Learning Thai the Easy Way!

If you want to be serious about shopping and bargaining then it is important to learn Thai numbers. In department stores all prices are marked but in outdoor markets you will have to ask for the price and then try and make it cheaper.

Zero soon	One nueng	Two song	Three sam	Four see

Five har	Six hok	Seven jed	Eight bad	Nine gao

Ten sib	Eleven sib et	Twelve sib song	Thirteen sib sam

Once you can count 1-11 the rest will be very easy. In fact easier than English. Thai students are very good in learning Math. This is partly due to the way the numbers are named. Take thirty as an example. To us it is just a name but to a Thai student it is three blocks of ten. In Thai thirty is "sam sib" or literally "three tens". Thirty six is "three tens six".

From twelve to nineteen you just repeat the same formula:

14 = 10 + 4 (sib see)
15 = 10 + 5 (sib ha)

Twenty yee sib	Twenty One yee sib et	Twenty Two yee sib song	Twenty Three yee sib sam

Again, from twenty two to twenty nine you repeat the same formula:

24 = 20 + 4 (yee sib see)
25 = 20 + 5 (yee sib ha)

Thirty sam sib	Forty see sib

By now you should be able to count all the way to one hundred.

60 = 6 x 10 (hok sib)
70 = 7 x 10 (jed sib)

One Hundred nueng roi	Two Hundred song roi

One Thousand nueng pun	Two Thousand song pun

Ten Thousand nueng muen

NOTES:

• All shops use Arabic numerals so it will be easy for you to read. The only time you will see Thai numerals is in a school or when there is a two price system at a tourist attraction.
• If you haven't learned all of the numbers by the time you arrive in Thailand don't worry. Many shopkeepers will show you the price on a calculator! See the bottom of this page for more notes on numbers

RELATED LINKS:

• Thai numbers
• How to read numbers
• How to count to 1 million
• At the Market
• Thai Numerals Flashcards