Thai Numbers and Numerals
Being able to speak and understand numbers in Thai is an essential skill for any traveler in Thailand. Bartering is common when
arranging transportation or making purchases at many markets. Even when not bartering, it is important to understand spoken prices,
although merchants who frequently see tourists always have a small calculator to show you prices (and even allow you to barter by
punching in your offer).
The Thai language requires the use of words called
classifiers when you wish to talk about a number of items (nouns). These
"counting words" are discussed
here.
Although Thai has its own numerals, western digits are more commonly used throughout Thailand so it is less essential to learn the exotic
digits. For more examples of Thai numbers, visit our category page:
Thai Digits and
Numerals
Using these charts, arbitrary numbers in Thai can be constructed much as they are in English. However, please note the following:
- Numbers ending in one between eleven and ninety-one use the word เอ็ด
/etL/ instead of หนึ่ง
/neungL/ (one, 1) as in the following:
- Numbers between twelve and nineteen are not special as they are in English. They are considered "ten-two," "ten-three," etc.
- If a rule in English is to add -ty to a digit to obtain the tens series, then twenty, thirty, and fifty are exceptions. In Thai,
the only special word is ยี่สิบ

/yeeF sipL/ (twenty, 20).
- Ordinals are formed by prefixing a number with the word ที่
/theeF/ as in the following examples:
- Note that the words Ten-thousand and hundred-thousand are not compounds as they are in English‚there are unique Thai words for
these shown in the chart above.
- The word หนึ่ง
/neungL/ (one, 1) can be omitted if it occurs at the beginning of any number (other than one, of course).
- โท
/tho:hM/ is used instead of สอง
/saawngR/ (two, 2) when saying a telephone number, perhaps because this is believed to eliminate confusion
between two and three if the connection is poor.
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