Sawadika Thailand

“Sawadika” is how the Thai greeting สวัสดีค่ะ (sà-wàt-dee kâ) is usually written in English. It is the everyday Thai hello, said by a woman. A man says สวัสดีครับ (sà-wàt-dee kráp).

One word covers both hello and goodbye, at any hour. Thai does not swap greetings for morning, afternoon and evening the way many languages do.

Kâ and kráp mean nothing on their own. They are politeness particles that soften a sentence, and Thai speakers add them to almost everything when talking to someone they have just met.

Sawatdee traces back to the Sanskrit svasti, meaning well-being, safety, or a blessing.

It was proposed as a Thai greeting in the 1930s by Phraya Upakit Silpasan, a scholar at Chulalongkorn University, and spread from there into the standard hello used across the country.

Before that, people greeted each other with situational questions — “where have you been?”, “have you eaten yet?” — which you still hear every day between people who know each other.