM	ลงน้ำ	Go (down into) the water.
	CHAH LONG	ช้าลง	To slow up.
	WAHNG LONG TEE NEE วางลงที่นี่		Put it down here.

As with KEUN, LONG is used to make a great many compound words with very idiomatic meanings as you will see later.

AROY (อร่อย) has not quite the same superlative connotation as “delicious” in English. It is nearly always used in relation to food and means that the food is “very nice” or MY AROY “not very nice”. If you want to express greater appreciation than that you can say AROY MAHK or AROY DEE. If the food is not very nice don’t say MY DEE as this implies that it is very nasty indeed and may even be bad.

DIP (ดิบ) “unripe” also means “raw” or “not cooked”.

SOO-AN (สวน) usually refers to a domestic garden or a commercial vegetable garden or a plantation of fruit, rubber, kapok or coconuts.

RY (ไร่) is a plantation usually of small shrubs such as chilli, coffee etc. It is also a measurement of land of 1913 square yards or about 2/5 of an acre (See Appendix 6).

For the activity of farming we use the word TUM “to do”.

	TUM RY	ทำไร่	Works a plantation.
	TUM NAH	ทำนา	Works a field (Usually rice).
	TUM RY TUM NAH	ทำไร่ทำนา	General farming.

SUT (สัตว์) is a general term like “animal” and refers to all members of the Animal Kingdom except humans.

NOOM (หนุ่ม) and SAOU (สาว) both mean “young” but NOOM is only used in relation to “a young man” and SAOU only when referring to “a young woman”.

	(POO) CHAI NOOM KON NUN (ผู้) ชายหนุ่มคนนั้น	That young man.
	(POO) YING SAOU KON NUN (ผู้) หญิงสาวคนนั้น	That young woman.

UN is both a classifier and a noun meaning “one” in such expressions as,

	UN NY	อันไหน	Which one?
	UN DEE-O	อันเดียว	Only one.
	EEK UN NEUNG	อีกอันหนึ่ง	One more.

It is not generally used with concrete nouns which have their own proper classifier. “The small one” referring to a car would be KUN LEK คันเล็ก.

DOO (ดู) is the normal word for “to look” or “to look at” and generally implies looking at something fairly close.

MORNG (มอง) which means “to look at intently” or “to stare at” is more often used for looking at something a distance away.

The usage of either of these words however is largely idiomatic and they are not usually interchangeable.

DOO also means “to appear” but MORNG cannot be used in this sense.

	DOO NEE	ดูนี้	Look at this.
	KOON DOO MY SABAI คุณดูไม่สบาย		You don’t well. (You look not well)
	BAHN TEE CHUN DOO LAAW บ้านที่ฉันดูแล้ว		The house that I have looked at already.
	MORNG MY HEN	มองไม่เห็น	I am looking (carefully) but I can’t see it.

Compare this last example with

HEN MY DY

เห็นไม่ได้

I can’t see it.

This latter implies that there is something in the way which is physically preventing you from seeing it.

Generated by Lyndon Hill on Thu Jul 20 18:40:32 BST 2006.

Copyright remains with the original authors.