Syllables & missing adverbs
The Thai alphabet is a set of 44 syllables. Placed in the wrong order it is unlikely to cause offence but the listener will have difficulty in understanding. Avoid comparing Thai to English and consider the sentence the way Thai's do. When requesting something such as 'I want' or 'Can we' the structure is 'verb, noun, adjectives'. So, Can I have (Khor) coffee (gafare) hot (lon) please (khrap).
There are few adverbs (in, at, to, or, the etc.), so, I (Phom) want (thong gaan) go (bai) market (talat).
On one of those evenings when hoodies no longer look scary and the sun stays out till late, my partner was extending her knowledge of English by utilising the greatest of information resources, the TV. I take no personal delight in sharing in her English lessons because they involve reality TV shows and Big Brother (I make a distinction between the two because there is surely nothing real about BB, a program which I have come to understand should be pronounced Beeg Brudtah, and has its own TV channel in Thailand that is on 24/7. Imagine, having a resource made available to stress test your mental agility for a full 24 hours, you've got to admire Thai tenacity).
So I was pretending to be doing something useful on the computer. My attentions were rescued by the sudden lamentation of "Oh! Da lady she have problem widda hot skittell". This seemed, not unreasonably, an unusual predicament for anyone to find themselves in and if I were canine, no doubt I would have lifted one ear in bated anticipation as I didn't look up. I requested clarification using the regular query of "Eh?" to which she re-iterated "she have burn hand on hot skittell". Unable to reconcile in my head how to make a skittle hot or how to be foolish enough to handle it was enough to capture my attentions and look at the TV to discover she was watching 'General Hospital'. Or as we now know it 'Jen Al Hot Skittel'.