The 5,000 most common Thai words
Ranked by how often they actually turn up in spoken dialogue, not by how useful somebody guessed they would be.
Every number below is counted from a corpus, and the corpus is named at the bottom.
What each step buys you
Learn the first 100 words of Thai and you follow 28.8% of everyday speech. The first 1000 take you to 54.2%. After that every thousand words buys less than the thousand before it, which is exactly why the order matters.
| Words known | Speech followed | |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 11.8% | |
| 50 | 22.3% | |
| 100 | 28.8% | |
| 250 | 38.3% | |
| 500 | 46.1% | |
| 1,000 | 54.2% | |
| 2,000 | 62.2% | |
| 3,000 | 67.0% | |
| 5,000 | 73.1% | |
| 8,000 | 78.6% | |
| 10,000 | 81.2% | |
| 15,000 | 85.9% | |
| 20,000 | 89.3% |
Comfortable reading starts around 98%. Everything before that is still worth doing, but the first hundred words buy you a foothold, not comprehension.
The first 100 words of Thai
In order. The percentage is the share of ordinary speech you cover once you know that word and every word above it.
- 1เธ2.44%
- 2ใช่4.13%
- 3ไม่5.72%
- 4เน7.28%
- 5โอเค8.31%
- 6โอ้9.28%
- 7เฮ้10.15%
- 8ๆ10.88%
- 9เอ่อ11.37%
- 10ครับ11.83%
- 11you12.26%
- 12นี่12.68%
- 13the13.1%
- 14อืม13.51%
- 15ขอบคุณ13.91%
- 16อะไรนะ14.3%
- 17i14.68%
- 18แต่15.04%
- 19เอาล่ะ15.36%
- 20อะไร15.67%
- 21ค่ะ15.98%
- 22พระเจ้า16.27%
- 23ฟังนะ16.57%
- 24และ16.86%
- 25to17.14%
- 26ฉัน17.39%
- 27a17.64%
- 28เธฒเธ17.88%
- 29เธญเธ18.12%
- 30ได้โปรด18.34%
- 31แน่นอน18.57%
- 32s18.79%
- 33ดี19.01%
- 34แล้ว19.23%
- 35ทำไม19.44%
- 36ได้19.65%
- 37ไม่เป็นไร19.86%
- 38ไป20.06%
- 39ที่รัก20.27%
- 40งั้น20.46%
- 41โอ20.66%
- 42เธตเน20.86%
- 43เธฑเธ21.05%
- 44it21.24%
- 45เกิดอะไรขึ้น21.43%
- 46คุณ21.62%
- 47เดี๋ยว21.8%
- 48ตอนนี้21.98%
- 49อ่า22.16%
- 50ก็ได้22.33%
- 51แม่22.5%
- 52and22.67%
- 53พ่อ22.83%
- 54สวัสดี22.99%
- 55ปี23.15%
- 56ฉันรู้23.31%
- 57บรรยายไทยโดย23.46%
- 58ว้าว23.61%
- 59ไม่นะ23.76%
- 60ใช่แล้ว23.91%
- 61ใช่ไหม24.05%
- 62t24.19%
- 63เปล่า24.33%
- 64ใช่มั้ย24.47%
- 65ดังนั้น24.61%
- 66คือ24.75%
- 67เธกเน24.89%
- 68เร็วเข้า25.02%
- 69ผม25.16%
- 70of25.29%
- 71that25.42%
- 72หวัดดี25.55%
- 73in25.68%
- 74ฉันขอโทษ25.8%
- 75ไม่เอาน่า25.93%
- 76เพื่อน26.05%
- 77ตกลง26.17%
- 78อ้อ26.3%
- 79เหรอ26.42%
- 80จริงเหรอ26.54%
- 81c.bg26.66%
- 82นะ26.78%
- 83chffffff26.9%
- 84หรือ27.02%
- 85เยี่ยม27.14%
- 86เออ27.25%
- 87on27.36%
- 88คน27.48%
- 89is27.59%
- 90ไง27.7%
- 91ไม่ใช่27.82%
- 92ไปกันเถอะ27.93%
- 93ฮัลโหล28.03%
- 94เดี๋ยวก่อน28.14%
- 95me28.25%
- 96แต่ว่า28.35%
- 97หยุด28.45%
- 98ั28.55%
- 99ฉันไม่รู้28.65%
- 100ขอโทษนะ28.75%
Thai does not separate words with spaces, so what is counted here are the segments the corpus splits on, not whole words. The order is still right and the coverage is still real, but read the list as building blocks rather than dictionary entries.
Open all 5,000 words in the codex →
In the codex you tap the ones you already know and the number moves. It stays in your browser, no account.
Where Thai comes from
Kra-Dai › Thai
Thai borrowed its writing from India and its vocabulary from everywhere.
Where the numbers come from
Frequencies counted over the OpenSubtitles 2018 dialogue corpus, 3,321,670 tokens of Thai in total. Lists compiled by Hermit Dave, released under CC BY-SA 3.0. Subtitles skew towards conversation, which is the point: this is the language people speak, not the language people publish.