How to Say "Sorry" in Thai

To say sorry in Thai, say ขอโทษ (khǎaw thôot). The same word means "I apologise" and "excuse me," so it carries you through everything from bumping a stranger to interrupting a meeting. To sound properly polite, men add ครับ (khráp) and women add ค่ะ (khâ): ขอโทษครับ or ขอโทษค่ะ.

Literally ขอโทษ is "to ask for [the] fault" — ขอ ("to ask for") plus โทษ ("fault" or "blame") — a small, graceful way of taking responsibility. Get this one phrase right and you'll handle most of the everyday moments where an apology is due.

When to use ขอโทษ

ขอโทษ is the workhorse. You use it to apologise for a real mistake ("sorry I'm late"), to excuse yourself past someone in a packed BTS carriage, to get a waiter's attention, and to soften an interruption. English splits these jobs across "sorry," "excuse me," and "pardon"; Thai folds them all into ขอโทษ. When you're unsure which word fits, ขอโทษ with the right particle is almost never wrong.

For a fuller apology, add จริงๆ (jing-jing), "really," giving ขอโทษจริงๆ — "I'm really sorry." To say what you're sorry for, use ขอโทษที่… (khǎaw thôot thîi…), "sorry that…," followed by the situation: ขอโทษที่มาสาย, "sorry I'm late."

The polite particles: ครับ and ค่ะ

Thai attaches a short word to the end of a sentence to mark courtesy, and it changes with the speaker's gender, not the listener's. Men say ครับ (khráp), on a high tone; women say ค่ะ (khâ), on a falling tone. So a man apologises with ขอโทษครับ and a woman with ขอโทษค่ะ — even to the same person. These are the same particles you meet everywhere in polite Thai, including in the companion piece on how to say thank you; the two phrases are a matched pair you'll lean on daily.

Dropping the particle isn't grammatically wrong, but it lands as curt — the difference between a muttered "sorry" and a sincere one with eye contact. When an apology actually matters, the particle matters too.

A more formal apology: ขออภัย

For weightier, more written-feeling apologies — a customer-service email, a public notice, an announcement on the train — Thai uses ขออภัย (khǎaw à-phai). You'll see it on signs ("ขออภัยในความไม่สะดวก," "we apologise for the inconvenience") far more than you'll hear it in casual speech. As a learner you'll reach for ขอโทษ ninety-nine times out of a hundred; just recognise ขออภัย when it appears in print so it doesn't trip you up. There's also a very deferential ขอประทานโทษ, but that's elevated, almost ceremonial — file it under "good to recognise, rarely to say."

The trap: ขอโทษ vs เสียใจ

Here's the distinction that catches nearly every learner. ขอโทษ is an apology — you're at fault, you're asking forgiveness. เสียใจ (sǐa-jai) literally means "to lose heart," i.e. to feel sad or regretful. So เสียใจด้วย (sǐa-jai dûay) is "my condolences" — what you say to someone who has suffered a loss, not what you say when you've spilled their coffee. English uses one word, "sorry," for both ("sorry I'm late" and "I'm so sorry for your loss"); Thai keeps them firmly separate. Say ขอโทษ at a funeral and you'll be apologising for the death, which is exactly the wrong note. This is the same one-English-word, two-Thai-words problem learners hit early — it's worth meeting head-on alongside other first-word pitfalls.

How people reply

The reply you'll hear most is ไม่เป็นไร (mâi-pen-rai) — "it's nothing / never mind," the same all-purpose phrase that doubles as "you're welcome." It's possibly the most Thai sentence there is: a calm, smiling wave-away that absorbs a late arrival, a bumped elbow, or a minor mishap with equal ease. Don't read it as the matter being dismissed — read it as the gracious, expected close to the exchange. (If a Thai friend ever greets you with a cheerful สวัสดี and a ไม่เป็นไร in the same breath, you'll know the air is well and truly cleared.)

The mistake learners make most

The single most common slip we hear is on the first syllable: ขอ is a rising tone (khǎaw) — your voice should dip and then climb, like the lift at the end of an English question. Reading the loose romanization "khor thot," beginners flatten it into a dull mid-tone "kor tot," which a Thai ear clocks instantly even while understanding you. The second syllable, โทษ, falls (thôot) — start high, drop down — and the vowel is longer than English speakers expect: it's "thôot," not a clipped "tot." A rising-then-falling shape across the two syllables is what makes it sound like a real apology rather than a tourist phrasebook.

Tones carry meaning in Thai the way vowels do in English, which is exactly why hearing them beats memorising rules about them — and why the Paiboon tone marks above each card are there to guide your voice. Study the deck at the top of this page in both directions — recognising ขอโทษ when you read it, and recalling it when you see "sorry" — and within a week the phrase and its ครับ / ค่ะ particle will come out without a thought. It's a small phrase that smooths over a great deal, and in Thailand a well-pronounced ขอโทษครับ or ขอโทษค่ะ is rarely just understood — it's appreciated.