Confirming with ใช่ไหม / หรือ

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

The tag question

chai mai (ใช่ไหม) is Thai for 'right?', 'isn't it?', 'aren't you?'. English needs a different tag for every sentence - you are, aren't you; he does, doesn't he - and Thai gets away with one. It goes on the end of a statement you already half believe. khun pen khon angkrit chai mai means 'you are English, aren't you?'. You are not asking from nothing; you are checking. Because it asks about the truth of the whole statement rather than about a verb, this is the one place where chai (ใช่) really is the answer for yes, and mai chai (ไม่ใช่) for no.

The softer check

roe (เหรอ) and its cousin rue (หรือ) do a gentler job: mild surprise, or checking something you have just been told. It is closer to 'oh, really?' than to 'right?'. pen khru roe means 'oh, you are a teacher?'. It invites the other person to confirm and expand, and it is much warmer than an interrogation. Because it is so light, roe is everywhere in casual conversation, often as a whole utterance on its own: roe? - really? You will hear it constantly.

Offering a choice

rue (หรือ) between two options means 'or'. It is the same little word doing a second job, and this one is the workhorse in shops and restaurants. ao rawn rue yen (เอาร้อนหรือเย็น) is 'do you want it hot or cold?'. The answer is not yes or no, it is one of the two options repeated back. rue plao (หรือเปล่า) at the end of a sentence means 'or not', and makes a straight yes/no question with a slightly blunter edge than mai. Useful when you genuinely need a firm answer.

Choosing between the endings

Three endings, three jobs, and picking the right one is most of sounding natural here. Use mai when you have no idea and want a plain yes or no. Use chai mai when you are fairly sure and want confirmation. Use roe when you have just been told something and are reacting to it. Getting this wrong is not a grammar error so much as a tone error. Asking chai mai about something you could not possibly know sounds like you are testing the other person; asking mai about something they just told you sounds like you were not listening.

Checking things politely

Confirming is what you do most as a beginner: you half-understood something and want to be sure. These are the lines for it.

Answering a choice question with yes

Asked 'hot or cold?', the reflex answer 'yes' is meaningless in any language, but it is surprisingly easy to produce when you are concentrating hard on the words and not the shape of the question. Listen for rue in the middle of a sentence. If it is there, two things were just offered, and your job is to repeat one of them back.

Using chai to answer everything

chai answers a question about whether a statement is true. It does not answer a question about a verb. Asked 'do you like it', chai is wrong; chop is right. The test: if the question ended in chai mai, answer chai or mai chai. If it ended in plain mai, repeat the verb instead.

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