Word
นี่ โทรศัพท์ ของ ใคร ครับ
Meaning
Whose phone is this?
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Lesson
Breakdown of นี่ โทรศัพท์ ของ ใคร ครับ
นี่
this
ครับ
polite particle (male)
โทรศัพท์
telephone
ของ
of (belonging to)
Questions & Answers about นี่ โทรศัพท์ ของ ใคร ครับ
Where is the verb "is" in this sentence?
In Thai, the verb "to be" is often left out when you point something out with นี่ (this). So นี่ โทรศัพท์ literally translates to "This [is] phone".
How do we get "whose" from the words in this sentence?
The word ของ means "of" or "belonging to", and ใคร means "who". When you combine them into ของใคร, it literally means "of who", which is how Thai expresses "whose".
Why is the question word ใคร (who) at the very end of the sentence?
Unlike English, which pulls question words to the front ("Whose phone is this?"), Thai leaves the question word exactly where the answer would go. If the answer is "This is the phone of John", the question is "This is the phone of who".
Why isn't the word นี่ (this) placed next to the word for phone?
In this sentence, นี่ acts as a stand-alone pronoun for the subject ("This is..."). If you wanted to group them together to say "this phone", the word for "this" changes slightly in tone to นี้ and goes after the noun, creating โทรศัพท์นี้.