The 18 topics below cover the whole system, each with example sentences you can play.

Thai sentences follow Subject-Verb-Object, like English. Words never change form for tense, number, or person.

khrap and kha sit at the end of a sentence and carry almost all of Thai politeness. Which one you use depends on your gender, not the listener's.

Thai has many pronouns chosen by age, status and gender, and leaves them out entirely whenever context makes them obvious.

Counting anything in Thai needs a classifier, and it sits after the number: noun, number, classifier.

Add mai to the end of a statement and it becomes a yes/no question. Answer by repeating the verb, not with a word for yes.

chai mai checks something you already believe; rue offers an alternative. Both are tag questions, and they take different answers.

Thai question words sit where the answer would sit, so the sentence keeps its normal shape.

mai in front of a verb or adjective makes it negative. Where it sits relative to other words changes what is being denied.

Thai verbs never change. Time comes from small marker words and from ordinary time expressions.

khong links owner to owned, in the order thing-of-owner, and it is dropped whenever the relationship is obvious.

kwa after an adjective makes a comparison; thii sut makes a superlative. Neither changes the adjective itself.

Small end particles carry the mood of a Thai sentence: friendly, insistent, pleading or shared.

tha marks the condition and ko introduces the result. Both are often dropped once the meaning is clear.

Thai marks the passive only when something bad happened. Otherwise it simply reorders the sentence.

hai makes someone do something or gives something to someone; tham hai says one thing caused another.

thii introduces a clause that describes the noun before it, and it does the work of who, which and that all at once.

Thai strings verbs together with nothing between them, and the order of the string is the order of events.

Written Thai uses different words, fuller sentences and no particles. Knowing which register you are in stops you sounding like a sign.

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Thai grammar