How to address people

The first thing most learners are taught is that คุณ (khun) means "you". That is true the way a dictionary entry is true, and it will still leave you sounding wrong in most of the conversations you have this week. Thai has pronouns, but in ordinary speech people avoid them. What they use instead is a kinship term: they call the person in front of them older sibling, younger sibling, aunt, uncle, grandmother, teacher, doctor. The word chosen carries the relative age and standing of the two of you, which is exactly the information Thai speakers want settled before anything else gets said. Which is why a Thai you have just met will often ask อายุเท่าไหร่ (aa-yú thâo-rài), how old are you, long before that would be comfortable at home. It is not nosiness and it is not about your appearance. Until the answer is known, the person has no word for you, and the conversation cannot really start. Answer it plainly. You are allowed to ask back the same way, พี่อายุเท่าไหร่ครับ, and the moment it is settled both of you can stop hedging. And very often, once that relationship is obvious, the word is dropped and the sentence has no subject at all. The backbone of the system is พี่ (phîi) and น้อง (náwng), literally older sibling and younger sibling. They are not about absolute age, only about age relative to you. The colleague five years older than you is พี่. The twenty-year-old at the coffee counter is น้อง. Both words can stand alone as "you", and both are used in front of a name or, much more often, a nickname: พี่ต้อย, น้องเบียร์. They also work as "I". An older person talking to a younger one will say พี่ where a textbook would put ผม, and a younger person will sometimes say น้อง about themselves. That is why a shop assistant can say a whole sentence about herself without ever using a first person pronoun. When you cannot tell who is older, use พี่. The two errors are not equally expensive. Calling someone older than you น้อง demotes them in public, and people notice. Calling someone slightly younger พี่ is at worst a small over-politeness, and it is exactly what service staff do to customers all day long. One honest caveat: with a woman who is plainly much younger than you, พี่ sounds like a joke, and น้อง is the natural word. There is no way to be right every time, and Thais are not right every time either. They look at a face, guess, and adjust when corrected. One rule sits above the age rule: role beats age. If the person has a title that comes with their job, the title wins even when they are visibly younger than you. The doctor who looks twenty-eight is คุณหมอ (khun mǎw), not น้อง. The monk who looks nineteen is หลวงพี่ (lǔang-phîi), not น้อง. The officer behind the counter at Immigration is เจ้าหน้าที่ (jâo-nâa-thîi) or คุณ plus the first name on the badge. Your section head is หัวหน้า (hǔa-nâa) whatever her age. น้อง is for a younger person with no title in the room: the waiter, the shop assistant, the intern, the delivery rider. Getting this backwards is worse than mis-guessing an age, because it does not read as a foreigner's mistake, it reads as a comment on the person's standing. This is why พี่ to a waiter is normal and friendly rather than presumptuous. It does not claim that you are close. It claims only that the two of you are people, one slightly older than the other, and that is a warmer footing than a transaction. Calling คุณครับ across a restaurant sounds stiff and distancing, roughly the way "Sir?" would sound in a neighbourhood cafe at home. The same applies to the motorbike taxi rider (พี่วิน), the hairdresser, the mechanic, the security guard at your building and the แม่บ้าน who cleans the corridor. Notice that they do the same thing back: staff will call you พี่ or คุณลูกค้า, and will call themselves น้อง. For people of your parents' generation and older, the family words take over. ลุง (lung) for an older man, ป้า (bpâa) for an older woman. The two are not equally safe. ลุง is taken cheerfully by most men over about sixty. ป้า is riskier, because a woman who still thinks of herself as พี่ hears it as being retired early, and the market seller in her fifties who beams at พี่ can visibly cool at ป้า. The working compromise is to stay on พี่ with any woman until she is unmistakably of your parents' generation, and to reach for คุณป้า rather than bare ป้า when you do switch. Men do not need the same caution. For someone clearly older than you but not old enough to be a parent, there are น้า (náa) and อา (aa); inside a real family น้า is your mother's younger sibling and อา is your father's younger sibling. Outside the family the two do not behave the same way. น้า is heard constantly with strangers, especially to a woman at a stall or a driver in her forties, and lands as a gentler, warmer step above พี่. อา stays mostly inside families and Chinese-Thai households, so as a stranger you are better off leaving it alone until you hear it used around you. Above ลุง and ป้า come the grandparent terms, and the set is closed: ปู่ (bpùu) paternal grandfather, ย่า (yâa) paternal grandmother, ตา (dtaa) maternal grandfather, ยาย (yaai) maternal grandmother. With strangers, ลุง and ป้า cover almost everyone older, while ตา and ยาย are kept for the visibly very old and sound affectionate rather than formal. Putting คุณ in front softens any of them: คุณลุง, คุณป้า, คุณน้า is the safe choice for an older stranger you want to treat carefully. So where does คุณ actually live? In offices, on the phone, at first introductions, in writing, and in any situation where you do not know the person and do not want to guess their age. The important mechanical point is that คุณ goes in front of a first name: คุณสมชาย, คุณมาลี. Never a surname in speech. In writing the surname comes back: a formal letter opens เรียน คุณสมชาย ใจดี with the full name, and so do contracts, invoices and envelopes. What you do not do is say คุณใจดี out loud. Thai family names were only imposed by law in 1913, they are long, they are close to unique per family, and outside documents they simply are not conversational currency. In an office you will also hear คุณ attached straight to a nickname: คุณนัท. The forms นาย (naai), นาง (naang) and นางสาว (naang-sǎao) are legal vocabulary printed on ID cards and contracts; nobody addresses you that way in conversation. You will still hear them, because queue systems and public announcements read straight off the ID: a hospital, a government office or a courtroom will call นายสมชาย ใจดี or นางสาวมาลี ศรีสุข over the speaker, full name attached. Learn the sound of your own name in that frame, because it is often the only warning that your turn has come. Government counters have their own default. At Immigration, the land office, the district office and the bank, the person serving you is เจ้าหน้าที่ (jâo-nâa-thîi), literally the official, and it works as a form of address on its own: เจ้าหน้าที่ครับ. Most of them wear a badge with a first name, and คุณ plus that name is a step warmer. If the queue is friendly and the officer is around your age, พี่ is fine and often gets you further, but เจ้าหน้าที่ is never wrong. Save ท่าน for the person the officers themselves stand up for. In a hospital, the nurse is พี่พยาบาล (phîi phá-yaa-baan) or just พี่, and the doctor stays คุณหมอ. With police, คุณตำรวจ (khun dtam-rùat) is neutral and safe, พี่ตำรวจ is what Thais actually say at a routine roadside stop, and neither is a substitute for handing over your licence politely. Used on its own, repeated through a conversation, คุณ does one specific thing: it holds the person at arm's length. With a stranger at a counter that is correct and unremarkable. With the neighbour you greet every morning, the colleague you eat lunch with, or the landlord you have dealt with for two years, it reads as coldness, and in an argument it reads as anger, in the way switching to someone's full name does in English. A landlord is the clearest case of a relationship that starts formal and should not stay that way. The first phone call and the signing are คุณ plus her first name. Once she has been in your flat twice she is พี่, or พี่ plus her nickname if you have it. Staying on คุณ past that point tells her you intend to keep the relationship at contract distance, which is a poor position to be in when you want the water heater fixed. The word is not cold by nature; couples of an older generation use คุณ to each other almost as an endearment. It simply marks that the relationship is not a family-shaped one. Foreigners get into trouble by using it for everybody, which comes out sounding like a recorded announcement. Once someone has become พี่ or น้อง to you, switch and stay switched. Then there is the name problem. Every Thai has a ชื่อเล่น (chêu-lên), a nickname given in infancy, usually one syllable, and that is the name actually in use: by parents, friends, colleagues, and very often by the boss. The ชื่อจริง (chêu-jing), the real name on the ID card, surfaces at the hospital, at Immigration, in formal writing and almost nowhere else. Nicknames can be Thai words (ต้อย, หน่อย) or English ones (Beer, Golf, Bank, Ice, May, Benz). They combine with the kinship term rather than replacing it: พี่ต้อย, น้องเบียร์, คุณนัท. When you meet someone, the name offered first is the nickname, and that is the one to learn. Offer one back. A three-syllable European first name is genuine work for a Thai colleague, and giving people a short version of your own is the fastest way to stop being addressed as nothing at all. A few roles carry their own term, which outranks the kinship words. ครู (khruu) for a school teacher and for whoever is teaching you Thai; อาจารย์ (aa-jaan) at university level and generally more respectful. หมอ (mǎw) or, better, คุณหมอ for a doctor. For monks the word tracks seniority, not just the robe. หลวงพี่ (lǔang-phîi) for a young monk, which is most of the ones you will meet. หลวงพ่อ (lǔang-phâw) for an older monk or the abbot of a temple, and หลวงปู่ (lǔang-bpùu) for a very senior one. พระอาจารย์ (phrá aa-jaan) if he teaches. ท่าน works for any of them. He will call himself อาตมา (aa-dtà-maa) and will call you โยม (yoom), which is simply the word for a lay person and is not a demotion. หัวหน้า (hǔa-nâa) for the person who runs your section, and เจ้านาย (jâo-naai) or ผู้จัดการ (phûu-jàt-gaan) for a boss or manager spoken about rather than to. ช่าง (châang) covers anyone who fixes things, and works as an address on its own: ช่างครับ to the aircon technician, or พี่ช่าง if he is older than you. ยาม (yaam) is the security guard at your building, though almost everyone calls him พี่ or ลุง depending on his age, which is friendlier and gets the gate opened faster. ท่าน (thâan) is reserved for genuinely high rank: a judge, a senior official, an ambassador, a senior monk. It is not a stronger คุณ, and aiming it at an ordinary person sounds sarcastic. In Chinese-Thai families and markets, especially in Bangkok, you will hear เจ๊ (jée) for an older woman running a stall, เฮีย (hia) for an older man, and อาม่า (aa-mâa) and อากง (aa-gong) for grandmother and grandfather. Using เจ๊ with the woman who has sold you noodles for a year signals that you know the neighbourhood. Some pronouns deserve a warning label. เธอ (thoe) is "you" between close friends, from a partner, and from a teacher down to a student; from a foreign man to a Thai woman he barely knows it lands as far too intimate. แก (gae) is blunt and familiar, fine between old friends and rude to a stranger. มึง (meung) and กู (guu) are the you and I pair used between very close friends, women as much as men, and in genuine anger; recognise them, do not deploy them until someone has used them with you first. หนู (nǔu), literally "mouse", is what children and young women call themselves and what an adult calls a child. For yourself, ผม (phǒm) if you are a man, and ดิฉัน (dì-chǎn) if you are a woman, though ดิฉัน is formal enough that it sounds like a meeting. In everyday speech women use their own nickname, or หนู (nǔu) to anyone older, or เค้า (kháo), which is soft and very common, or ชั้น (chán), the spoken form of ฉัน. Written ฉัน is neutral; said out loud it can come across firm, so it is not the safe default it looks like on the page. เรา (rao) is worth knowing on both sides: between friends it means I as often as we, and a teacher uses it downward the way an English speaker says we when they mean you. ตัวเอง (dtua-eng) is you between couples and close friends, and out of place anywhere else. Using your own nickname as I is completely normal Thai, not baby talk. In practice the decision takes half a second. The woman selling grilled pork on the corner who looks sixty is ป้า. The motorbike rider in his forties is พี่. The twenty-two-year-old at the coffee counter is น้อง. The accountant who calls you about the lease is คุณ plus her first name. The doctor is คุณหมอ, your Thai teacher is ครู or อาจารย์, the old man watching the street from his shophouse is ลุง. And when you honestly cannot place someone, build the sentence with no pronoun in it at all and finish with ครับ or ค่ะ. Thai allows that, it sounds entirely natural, and it is always better than the wrong word.