Possession & word order
My friend's brother's car. How ของ glues nouns together and how Thai sentence order actually works.
One little word: ของ.
English uses apostrophe-s or "of" for possession. Thai uses one word, ของ (khɔ̌ɔng), and the pattern is always the same.
[thing] + ของ + [owner]
หนังสือของผม
book + of + me · my book
In casual speech, drop it.
Thais usually skip ของ in everyday conversation. The meaning stays the same; you just sound more natural.
Use ของ when the sentence would be ambiguous without it, or when speaking formally. For quick daily speech, drop it.
Subject, then verb, then object. Mostly.
Thai is subject-verb-object, like English. The complications start with modifiers:
Modifiers follow the noun they describe, which is the opposite of English.
รถสีแดงคันใหญ่
car + colour-red + classifier-big · the big red car
In English: big red car. In Thai: car red big.
Time expressions usually come before the verb, sometimes before the subject.
เมื่อวานผมไปตลาด
yesterday + I + go + market · Yesterday I went to the market