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SENTENCE
STRUCTURE - โครงสร้างประโยค
Language tips
by Ajarn Richard (English teacher, Sriwittayapaknam
School)
When I first came
to learn Thai I was pleased to see that the basic sentence structure
was virtually the same as English. However, there are a few
important differences which I will show you on this page.
Thai sentences are:
subject - verb - object
For example:
We play football = เรา
เล่น ฟุตบอล -
rao len
footbon
I eat bread =
ผม กิน ขนมปัง
- phom gin
kanom bung
However, when I started
to mark the homework handed in by my Thai students I noticed
some interesting examples of word order:
"I live in a
house big."
"I am hot very."
"I have brothers two people."
"I no go to school."
"You are doing what?"
Let's look at
some of these examples more closely.
 The
first obvious mistake is "I live in a house big".
Here the adjective is following
the noun it is describing. Here are some examples of how to
write these sentences in Thai:
แมว เล็ก
- maeow
lek - literally means "cat
small".
ผู้หญิง
สวย
- poo-ying
suay - literally means "woman
beautiful".
หมา สี ดำ
- ma see
dum - literally means "dog colour
black".
ผู้ชาย สูง
- poo-chai
soong - literally means "man
tall".
อาหาร อร่อย
- ahan aroy
- literally means "food delicious".
Another
common mistake among my students are classifier nouns. I quite
often see them writing sentences such as: "There are students
45 people in my class." What is happening here is that
the Thai language has classifier nouns which come after the
main words.
For example:
three students = นักเรียน
สาม คน
- nak rian
sam khon - literally means "student three person".
three buses = รถเมล์
สาม คัน - rot
meh Sam khan - literally means "bus three vehicle".
I have already talked about this on the Classifier
page
The
next common mistake with word order are to do with adverbs of
manner.
For example:
very hot = ร้อน
มาก -
rawn mak
- literally means "hot very".
very big = ใหญ่
มาก - yai
mak - literally means "big very".
very pretty = สวย
มาก - na-rak
mak - literally means "pretty very".
Next
on my list are negatives. The Thai word for "no" is
"mai" and comes between the subject and verb. The
problem my students have is when they translate from Thai to
English word by word: "I no understand".
For example:
I don't have any money = ผม
ไม่ มี เงิน -
phom mai
me ngern = "I no have money".
I don't like spicey food = ผม
ไม่ ชอบ อาหาร เผ็ด -
phom mai chawb ahan pet = "I no like food spicey".
I am not going to Chiang Mai = ผม
ไม่ ไป เชียง ใหม่ -
phom mai bai chiang mai = "I no go chiang mai".
The
last example for this lesson deal with Question words. These
are never easy for my students and you will probably find it
a little harder. Some words come at the start and some at the
end. The phrase "What are you doing?" will come out
as "do what?" if my students are not concentrating
properly. The same goes for "where?" Others like "who?"
and "why?" come at the start.
For example:
Where is the toilet? = ห้องน้ำ
อยู่ ที่ ไหน -
hong nam
yu tee nai = "toilet where".
When will you go? = เมื่อ
ไหร่ จะ ไป -
meua rai ja bai = "when will go".
Who is sitting there? = ใคร
นั่ง ที่ นั่น -
krai nung tee nun = "who sit there".
I
have really only given you highlights on this page. It does
get a bit more complicated and of course, like any language,
there are exceptions to the rule. Some of these points I will
go into more detail in future lessons. If anyone would like
to add their own comments or insights then please fill in the
form below:
hi there i would like to know if there are any schools or whatever institute that allows foreigner to teach and provide lodging if there is any could nai one ple msg me : my_mo_mo@hotmail.com i am 21 and looking for a means to go to thailand a get a better knowledge of thai languge
joe
Tanks for these lessons
especialy the literally translated sentences are very usefull to understand Thai
Henk
I'm English, living and working up in Chonburi with Thai people. One of the things that I try to tell them is that Thai and Engish are actually very similar, in terms of syntax and a lot of the grammar. It's interesting to me that you pick out the same DIFFERENCES as I would if asked to do so. By exclusion, that leaves an awful lot of commonalities.
Compare, for example, languages like Gaelic that have completely different Subject/verb/object orders, or Japanese, with several radically different word ordererings, or highly inflected languages like Latin (let alone agglutinating languages), and the difference between 'red dog' and 'dog red', or 'where is it' vs 'it is where' hardly seem worth worrying about....
What's more baffling tome is why Thai people almost always confuse 'interested' and 'interesting' in English, given that Thai makes precisely the same distinction.
Very cool site, BTW.
john winward (john@tgi.or.th)
Read more Language
Tips from Ajarn Richard.
How
to read Thai fonts - instructions and downloads
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