{"id":1128,"date":"2012-02-13T09:07:49","date_gmt":"2012-02-13T09:07:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/?p=1128"},"modified":"2012-02-10T09:20:27","modified_gmt":"2012-02-10T09:20:27","slug":"right-on-thai-time-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/right-on-thai-time-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Right on Thai Time, Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

I first started associating myself with Thai people in the US, way back in the day. We\u2019d often hang out as a group, sometimes up to 15 people, with both Thais and Americans. We\u2019d usually go out to eat, watch a movie, or hang at a karaoke bar. But what we immediately noticed, time and again, is that on average most of us will show up an hour late. Predictably an hour late. It turns out that this is pretty normal for Thai culture and not a big deal.<\/p>\n

The joke was, if you arrived an hour late, we\u2019d say \u2018hey! You\u2019re right on Thai time!\u2019 If you\u2019re in Bangkok then you can blame it on traffic, which is what everyone generally does. But that didn\u2019t quite work in the US in areas with never any traffic . . . Being with Thais for so long, I just accept that everyone will be late, and not worry about showing up on time myself. Mai bpen rai \u2013 it\u2019s not a big deal.<\/p>\n

Now, telling time in Thai is pretty complicated. In English there are two systems to tell time: AM\/PM, and military time. Thais also has two systems, one being overly complex, and the other also being military time. If you are a complete beginner, I recommend learning only Thai military time for now.<\/p>\n

Thai military time is exactly like English military time. In English, you basically say a number from 1 to 24, followed by \u201chundred hours\u201d. In Thai, basically say a number from 1 to 24, followed by naa1li4gaa1 \u0e19\u0e32\u0e2c\u0e34\u0e01\u0e32. If you were to write it, you\u2019d write the number followed by \u201c\u0e19.\u201d. For example, 14\u0e19. would be 2pm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Military Time in English<\/td>\nTransliteration<\/td>\nMilitary Time in Thai<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
0000 (only used for digital time)<\/td>\nsuun5 naa1li4gaa1<\/td>\n0\u0e19.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
0100<\/td>\nneung2 naa1li4gaa1<\/td>\n1\u0e19.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
0200<\/td>\nsawng5 naa1li4gaa1<\/td>\n2\u0e19.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
0900<\/td>\ngaow3 naa1li4gaa1<\/td>\n9\u0e19.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1200<\/td>\nsib2 sawng5 naa1li4gaa1<\/td>\n12\u0e19.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1600<\/td>\nsib2 hok2 naa1li4gaa1<\/td>\n16\u0e19.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2200<\/td>\nyee3 sib2 sawng5 naa1li4gaa1<\/td>\n22\u0e19.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2300<\/td>\nyee3 sib2 saam5 naa1li4gaa1<\/td>\n23\u0e19.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2400<\/td>\nyee3 sib2 see2 naa1li4gaa1<\/td>\n24\u0e19.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The reason I recommend military time is that it\u2019s very easy for a beginner to learn, avoiding confusion for when you planned to meet your hot date tomorrow night (or whatever). In the next part I\u2019ll teach the much harder, but much more common, way to say what time it is.<\/p>\n

side note: Although it\u2019s not Thai, it is considered acceptable to use the western AM\/PM format when writing Thai.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Learn how to tell time in Thai.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[10208],"tags":[192199,10177,156],"class_list":["post-1128","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-beginner","tag-military","tag-thai","tag-time"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1128"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1130,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128\/revisions\/1130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}