I called my boss “auntie” and everyone froze

I was eighteen, and I’d just started my first job with Thai people my own age: a Thai restaurant and bar. The boss was a woman of about fifty. I wanted to be respectful. I’d been raised to be respectful. So I did what every polite Thai kid in Sweden would do, and called her ป้า, auntie.

Everyone froze.

Not angry, exactly. Just a moment of total silence. Then I was told: “Call her พี่.”

Older sister. Not auntie. Older sister.

I’d just added a generation to her age with one syllable, while trying my very hardest to be polite. If you’re luk khrueng, you probably have a moment like this. This site exists because of moments like this.

พี่

phii

Draft: waiting for a native speaker’s review.

Practise replying to this in Reply Thai, coming soon to iPhone.

Thai, the polite edition

I grew up in Sweden, and my mum is from Ratchaburi, west of Bangkok. My dad is Finnish, born and raised in Sweden. My Thai came from my mum and my aunties, which means it came out exactly the way they spoke to me and the way I was taught to speak back to them: polite, careful, formal. ครับ at the end of everything. ผม for “I”. The Thai you use with grown-ups who love you and who will absolutely tell you if you forget your manners.

That Thai worked at home, and it worked with family. What I didn’t know, until that restaurant, was that it was only one Thai. There was a whole other one that people my age spoke to each other, and nobody had ever handed me the manual.

There were other Thai things in my childhood, too. I grew up with Doraemon, Shin-chan and Conan dubbed in Thai, and later with Thai films like Fan Chan and SuckSeed. If you grew up with them too, you know.

The cousins

Every other year, we went to Thailand. Every other year, I met my cousins again, and every other year it went the same way. We got along. We laughed. We ate far too much. And we stayed somewhere near the surface.

I could say the polite things. I could answer the questions grown-ups ask. But the real conversations, the jokes that need perfect timing, the “what’s actually going on with you” talk, the stuff cousins tell each other and not their parents, I couldn’t get there. Not for lack of wanting. I just didn’t have the words, or the right register for them.

If you’ve ever sat at a family table understanding most of what’s said and saying almost nothing, I know that feeling. It isn’t a lack of love. It’s a gap between what you feel and what you can say in that moment.

Going quiet

Back at the restaurant, after ป้า, I got quiet. Really quiet.

I didn’t know what to call my coworkers. I didn’t know when to drop ครับ, or whether dropping it would sound rude. I didn’t know what to say instead of someone’s name, because in Thai you often don’t just say the name. Everyone else seemed to have an instinct for all of this. I had a rulebook written for talking to my mum and my aunties.

So I listened, and I mostly stayed out of it. When you’re scared of being disrespectful, silence feels like the safe choice. It isn’t, really. It just looks like you don’t want to be there.

The slang went right past me, too. People my age used กู and มึง with each other, the blunt “I” and “you” that close friends use. I never picked them up. I still don’t use them, and that’s fine. Plenty of luk khrueng never do. Being able to understand them is enough.

Even now, in a big group of Thai people, I can still feel myself going quiet. For me the hard part isn’t knowing the words. It’s actually using them, out loud, in the moment.

After-school Thai class

As a kid, I had Thai class after school. I hated it. After school was supposed to be free time.

I’m glad now. Really glad. It gave me a base that I’ve leaned on ever since.

I have a friend who skipped it. He’s luk khrueng too, and today he still struggles to talk with his mum and his cousins. It’s not his fault, and it’s not too late for him. But I see how much it costs him, in conversations that should be easy and aren’t.

So if you’re a parent and your kid hates Thai class: I hated it too. Keep going. And if you’re the kid who skipped: most of us wanted to. It’s not too late.

Wanting friends who just get it

What I wanted more than anything, growing up, was luk khrueng friends. People who also had a second life their classmates never saw. People who also had family on the other side of the world, and a language they understood better than they could use. People who wouldn’t need anything explained.

In Sweden, they were hard to find. I knew they existed. I just never found them in one place.

Today I live in Thailand. In a way I’ve come full circle: I’m here, among the people I used to go quiet around, still learning when to say พี่ and when to drop ครับ. And I know now that there are a lot of us with this kind of story. We’re just scattered.

Why this site, and why the app

That’s why lukkrueng.com exists. I wanted the place I couldn’t find at eighteen: somewhere you read a story and think “oh, that’s me”, where the Thai-side paperwork is explained calmly and with sources, and where you can find other people who are Thai by family. Not a place that ranks who is “really Thai”. Just a place where none of this needs explaining.

And that’s why I’m building Reply Thai. Not to make anyone fluent overnight, and not to teach you a language you already half-understand from scratch. It’s for the moment I kept getting stuck in: someone says something to you in Thai, and you need to say something back. To your boss. To your cousin. To yai on a video call. The app lets you practise that reply, so that next time the words are there when you need them.

If you’ve ever called someone ป้า who wanted to be พี่, you’re in the right place. Welcome. I’m glad you’re here.

Thai words on this page are a draft until a native speaker has reviewed them.

Eric