There are no two words in Thai which can be considered as being the equivalents of “Yes” and “No” in English and plain affirmative and negative answers are given in a variety of ways depending on the way in which the question is asked.

This fact usually causes difficulty to the foreigner who is accustomed to using “Yes” and “No” quite freely in a large number of sentences where they are in many cases fairly redundant and are merely added for emphasis or to smooth out the sentence and make it sound less abrupt.

You have already seen some of the ways in which Thai people give affirmative and negative answers and we will now bring all these and some other forms together for comparison.

1. In Lesson 1 you had CHY “it is” and MY CHY “it is not”, but these two words are often used alone in sentences where in English we would also add “Yes” or “No”.

   	BAHN NEE CHY MY	บ้านนี้ใช่ไหม	Is this the house?
   	CHY KRUP	ใช่ครับ	Yes, it is.
   	MY CHY KRUP	ไม่ใช่ครับ	No, it is not.

   As a general rule, if a question ends in CHY MY the best answer is either CHY or MY CHY.

   Similarly, if the question ends in DY MY, the answer will generally be either DY or MY DY.

   	WAHNG TEE NEE DY MY KA Can I put it down here? วางที่นี่ได้ไหมคะ
   	DY KRUP	ได้ครับ	Yes, that is alright.
   	MY DY KA YAH WAHNG TEE NUN No, don’t put it down there. ไม่ได้ค่ะ อย่าวางที่นั้น

2. Another common way of rendering “Yes” or “No” in answering a question is merely to repeat the verb on its own for the affirmative or the verb preceded by the negative word MY for the negative.

   	NAI SAMAHN YOO MY KA นายสมานอยู่ไหมคะ		Is Nai Samahn in?
   	YOO KA	อยู่ค่ะ	Yes, he is in.
   	MY YOO KA	ไม่อยู่ค่ะ	No, he is not in.

   As a variation of the above, where the verb is qualified by an adverb, we can omit the verb and merely repeat the adverb.

   	KOON SANIT YOO TEE NEE MAH NAHN LAAW REU KA Has Koon Sanit been living here for a long time? คุณสนิทอยู่ที่นี่มานานแล้วหรือคะ
   	NAHN LAAW KRUP นานแล้วครับ	Yes, for a long time (already).
   	MY NAHN KRUP ไม่นานครับ	No, not for long.

3. The “polite” words KRUP and KA are very often used either alone or at the beginning of a sentence to mean “yes” or “I understand”.

   	NEE BAHN KORNG KOON SANIT REU Is this Koon Sanit’s house? นี่บ้านของคุณสนิทหรือ
   	KRUP	ครับ	Yes, it is.
   	PY RUP PEU-AN CHUN TEE SATAHNEE ROT FY Go to the station and meet my friend. ไปรับเพื่อนฉันที่สถานีรถไฟ
   	KRUP	ครับ	Yes, I understand.

   When talking on the telephone Thai people use these words KRUP and KA very frequently meaning “I understand”. Note that it is only when used either alone or at the beginning of a sentence that KRUP and KA have this meaning of “yes”.

4. When the question ends in REU PLOW the negative answer is usually either PLOW alone or PLOW followed by an amplifying clause.

   	ROT FY (KABOO-AN) NEE PY OODORN REU PLOW Does this train go to Udorn? รถไฟ (ขบวน) นี้ไปอุดรหรือเปล่าครับ
   	PY KRUP or; KRUP ไปครับ or; ครับ	Yes, it does.
   	PLOW KRUP or; MY PY KRUP เปล่าครับ or; ไม่ไปครับ	No, it does no.
   	PLOW KRUP ROT FY (KABOO-AN) NEE PY CHEE-ANGMY No, this train goes to Chiengmai. เปล่าครับรถไฟ (ขบวน) นี้ไปเชียงใหม่

5. You will occasionally meet the word JA (จ้ะ) meaning “yes” used similarly to PLOW “no” and usually followed by an amplifying clause.

   It is not a very “polite” word and is used mostly to inferiors or amongst intimates and it is better for you not to use it at all.

Whether talking English or Thai you should be very careful about asking a Thai a negative question such as:

MEU-A WAHN NEE KOON MY DY PY SPORTS CLUB REU Yesterday you didn’t go to the Sports Club, did you? เมื่อวานนี้คุณไม่ได้ไป (Sports Club) หรือ

If he went he will probably reply,

PY KRUP

ไปครับ

Yes, I went.

which is quite straight forward, but if he did not go he will probably merely say.

KRUP

ครับ

Yes, I did not go.

Or again,

	PEU-AN CHUN YUNG MY MAH REU Hasn’t my friend come yet? เพื่อนฉันยังไม่มาหรือ
	MAH LAAW KRUP	มาแล้วครับ	Yes, he has come already.
	KRUP	ครับ	Yes, he has not yet come.

If you are not careful you can get very mixed up in these negative questions and the unusual, though quite logical, reply, and it is better to try and avoid them if possible.

The Thai themselves do not use the negative form of question very much in conversation.

These short answers given to questions in Thai sound rather abrupt when translated into English but they are perfectly alright in Thai and you need not be afraid to use them.

Although we have tabulated the various forms of question and answer above, there are no fixed rules as to when to use one or other particular form and in fact most of them are fairly interchangeable. Once you have had a little practice in the language you will have no difficulty in forming an appropriate reply to any question.

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

Copyright remains with the original authors.