Glass noodle salad (yam-wún-sên)
ยำวุ้นเส้น
yam-wún-sên
The name, part by part — it reads straight through
| Part | Sound | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| ยำ | yam | dressed hot, sour and salty — tossed off the heat in lime juice, fish sauce and fresh chilli |
| วุ้นเส้น | wún-sên | glass noodles — literally jelly-strands, วุ้น a set translucent substance plus เส้น a strand |
A ยำ dressing applied to glass noodles. There is no cooking word in the name at all: ยำ describes what is done to the food after the heat, and the last slot is where you swap the protein (ยำวุ้นเส้นทะเล, ยำวุ้นเส้นหมูสับ).
วุ้นเส้น is one of the noodle words a noodle shop expects you to know alongside เส้นใหญ่, เส้นเล็ก and บะหมี่. A ยำ is a salad in the Thai sense, which means it can arrive hotter than anything else on the board, and the dressing is why it often reaches you still warm. The dried shrimp and fish sauce in that dressing are not named.
How Thai dish names are built, in full: Thai food, dish by dish.
Warm glass-noodle salad in the sharp lime-chilli-fish-sauce dressing that defines the whole ยำ (yam) family, with minced pork, prawns, celery and roasted peanuts. Order it and you have learned to order every other yam.
Spice hot The yam dressing is lime-chilli forward; state your chilli count.
What is in it Mung-bean glass noodles, minced pork, prawns, shallots, Chinese celery, tomatoes, roasted peanuts, lime-chilli-fish-sauce dressing.
Vegetarian and allergies ยำวุ้นเส้นเจ with mushrooms and soy dressing appears at เจ restaurants.
Say it at every level
A1.1 Order it
ยำวุ้นเส้นครับ (yam-wún-sên khráp), and your chilli count: พริกสองเม็ด (two chillies).
A2 Make it yours
ยำ is a verb you can now use everywhere: ยำรวมมิตร (mixed yam), ยำทะเล (seafood yam). Dressing balance requests are legitimate: เปรี้ยวนำ (bprîao nam, lime-forward).
B1 Talk about it
แซ่บ works here too, but the Bangkok word is จี๊ดจ๊าด (jíit-jáat, zingy); using both correctly in the right provinces is real register control.
C1 to native Own it
ยำ the verb means "to toss together" and slang-extends to mixing anything: ยำเพลง (a mashup), โดนยำ (got roughed up, "tossed"). The dish is the etymology lesson: once you have eaten it, the slang is transparent.
Hungry for the words too? Ordering food phrases