futurespy

1 hour ago, tgeezer said:

Using Thai familiar titles is difficult because we don’t belong to the “Thai family”.   There are so many possibilities depending on our relationship to them.  You seem to have ‘cracked it’ with one individual but unless the circumstances of your meeting is known we can’t take much from your experience. 

For example, you could call a market trader almost anything ป้า แม่ ยาย it seems provided you buy something but since they could not imaging a farang related to them in that way would it work?   I would be interested in a Thai opinion but that could not be taken as the rule.

You do have a point. So perhaps, even if I met another person under the same circumstances (someone just slightly younger than me), odds are that something different might happen? Does mentioning that I'm East Asian make any difference in this case? I mean, I wasn't born in Japan, but at least physically (not culturally) I'm full Japanese.

8 hours ago, uhuh said:

I would not do this. It's too easy to get it wrong. 

There is a tendency to call the other person พี่ anyway,  it's just polite, so as a foreigner i felt how can it be that 2 persons both call each other พี่???

 

I prefer neutral terms of address,  like a name or the very convenient Thai pronouns "I" and "you". No wonder young Thais like them. 

 

Nope, I mean, he started calling me พี่, so I was referring to myself as พี่ too. He was using ผม to refer to himself. I was calling him น้อง until I knew his nickname. Then I started addressing him by his nickname.

You mean people will use พี่ even when they're not sure if the other person is older than them?

Apparently it's okay. I was called "อ้าย" (equivalent of พี่ in Northern Thai) by the other guy, so I guess it should be safe to call him "น้อง"...

I was just wondering: can you refer to yourself as พี่ when talking to someone a few years younger than you from the beginning assuming both are young, or does it sound rude/arrogant?