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For the most part, Thai people prefer to
speak in the simplest possible way,
therefore it’s far easier to speak without
your syntax sounding broken, and Thais
certainly won’t judge you for imperfect
grammar. This gives you the confidence to
communicate without sounding ignorant. There
are far less words to worry about, such as
prepositions, articles, tense conjugations,
imperfect modals (e.g. ‘has, had’) and so
on. Furthermore, most Thai is spoken in the
present simple without the continuous
(‘ing’).
Simply put, a Thai sentence isn’t much
different from an English one, comprising
of:
Subject + verb + object - with an
adjective thrown in or a simple tense
modifier.
| Therefore, in English: |
the car is going to the market |
| Would, in Thai, be: |
rot pai talad (lit; vehicle
go market) |
Adjectives are added after the verb, like
in French, and after the object so that in
Thai you would say: rot dang pai talad
reo (lit; vehicle red go market quick)
Repeating an adjective turns it into an
adverb so that reo reo would mean
‘quickly’.
Tenses
The expression of tenses and relation of
time in Thai is far simpler. In fact, their
whole concept of time is far less exact or
important than it is in the west and they
tend to refer vaguely to something that will
happen in the future or something that has
already happened, without expressing perfect
or imperfect tenses very often.
The future: is simply expressed by
adding ja in front of the verb
| So that in Thai you say: |
rot ja pai talad |
(lit; vehicle will go market) |
And a time stamp may be added to the end
or beginning to be more exact (such as
‘tomorrow’).
The past: is expressed either by
adding a past time stamp in front of the
clause or adding laeow (meaning
‘already’) to the end.
| For example: |
mua-wan-nee rot pai
talad |
(lit; yesterday vehicle go market) |
| Or |
rot pai talad laeow |
(lit; vehicle go market already) |
Present continuous: is
occasionally used to more accurately express
a current action. This is simply done by
adding gamlang before the verb.
| For example: |
rot gamlang pai talad |
(lit; vehicle going market) |
This would be used when someone asked
‘what is the vehicle doing right now?’
Future continuous: is seldom heard
other than to express something imminent
| For example: |
rot ja gamlang pai
talad |
(lit; vehicle will be going market) |
Which would be used if someone asked ‘Is
this vehicle ever going to leave?’
This is aimed at helping you understand
the basic construction of a sentence or
clause, which can be patched together with
other sentences using conjunctions in a
similar way to other languages.
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