Let’s learn about Thai shapes!

For shapes with less than five sides, English has a different word for each shape:

1 – line segment

2 – angle

3 – triangle

4 – square, rectangle, rhombus, diamond, parallelogram, or quadrilateral

5 – pentagon

6 – hexagon

7 – heptagon

etc.

The word ‘gon’ means ‘angle’, meaning you are describing how many angles each shape consists of.  For example, a pentagon has ‘penta’ (five) angles. But it’s so hard to remember which is ‘penta’, ‘hepta’, etc. . . .

Highschool geometry note: the number of sides a shape has is equal to the number of angles a shape has.

Useless knowledge: there exists the words monogon (line), digon (angle), trigon (triangle), and tetragon (square), but no one actually uses these words.

Naming a shape is much easier in Thai than in English. You simple say a number, followed by the Thai word for ‘corner.’It’s a bit like in English where we say ‘triangle’, ‘tri’ meaning three, meaning it has three angles. 

For example, a triangle would be ‘3 corners’, or saam5 liem2 สามเหลี่ยม. A square would be see2 liem2 สี่เหลี่ยม. There are no Thai words for ‘rectangle’ or ‘rhombus’ – you’d have to use additional adjectives to describe those. 

รูปร่างสามเหลี่ยมมี __________________ เหลี่ยม

______________ เป็นรูปร่างที่ไม่มีด้าน

เหลี่ยมของด้านต่างๆก็คือ ________________