What and who (อะไร, ใคร)

In-situ Questions

In Thai, question words like "what" and "who" are in-situ. This means they do not move to the front of the sentence like they do in English. Instead, you simply place the question word exactly where the answer will go.

Asking "What?" (อะไร)

To ask what someone is doing, use the question word อะไร (what). It sits exactly where the answer will go—usually right after the verb: Subject + Verb + อะไร.

Notice how the answer simply replaces the question word with the new information, keeping the exact same sentence structure:

Asking "Who?" (ใคร)

The word for "who" is ใคร. It can act as either the subject or the object of a sentence.

When asking who is performing an action, ใคร sits in the subject position: ใคร + Verb + (Object).

When asking whom someone is acting upon, ใคร takes the object position after the verb: Subject + Verb + ใคร.

Asking "What kind of...?"

You can also place อะไร directly after a noun to ask "What kind of [noun]?" or "Which [noun]?": Noun + อะไร.