Sawadee (hello, bye, have a good day in Thai)

Thailand is often called “The Land of Smiles” because of its friendly people and fascinating culture. Thai language is not too difficult to learn for Easterners with Asianic background. It’s tonal and does not have tenses or plurals. You learn a verb and that’s it!

The complicated parts are the five different tones and the script writing. Thai does not have an official transliteration system like the Chinese with their pinyin. This is problematic because different people translate the phonetics based on their perspectives. So you might hear people say sawasdee, sawatdee, sawadee, or even sawatdii.

Thai pronounce the “ph’s” as hard “p’s”, and “th’s” as hard “t’s”, and “k’s” as “g’s” . . . So Phuket would be pronounced as Poo Get and Thailand would be pronounced as Tailand.

Also keep in mind that Thai use words in conjunction with polite aricles. The rule is to add “khap” and “ka” at the end of a sentence for men and women, respectively, to show manners and respect. If you are a woman, you would say “sawadee ka”, and if you’re a man, you would say “sawadee khap.”

Eventhough we are only in Thailand for a week at most, but learning at least a few useful phrases will make a world of difference when interacting with the locals.

Sawadee ka.