Counting in Thai is refreshingly logical. The numbers one to ten are neung (หนึ่ง), song (สอง), sam (สาม), see (สี่), ha (ห้า), hok (หก), jet (เจ็ด), paet (แปด), gao (เก้า), and sip (สิบ) — and zero is soon (ศูนย์). Learn those eleven words and you can count to a hundred within the hour.
Thai numbers stack in a tidy pattern with just two small exceptions worth memorizing early. Get those, and prices, phone numbers, and market haggling all fall into place.
Thai numbers 0 to 10
Start here. These are the building blocks for every larger number you will ever need.
| Number | Thai | Romanization |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | ศูนย์ | soon |
| 1 | หนึ่ง | neung |
| 2 | สอง | song |
| 3 | สาม | sam |
| 4 | สี่ | see |
| 5 | ห้า | ha |
| 6 | หก | hok |
| 7 | เจ็ด | jet |
| 8 | แปด | paet |
| 9 | เก้า | gao |
| 10 | สิบ | sip |
The teens and the sip-et rule
Eleven through nineteen simply add the ones digit after sip (สิบ, ten): sip song is 12, sip sam is 13, and so on. The one exception is eleven, which is sip et (สิบเอ็ด), not "sip neung." Whenever a number ends in one — 11, 21, 101 — the word for one becomes et (เอ็ด).
Twenty breaks the pattern too. It is yee sip (ยี่สิบ), not "song sip." After that, the tens are wonderfully regular: sam sip (30), see sip (40), ha sip (50), and so on up to gao sip (90).
| Number | Thai | Romanization |
|---|---|---|
| 11 | สิบเอ็ด | sip et |
| 12 | สิบสอง | sip song |
| 15 | สิบห้า | sip ha |
| 20 | ยี่สิบ | yee sip |
| 21 | ยี่สิบเอ็ด | yee sip et |
| 30 | สามสิบ | sam sip |
Hundreds, thousands and beyond
One hundred is roi (ร้อย), one thousand is pan (พัน), and ten thousand is meun (หมื่น). So 150 is roi ha sip, and 2,500 is song pan ha roi — you just read the number left to right, place by place.
| Number | Thai | Romanization |
|---|---|---|
| 100 | ร้อย | roi |
| 1,000 | พัน | pan |
| 10,000 | หมื่น | meun |
| 100,000 | แสน | saen |
| 1,000,000 | ล้าน | lan |
Thai has single words for ten thousand (meun) and a hundred thousand (saen, แสน), which surprises English speakers used to grouping everything by thousands. For the full grammar of place values and counting words, see our guide to numbers and counting.
Counting baht at the market
Numbers earn their keep when money is involved. Prices are quoted in baht (บาท), and vendors rattle them off fast — so being able to catch "ha sip" or "song roi" is what keeps you from overpaying. A few of our shopping phrases pair perfectly with these.
เท่าไหร่
tao rai
How much?
ห้าสิบบาท
ha sip baht
50 baht
สองร้อยบาท
song roi baht
200 baht
Nine is Thailand's lucky number. gao (เก้า, nine) sounds almost identical to gao (ก้าว), meaning "to step forward" or "to progress" — so nine quietly hints at moving up in life. You will spot it on license plates, phone numbers, and shop names all over the country.
On a phone keypad you will use the Arabic numerals you already know, but Thailand keeps its own digits too — ๑ ๒ ๓ for 1, 2, 3 — still printed on temple signs, ID cards, and official documents. You never have to write them, but learning to recognize them is a fun afternoon.
Keep learning Thai
Numbers are the rare corner of Thai that rewards you almost instantly — a morning of practice and you can shop, split a bill, and read a bus number. Drill them with audio and spaced repetition in the Pretalk app, then dig into the patterns behind them in our numbers and counting lessons.
