Courses > Conversation Course Trial > Lesson 3   Lesson 3: Where do you come from?
Description:

One common question you will hear from Thai people is, "Where do you come from?" You can answer this two ways, as we will learn in this lesson.

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Grammar Notes:

In the Thai Language, question words such as what, when, and where often come at the end of the sentence (as opposed to English, where they are usually first). In this lesson, the question word we are learning is "What?" or  à-rai . So you can ask what country someone comes from like this:

what country do you come from ? kun mah jàhk þrà-têt à-rai lit: you come from country what

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You could answer by saying, "I come from Japan", or "I am a Japanese person". These sentences are shown here:

I come from Japan  dì-chǎn / pǒm  mah jàhk þrà-têt yêe-þùn lit: I come from country Japanese

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I am a Japanese person  dì-chǎn / pǒm  þen kon yêe-þùn lit: I to be people Japanese

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There are two points to notice in these sentences:

1) In the Thai Language, the adjective comes after the noun, for example:  kon  yêe-þùn  is "person Japanese"

2) The second sentence is an example of using the "to be" verb (in this case, "am"). In Thai Language, we do not use "to be" when connecting a noun to an adjective ( pǒm  hěw  = lit: I hungry) but we do use it when we are connecting two nouns ( pǒm  þen  kon  tai  = lit: I am person thai)

Word List: English Phonetic Audio Thai people kon คน to be þen เป็น what à-rai อะไร country þrà-têt ประเทศ from jàhk จาก Thailand þrà-têt tai ประเทศ ไทย Japan þrà-têt yêe-þùn ประเทศ ญี่ปุ่น China þrà-têt jeen ประเทศ จีน France þrà-têt fà-ràng-sèt ประเทศ ฝรั่งเศส United States þrà-têt à-may-ri-gah ประเทศ อเมริกา come mah มา

 

Sample Sentences:

These sentences are based on the patterns described in the Grammar section. Click here to see slightly different versions.

dì-chǎn mah jàhk þrà-têt jeen
ดิฉัน มา จาก ประเทศ จีน
I (f.) come from China

pǒm þen kon fà-ràng-sèt
ผม เป็น คน ฝรั่งเศส
I (m.) am French

kun mah jàhk þrà-têt à-rai
คุณ มา จาก ประเทศ อะไร
what country are you from ?

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