Past, future and already

Start with the mistake almost everyone makes, because it costs a year of sounding odd: แล้ว (láew) is not the past tense. Thai verbs never change shape. กิน (gin) is กิน whether you ate yesterday, are eating now, or will eat tomorrow. There is no gin, ate, eaten. So when a learner hears แล้ว glossed as "already" and then quietly reclassifies it as "-ed", they start bolting it onto every sentence about the past, and two things go wrong. They say things they did not mean, and they never notice that most past sentences in Thai carry no marker at all. เมื่อวานนี้ผมไปตลาด (mêua-waan-níi phǒm bpai dtà-làat), "yesterday I went to the market", is a complete, natural, unambiguous past sentence with nothing in it marking past. Once the time is known, Thai drops the machinery and does not pick it back up. So what does แล้ว actually do? It reports that a state has changed, that something has reached its point. It sits at the end of the verb phrase, after the object. อิ่มแล้ว (ìm láew): I was not full, now I am. ร้านปิดแล้ว (ráan bpìt láew): the shop was open, now it is closed. หายแล้ว (hǎai láew): I was ill, now I am not. With action verbs that reads as completion, which is why จ่ายเงินแล้ว (jàai ngoen láew) comes out in English as "I've already paid". But the change-of-state idea is the real one, and you can see it because แล้ว happily points forward: จะไปแล้ว (jà bpai láew) means "I'm off now", the leaving has not happened yet. There is also a second, quite separate แล้ว that links clauses and means "and then". In speech it usually arrives as แล้วก็ (láew gâw): อาบน้ำแล้วก็ออกไป (àap-náam láew gâw àwk bpai), "I'll shower and then go out". It also opens a question when someone wants to move things along: แล้วคุณล่ะครับ (láew khun lâ khráp), "and you?" Keep all of that apart from แล้วแต่ (láew-dtàe), "up to you", which shares the syllable and says nothing about time: ask a Thai friend where to eat and you will get แล้วแต่คุณเลยครับ (láew-dtàe khun loei khráp). And there is a third แล้ว, frozen into ที่แล้ว, "last, previous": อาทิตย์ที่แล้ว (aa-thít thîi láew), "last week", ปีที่แล้ว (bpii thîi láew), "last year". จะ (jà) goes in front of the verb and covers future, intention, prediction and willingness all at once. พรุ่งนี้จะไปหาหมอ (phrûng-níi jà bpai hǎa mǎw), "tomorrow I'm going to see the doctor". Notice that the sentence works just as well as พรุ่งนี้ไปหาหมอ, because พรุ่งนี้ has already settled the time; จะ earns its place when there is no time word (เดี๋ยวจะไปธนาคาร, dǐao jà bpai thá-naa-khaan) or when you want the flavour of intent rather than schedule. In the negative, keep the order straight: จะไม่ไป (jà mâi bpai) is "I won't go, I'm not going to", while ไม่ไป (mâi bpai) is a flat refusal or a general statement. เดี๋ยว (dǐao) itself is the near future in one syllable and does the job on its own, so จะ after it is optional: เดี๋ยวมา (dǐao maa), "back in a minute"; เดี๋ยวโทรหา (dǐao thoo hǎa), "I'll call you shortly". Now the in-progress pair, กำลัง (gam-lang) and อยู่ (yùu). They come in three shapes and Thai people use all three. กำลัง + verb puts the spotlight on the action being underway. Verb + อยู่ is lighter and much more frequent in speech, and leans on the ongoing state. กำลัง + verb + อยู่ wraps the verb on both sides and is the everyday way to say "right now, at this second": กำลังทำงานอยู่ครับ (gam-lang tham-ngaan yùu khráp). The wrap is not redundancy, it is emphasis. And อยู่ being the same word as the verb "to stay, to be located" is no accident: something in progress is residing in that action. Here is the trap inside กำลัง. English uses -ing for the future all the time, and Thai does not. "I'm flying to Bangkok tomorrow" is จะ, never กำลัง. Reserve กำลัง for what is genuinely happening at the moment of speaking. If you want "on the verge of", stack them: กำลังจะ (gam-lang jà), as in กำลังจะออกไปแล้ว (gam-lang jà àwk bpai láew), "I'm just about to head out". เคย (khoei) also sits before the verb and does two jobs. With no time frame it asks or states life experience, "have ever": เคยไปเชียงใหม่ไหมครับ (khoei bpai chiang-mài mǎi khráp), "have you ever been to Chiang Mai?" With a past time frame it becomes "used to": เมื่อก่อนเคยสูบบุหรี่ (mêua-gàwn khoei sùup bù-rìi), "I used to smoke". The negative ไม่เคย (mâi khoei) is "never", and it is a complete answer by itself. The trap is that เคย is not the English present perfect. "Have you eaten yet?" is not เคยกินไหม, which would ask whether you have ever eaten anything in your life. Experience and recency are different questions in Thai, and เคย only does experience. ยัง (yang) has two faces that look contradictory in English but are one idea in Thai: the situation has not moved. Face one is "still", ยัง + verb, usually with อยู่ closing it: ยังปวดอยู่ (yang bpùat yùu), "it still hurts"; เขายังอยู่ไหม (khǎo yang yùu mǎi), "is he still here?" Face two is "not yet", ยังไม่ + verb: เขายังไม่มา (khǎo yang mâi maa), "he hasn't come yet". Stronger and far more idiomatic is ยังไม่ได้ + verb, where ได้ insists the event has not taken place at all: ยังไม่ได้กิน (yang mâi dâi gin). Add เลย (loei) for feeling: ยังไม่ได้กินเลย, "I haven't eaten a thing". On its own, ยังครับ or ยังเลย means "not yet", full stop. Its spoken partner is ยังก่อน (yang gàwn), "not yet, hold on a second", which is how you stop a waiter clearing your plate or a driver pulling away before you are ready. ยังไม่ has an exact opposite you will hear just as often: ไม่ ... แล้ว, "not any more". ยังไม่หิว (yang mâi hǐu) is "I'm not hungry yet"; ไม่หิวแล้ว (mâi hǐu láew) is "I'm not hungry any more". Same แล้ว, same flip of state, only the state has flipped to the negative side. In a shop, หมดแล้วครับ (mòt láew khráp) is "we're out of it now", not "it has finished". The other three you will meet this week: ไม่ไหวแล้ว (mâi wǎi láew), "I can't take any more"; ไม่เอาแล้ว (mâi ao láew), "I've given up on it, I don't want it any more"; เขาไม่อยู่แล้ว (khǎo mâi yùu láew), "he's gone, he doesn't live here any more". That brings us to the question you will hear more than any other: ...หรือยัง (rěu yang), literally "or not yet". Say the whole statement first, then tack it on the end. กินข้าวหรือยัง (gin khâao rěu yang). เสร็จแล้วหรือยัง (sèt láew rěu yang). ต่อวีซ่าแล้วหรือยัง (dtàw wii-sâa láew rěu yang). With or without แล้ว in front, both are fine, though putting แล้ว in leans harder on the idea that the thing should already be done. หรือ on its own is a rising tone, but inside this question it gets squeezed flat and fast, and in casual speech it is often dropped altogether so you just hear กินข้าวยัง. The point to hold on to is the answer: there are two, and only two. Done is แล้ว, on its own or with the verb repeated (กินแล้วครับ). Not done is ยัง, on its own or expanded to ยังไม่ได้ + verb. Do not answer ใช่ or ไม่ใช่, and do not answer with a bare ครับ, which leaves the other person no wiser. Also worth knowing: ...หรือยัง asks whether something has happened, while ...ไหม (mǎi) asks whether it is so in general. กินข้าวไหม is an offer of food, กินข้าวหรือยัง is a check on your stomach. ได้ (dâi) deserves its own warning, because it interacts with all of this and expats mix it up for years. Position decides meaning. Before the verb, ได้ says the event did in fact happen. In the negative you will use it every day. In the positive it is much rarer in speech: ผมได้ไป (phǒm dâi bpai) is not wrong, but it sounds like a report, a form or a news bulletin, and in ordinary conversation people just say ผมไป. Take ได้ as your standard tool for "did not", and leave the positive to writing, or to the moment when you are insisting that yes, you really did do it. After the verb, ได้ means "can, be able to". The negatives make the split obvious: ผมไม่ได้ไป (phǒm mâi dâi bpai) is "I didn't go", while ผมไปไม่ได้ (phǒm bpai mâi dâi) is "I can't go". Same two syllables, opposite side of the verb, completely different sentence. Keep ไม่ได้ and ยังไม่ได้ apart too, because one syllable separates two different pieces of news. ผมไม่ได้ไป is "I didn't go", closed, no plan. ผมยังไม่ได้ไป (phǒm yang mâi dâi bpai) is "I haven't been yet", still open, still on my list. Drop the ยัง at the immigration desk and you have just told the officer you are not going to do it. And ยังไม่ได้ + verb, the "not yet" from further up, is just this same ได้ doing its job. One more marker sits behind the verb: มา (maa). It reports something that has run up to now, and with แล้ว on the end it gives you the duration answer you will need constantly: อยู่เมืองไทยมาห้าปีแล้ว (yùu meuang-thai maa hâa bpii láew), "I've been in Thailand five years"; ทำงานที่นี่มาสามปีแล้ว (tham-ngaan thîi-nîi maa sǎam bpii láew). It also does the recent past with a flavour of "and I'm back": ไปตลาดมา (bpai dtà-làat maa), "I've just been to the market". That is the มา inside เป็นมานานหรือยัง (bpen maa naan rěu yang), "have you had it long?", which is what the nurse asks about your symptom. Then there is เพิ่ง (phôeng), "just now, a moment ago", which goes before the verb: เพิ่งมาถึงครับ (phôeng maa thěung khráp), "I've just arrived". With that in place, here is the ordering rule. The full order in a clause is stable and worth memorising as a shape: subject, then ยัง, then เคย or เพิ่ง, then กำลัง, then จะ, then ได้, then the verb, then the object, then อยู่, then แล้ว, then the polite particle. The slots combine rather than compete, which is where กำลังจะ (about to), เพิ่งจะ (only just) and ยังไม่เคย (still never) come from. ไม่ has no slot of its own: it goes immediately in front of whatever it is negating, which is why it lands after ยัง in ยังไม่เคยไป (yang mâi khoei bpai) and after จะ in จะไม่ไป (jà mâi bpai). And ได้ appears on both sides of the verb doing different jobs, in front for "it happened", behind for "able to". Everything that sets up the action goes in front of the verb; everything that reports on its state goes behind it. You will never hear จะ after a verb. แล้ว needs one qualification: as a marker it is always behind the verb phrase, but the linking แล้ว, the one that means and then, starts a clause, so แล้วก็ไปกินข้าว (láew gâw bpai gin khâao), "and then we went to eat", is perfectly ordinary. If แล้ว is sitting in front of a verb, it is the linker, not the marker. Stacks like ยังไม่เคยไปเลย (yang mâi khoei bpai loei), "I've still never been", or กำลังจะถึงแล้ว (gam-lang jà thěung láew), "almost there", are built by that rule and are completely ordinary speech. One warning about the tail of that order: อยู่แล้ว (yùu láew) as a pair has been taken over by a different meaning, "of course, naturally", as in ได้อยู่แล้วครับ (dâi yùu láew khráp), "sure, no problem". So do not build "still doing it" by adding แล้ว to อยู่. Leave the ongoing sentence at ...อยู่: ยังทำอยู่ครับ (yang tham yùu khráp), "I'm still working on it". Since the whole system leans on the time word, here is the stock. Past: เมื่อกี้ (mêua-gîi) a moment ago, เมื่อเช้า (mêua-cháo) this morning, เมื่อวาน (mêua-waan) yesterday, เมื่อวานซืน (mêua-waan-seun) the day before yesterday, อาทิตย์ที่แล้ว (aa-thít thîi láew) last week, เดือนที่แล้ว (deuan thîi láew) last month, ปีที่แล้ว (bpii thîi láew) last year, เมื่อก่อน (mêua-gàwn) back in the day. Now: ตอนนี้ (dtawn-níi), เดี๋ยวนี้ (dǐao-níi), วันนี้ (wan-níi). Future: เดี๋ยว (dǐao) in a minute, ทีหลัง (thii-lǎng) later, พรุ่งนี้ (phrûng-níi) tomorrow, มะรืนนี้ (má-reun-níi) the day after tomorrow, อาทิตย์หน้า (aa-thít nâa), เดือนหน้า (deuan nâa), ปีหน้า (bpii nâa). Two patterns do most of the work: ที่แล้ว is literally "that has passed", and it is the same แล้ว you have just learned; หน้า is literally "ahead". Learn the pair and you have last and next for every unit of time. In practice, these markers carry most of your daily life here. At the clinic: เป็นมานานหรือยัง (bpen maa naan rěu yang), "have you had it long?", and กินยาแล้วหรือยัง (gin yaa láew rěu yang), "have you taken the medicine?" At the immigration office: ต่อวีซ่าแล้วหรือยัง. At the garage or the tailor: เสร็จแล้วหรือยัง. On the phone when you are late: กำลังจะถึงแล้วครับ. The last piece of advice is the one that makes you sound like a resident rather than a textbook: once the time is clear, stop marking. Say พรุ่งนี้ไปหาหมอ, say เมื่อวานไปตลาด, and let the time word carry it. Thai marks time when it is news, not when it is obvious.