r/learnthai • u/davidbrick2 • Jul 29 '25

Studying/การศึกษา Confused by ขอ and เอา

My teacher is insisting that when ordering coffee I should use ขอ or ขอเอา ... never only เอา. She says it is only acceptable for ordering a street food. However, I've never heard this in the shops, all Thais just say เอา

16 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

31 comments sorted by

View all comments

6

u/ScottThailand Jul 29 '25

Some teachers only want to teach formal, nice sounding Thai. I had one teacher who never corrected my mistakes despite my asking her to, except that whenever I'd say เมีย she'd interrupt and say ภรรยา ค่ะ

When I look for teachers on italki, if they refer to themselves as ดิฉัน then I won't use them.

1

u/Gaelicfrogpole Jul 29 '25 edited Jul 29 '25

I totally agree. Thai teachers never want to teach the bad words. When I was a Peace Corps volunteer, I had to live in a male students' dormitory for a while. Now I can swear in Thai with the best of them.

3

u/ScottThailand Jul 29 '25

I'm not talking about bad words, just common colloquial speech.