I and You Without Embarrassment (phǒm, chǎn, khun)

For I, men have it easy: ผม (phǒm) is polite, neutral and safe everywhere, from a noodle stall to the immigration counter. Women have two options: ฉัน (chǎn) is the everyday form, fine in shops and with people you know, while ดิฉัน (dì-chǎn) is the formal one for a visa office, a bank or a job interview. Using dì-chǎn to buy mangoes sounds stiff, like introducing yourself with your full legal name; chǎn is what real conversation uses. For you, the workhorse is คุณ (khun). It is polite with strangers, staff and officials, and it gets even better when you attach it to something: khun plus a first name is the standard friendly-polite address once you know someone's name, and khun plus a role works too. At a clinic, address the doctor as คุณหมอ (khun mǎw), literally khun doctor. Now the part textbooks undersell: Thais avoid pronouns whenever they can. A Thai sentence works perfectly with no I or you at all, so ไปไหนครับ (bpai nǎi khráp), going where, needs no you in it. Instead of pronouns, Thais reach for kinship words based on apparent age: พี่ (phîi), older sibling, for anyone a bit older, น้อง (náwng), younger sibling, for anyone younger, ลุง (lung), uncle, and ป้า (bpâa), auntie, for the older generation. When a market vendor calls you phîi, that is warmth, not cheek, and you can call the vendor phîi right back. If a pronoun feels risky, dropping it is not lazy learner Thai: it is what fluent speakers do. Those kinship words are not only for you. They work as I as well, and this is the piece that makes half of everyday Thai suddenly parse. A vendor a decade older than you says พี่ลดให้ (phîi lót hâi), which is not a sentence about some third person called phîi: it means I will take something off for you. She has used the word describing her position relative to you, the way she would use a name. The same happens with น้า (náa) and อา (aa), the aunt and uncle words for someone older than you but younger than your parents, and with lung and bpâa from an older stallholder. So when a sentence seems to be about a mysterious relative, check first whether the relative is the person speaking. Thais also use their own nickname where English uses I. A woman called Nok says นกไม่ชอบ (Nók mâi châwp), Nok doesn't like it, meaning I don't like it. It sounds soft and friendly rather than childish, it is very common among women and universal among children, and you can do it with whatever nickname Thais already use for you. It has one practical advantage over everything else on this page: it sidesteps the whole question of which pronoun your age and your gender entitle you to. เรา (rao) is the third escape route. Its dictionary meaning is we, but between friends and with people roughly your own age it is a comfortable, unmarked I, and women use it constantly. It is not for the visa counter, where it sounds a shade too casual, yet in a coffee shop it is often the most natural word available. For an unambiguous we, put พวก (phûak) in front of it: พวกเรา (phûak rao). หนู (nǔu) means mouse, and it is what a girl or a young woman says for I to anyone clearly older, and what that older person says back to her for you. It is warmth and a frank statement of the age gap in the same syllable. A foreign woman in her twenties will hear it aimed at her by an elderly neighbour and can use it back to that neighbour; a foreign man never uses it for himself. For he, she and they, Thai has one word: เขา (khǎo). It carries no gender and no number, so a story about khǎo can run for a minute before you learn who it was about, and asking is normal rather than rude. Add phûak for an explicit plural, พวกเขา (phûak khǎo). มัน (man) is it, correct for animals and objects, and aimed at a person it is either contemptuous or a joke that rests entirely on how close the two of them are. Do not be the foreigner who learnt man from a film. Then the rough pair. กู (guu) and มึง (meung) are I and you at their most intimate, and among friends who grew up together, especially men, using anything else would sound cold. Aimed at anyone else — a stranger, a colleague, a vendor, someone older — they land close to a slap, and this is one of the few places in Thai where there is no graceful way back afterwards. The arithmetic is worse for a foreigner, because the affection in guu and meung comes from a shared history the listener can hear you do not have. Recognise them, expect to hear them constantly on the street and in films, and let a Thai friend use them to you first; then mirror that person and nobody else. Three more you will meet and should not copy blind. เธอ (thoe) is you between lovers and close female friends, and pop songs are full of it, which is exactly why learners misuse it. แก (gae) is rough-affectionate you between old friends and simply rude to anyone else. ตัวเอง (dtua-eng), literally oneself, is what couples call each other, roughly babe. All three are real Thai, all three depend on a relationship you either have or do not, and none of them is a general-purpose you. Finally, ท่าน (thâan). Your textbook lists it as the formal you, and it is real Thai, but it belongs to a register you will almost never speak: high officials, monks, and formal announcements, as in ท่านผู้โดยสาร (thâan phûu-dooi-sǎan), dear passengers, over an airport loudspeaker. Saying thâan to an immigration officer does not sound extra respectful, it sounds like you are reading from a script. khun, plus a calm ครับ (khráp) or ค่ะ (khâ) at the end of your sentences, is already the full politeness that situation requires.