เป็น ไป ไม่ ได้
“เป็น ไป ไม่ ได้” (пен пай май дай) — impossible in Thai. Adjective, level A1. The pair of "possible", only with mai: pen pai mai dai — both "impossibly" and "impossible". In a live sentence: “ทาง นั้น เป็น ไป ไม่ ได้” — That way is impossible. Written with the characters เ, ป, น, ไ, ป, ไ, ม, ่, ไ, ด, ้. A word from the everyday Thai course, level A1.
In short
| Written in Thai | เป็น ไป ไม่ ได้ |
| Read in Latin letters | пен пай май дай |
| Translation | impossible |
| Part of speech | adjective |
| Level | A1 |
Why it looks that way
The pair of "possible", only with mai: pen pai mai dai — both "impossibly" and "impossible"
A word with a story stays in memory longer than one learned as a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.
In a live sentence
A single word almost never appears alone in conversation. A sentence shows where it fits and what stands next to it.
- ทาง นั้น เป็น ไป ไม่ ได้таанг нан пен пай май дайThat way is impossible
How not to forget this word
Reading a word and remembering it are different jobs. A day later, little survives of a single reading — and that is not bad memory, that is how memory works.
- This has been tested on foreign words too. The difference shows up most when you test yourself a few days later rather than straight away.checked many timesKim & Webb, 2022, Language Learning 72(2) · 48 experiments, 3,411 participants, 98 comparisons.
- Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
- An answer you worked out yourself sticks better than one handed to you.checked many timesBertsch et al., 2007, Memory & Cognition 35(2) · 86 studies, 445 comparisons, d = 0.40.
Frequently asked
How do you say “impossible” in Thai?
«เป็น ไป ไม่ ได้», read “пен пай май дай”. In a live sentence: “ทาง นั้น เป็น ไป ไม่ ได้” — That way is impossible. Adjective, level A1; written with the characters เ, ป, น, ไ, ป, ไ, ม, ่, ไ, ด, ้.
How is “เป็น ไป ไม่ ได้” written in Latin letters?
пен пай май дай. This is a practical spelling — you need it to read aloud and be understood, not to meet an academic standard.
Why does this word look the way it does?
The pair of "possible", only with mai: pen pai mai dai — both "impossibly" and "impossible". A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.