The word WAH may be used either as a verb or as a conjunction.

As a verb it means “to say” but its use in this sense is mainly confined to certain types of sentences reporting speech.

	KOW POOT WAH A-RY เขาพูดว่าอะไร	What does he say?
	KOW BORK MEE KAOU WAH... เขาบอกมีข่าวว่า...	He says that the news says...

The most common use of WAH is as a conjunction introducing a substantival clause after verbs of mental action such as “believe”, “think”, “understand”, “promise”, “know”, “say”, “feel” etc. In this usage it is similar to the English conjunctions “that”, “whether”, “if” in similar constructions.

	POM KOWJY WAH KOW PY SEERAHCHA LAAW I understand that he has gone to Sriracha (already). ผมเข้าใจว่าเขาไปศรีราชาแล้ว
	POM MY SAHP WAH KOW JA MAH REU MY I don’t know whether he will come or not. ผมไม่ทราบว่าเขาจะมาหรือไม่
	KOON SAHP MY WAH KOW YOO TEENY Do you know where he lives? (Do you know that he lives where?) คุณทราบไหมว่าเขาอยู่ที่ไหน

WAH is also used in other cases where it acts more as a comma than anything else and cannot be translated at all. You will come across this usage later.

Generated by Lyndon Hill on Thu Jul 20 18:40:33 BST 2006.

Copyright remains with the original authors.