I’m self-studying Thai using the Pimsleur CD series. It’s a very effective method, I think. However, it has one defect: overly formal and polite.
For this reason, they teach the use of the polite particle “krup/kha” at the end of EVERY sentence and question.
What I’d like to know is, in what situations do Thai speakers really use the polite particle?
Hi Vay,
I was interested in this question myself.
A quick search led me to this website:
language.school-explorer.com/info/Thai_language
which claims:
[quote=“website”]Within Standard Thai, there are different forms for different social contexts:
Street Thai: informal, without polite terms of address, as used between close relatives and friends.(ภาษาพูด)
Elegant Thai: official and written version, includes respectful terms of address; used in simplified form in newspapers.(ภาษาเขียน)
Rhetorical Thai: used for public speaking.
Sacred Thai.
Royal Thai. (ราชาศัพท์)
Less educated Thais can speak only at the first level. Few can speak the Sacred or Royal versions[/quote]
From this, I’d infer that polite Thai is mostly spoken with people you don’t know, or are further outside of your immediate circle than close friends and family. The “respectful terms of address” part made me wonder if there is an age aspect to this as well (i.e. Would you automatically address an older person in a more polite form?).
Good luck on finding out more detailed information.
[quote=“Vay”]For this reason, they teach the use of the polite particle “krup/kha” at the end of EVERY sentence and question.
What I’d like to know is, in what situations do Thai speakers really use the polite particle?[/quote]
Khor toht, khrap.
X yoo teenai khrap.
yoo teenee khrap.
khorp khun maak, khrap.
In short, YES, use the polite particle just like your lessons teach you.
I’m not sure I completely agree with the way the above website breaks down and describes varieties of Thai. Just ignore this categorization, as none except #1 are relevant for you; but note that its so-called “Street Thai” is not ‘informal’ by western standards, given that it continually adds polite particles, and so on. Just learn your textbook Thai, consider that “standard, i.e., polite Thai”, and don’t worry about anything else unless you end up there a long time and then you’ll just grok anyway.
“polite Thai is mostly spoken with people you don’t know, or are further outside of your immediate circle than close friends and family.”
Yes.
"The “respectful terms of address” part made me wonder if there is an age aspect to this as well (i.e. Would you automatically address an older person in a more polite form?). "
You’d just be sure to use the kha/khrap, be sure to use the hands together when thanking them, and bow slightly lower than they do (especially for monks). You don’t need to learn special vocab or anything.
Better to use it too much than too little.
With a little time in Thailand you’ll get the hang of how much to use it. It may get dropped from less important tag questions and phrases accompanying the main sentence, or from sentences 3 or 4 out of a group of 5, depending on the content, so you might have a "chan gor hiew, meuangan. Bai nai? inserted after the first couple kha-bearing sentences. But primary, direct sentences and questions, especially if they’re the major part of the exchange, DO invariably carry the final ptcl., as with the above example.
Absolutely (!) use it, along with a friendly, gentle, polite tone of voice in any situation where you are junior, especially if speaking to a monk, etc…
But note - eternal friendliness and politeness are just as important as the particle. If you pass someone handing out DM’s, take one with a smile, even if you don’t want one, just to be ‘friendly and accepting’.
You won’t hear it much between family members, close friends, or lovers. My Thai girlfriend wouldn’t say, for example, “Baah, kha” :loco: , but rather, Baaaah!!! and maybe a playful slap to accompany it.
If you’re gay or transsexual, you can use the female kha, and will not be looked down upon for this or for effeminate voice or mannerisms. It’s a wonderfully accepting society.
As a foreigner, as long as you’re very very friendly, polite and smiling, they won’t even notice if you occasionally fail to add a khrap or kha. You’ll be forgiven even if they notice, but they’ll probably be too pleased to see a foreigner is trying to speak their language to even notice.
One last tip – really focus on those tones, just like with Chinese!
8: Alai na? Where can I find a good book that puts the tones the same way mandarin books for Westerners do. I found even with the book I saw the tone marks and automatically used the Chinese equivalent.
I had the same trouble at first, but none of the books available use a rising / mark for a rising tone (typically it means high) and the opposite direction for a falling tone (instead, it typically means low tone). So you either have to laboriously go through converting all the marks (I tried; gave up) or get used to reading the marks differently in Thai and Mandarin contexts (recommended).
It’s not impossible; it just takes a little while, just like learning to read ‘en’ in pinyin differently than ‘en’ in the English ‘hen’. And as soon as you know some of the tones instinctively, this begins to reinforce the non-Chinese readings, e.g., you see p
Any suggestions for a good starter text?
HG
I lived in Thailand for a couple of years working in refugee camps. I went to Thai language classes. We were taught the Thai alphabet and learnt using a combination of kids books and my little Robinsons dictionary which I still have kicking about the house.
I didn’t pay much attention to tones, but the Thais are a lot more forgiving of foreigners speaking Thai than the Chinese are of foreigners speaking Mandarin. I’m no polyglot but after a while I could get by pretty well. It’s another caveman language like Chinese, but it sounds much nicer.
The beauty queen of the town where I was living was a man. It’s a fun funny danerous place. I loved it. It is more fun as a resident than as a tourist.
Caveman?
Bad Fox, Bad Bad Bad… No cookie for you!
Then you won’t mind if your English students don’t pay attention to verb tenses? 
Seriously, why are Thais more forgiving of mispronunciation of tones by troglodytic foreigners (besides their generally amicable, generous and forgiving nature)?
The greater number of vowels and finals in Thai means a vast increase in the number of possible syllables – over 23,000 theoretically possible combos, but around 5,912 in the actual modern lexicon
Thai for Beginners by Benjawan Poomsan Becker. This is generally regarded as the best textbook available. Get it with the tapes or CDs if you can. It is published by Paiboon Publishing.
There is also a Thai-English English-Thai dictionary by the same author. It has three sections: English-Phonetic-Thai; Phonetic-Thai-English; and Thai-Phonetic-English. The phonetic system in this book uses a combination of the roman alphabet and some phonetic symbols. Thai is a difficult language to romanise and every book seems to use a different system. If you are serious it is better to learn the Thai script, although I think it must be one of the world’s most complicated alphabetic writing systems.
Lonely Planet’s Thai Phrasebook is a handy companion in Thailand for situation specific language.
It’s a ridiculously convoluted system, no doubt! Which is why if you’re serious about conversing but can survive without reading Thai signs and menus, I’d go the other way and skip the Thai script. I started on it and gave up, just because it wasn’t worth the effort to me, since I just wanted to be able to chat with dusky babes. 
But if you’re into pain or funky exotic writing, yeah, go for it!
Thanks all for the suggestions.
I’m very much a visual learner so I think I’d progress better learning the script at the same time. While my experience with Chinese suggests this will be slower, I do think it helps attain a much more solid foundation to build upon.
Cheers.
HG
It’s a ridiculously convoluted system, no doubt! Which is why if you’re serious about conversing but can survive without reading Thai signs and menus, I’d go the other way and skip the Thai script. I started on it and gave up, just because it wasn’t worth the effort to me, since I just wanted to be able to chat with dusky babes. But if you’re into pain or funky exotic writing, yeah, go for it![/quote]
Thai may be a convoluted writing system, but come on, Chinese is more difficult, as is Khmer. Thai spelling is not perfectly phonetic, but English is less phonetic. But Lao, whose alphabet is very similar to Thai, is more phonetic than Thai due to spelling reforms.
Though I can’t speak Thai other than a few travelers phrases like “ABC yuu thi nai”, “khawp khun khrap” and “phuut phaasaa angkrit dai mai khrap”, I found that having a basic knowledge of the alphabet helps me read signs, especially important ones like “antaraai” (“danger”) or destinations of buses.
Yeah, you’re right. Much more. It all depends on how much you want to invest in it.
I’m reviewing my Thai in preparation for a trip there this fall, and ran across a dictionary that Huang Guang Chen and others might want to look into: “Thai-English English-Thai Dictionary, with transliteration for non-Thai speakers” (meaning for those who do not read Thai script, actually), by Benjawan Poomsan Becker.
This is valuable for several reasons:
In the English to Thai section, it gives the transliteration along with the Thai script. This is useful because you can read how to pronounce it straightaway, but you can also show it to a native speaker in case they can’t make heads or tails of your pronunciation.
There’s a transliteration to English section (which includes Thai script) so you can look up words you hear.
There’s a Thai script to English section (which includes transliteration) so you can hand it to a local as needed.
The transliteration is in the Benjawan Poomsan Becker format, which is perfect if you’ve learned that system using her texts.
It’s only about 4x5x1", so it’s very portable, too.
If you’re in Thailand, I’ll bet you can find it easily. If not, Amazon has it.
Ch
Thanks Dragonbones, how I long for one of those protracted periods pleasantly between work and house sitting your place, rifling your extensive dictionary collection and scrawled comments!
Actually I have seen this dictionary on sale in Thailand. Good to buy anywhere but the airport, where the mark up is a shitty 100% at least.
I also bought Thai for lovers, which aims a bit to heavily at the bar-end of the learning spectrum. It sits on my mobile phone despite not living up to the claims you can use it to generate a romanised input method for bringing up Thai charachters, which you can then paste into SMS messages. Perhaps it does, I just haven’t figured out how to copy and paste!
But then again, next time you get a message from a young poppit from Patpong saying: “I’m sorry. I’ve no flowers for an apology. But I don’t want to lose you. You’re the most precious thing that I have.”
You can reply with the same comment in Thai.
แม้ไม่มีดอกไม้มาให้ แต่ก็อยากให้คุณรู้ว่า คุณคือคนที่มีค่าที่ฉันไม่อาจสูญเสียไป ขอโทษจริงจากใจจริงๆ
HG
Yeah, it’s a bit hit and miss, but still a must-have if you’re dating khon thai. Mine is gathering dust now that my GF is Taiwanese. But just like any phrase book, there are still good words and patterns to be gleaned from it.
One of the advantages is that Thai for Lovers fits the BPBecker transliteration, so if you stick to that series of books, you won’t struggle with the varying systems.
Totally agree! And I thought Chinese Romanisation was bad! . . yeah, it is . . but damn those Thais!
HG