Chapter 2: Numbers 1–100

No plurals either
หมา is dog or dogs. Thai doesn't mark plural - if the number matters you say the number. This is why counting words matter so much, and why Thai speakers learning English so often drop the s.

Counting needs a classifier
You can't say two dogs. You say dog-two-body: หมาสองตัว. Every noun has a classifier that goes with its number - ตัว for animals, คน for people, ใบ for round hollow things. When you don't know one, อัน is the widely-forgiven fallback.

Questions come from a word, not word order
English flips the sentence to ask a question. Thai leaves the sentence exactly as it is and adds ไหม (mái) on the end. You're going becomes You're going, mái? That's the whole change.

ไม่ and ไหม are not the same
ไม่ (mâi, falling) means not. ไหม (mái, rising) makes a question. They're one tone apart and mean opposite things, and mixing them up is the single most common beginner mistake. Falling for no, rising for asking.

There is a culture note for this chapter too - the thing a phrasebook will not tell you.