I asked my friend why her friend wasn't married yet and she said that she still has 'para'. Sorry i can't type Thai, but the last a is short, not long. Does anyone know what this means?

Look up the word paramour and you could have the answer. I believe it means lover.

"paa-ra" mid tone on the first syllable , high tone on the second

it means burden , responsibility or duty.

she probably has parents or siblings to provide for or look after and cant consider marriage until those responsibilities have been discharged .

Look up the word paramour and you could have the answer. I believe it means lover.

That's not Thai.

Correct Mangkoon but I’ve heard it used by Thais mainly in a legal sense.

They used the word Para as a shortened version of paramour when describing the lover of a woman who is still married. I.E. X has a para.

"paa-ra" mid tone on the first syllable , high tone on the second

it means burden , responsibility or duty.

she probably has parents or siblings to provide for or look after and cant consider marriage until those responsibilities have been discharged .

yes khun taxexile is right ภาระ paa-ra means burden , responsibility or duty

"lover of a woman who is still married" is ชู้รัก (choo rak) or ชายชู้ (chaai choo).

I’ll agree in this scenario my suggestion may not be correct. I stand by the use of the word Para for lover in a legal slang sense. I have copies of correspondence from a few years back where lawyers used this word.

"paa-ra" mid tone on the first syllable , high tone on the second

it means burden , responsibility or duty.

she probably has parents or siblings to provide for or look after and cant consider marriage until those responsibilities have been discharged .

This makes perfect sense in the context.

While we're doing 'para' in general, there's also the shortened 'paracetamol' one hears fairly often - พารา phaaraa (both mid tones) but that obviously does not apply here.

I have copies of correspondence from a few years back where lawyers used this word.

how is it spelt ?

the only word i know of that roughly corresponds is para-chik (ปาราชิก ), which means adultery committed by a monk.

They used English writing “para” in the documents. This term was also used by the lawyers in verbal conversations at the time.

I asked my friend why her friend wasn't married yet and she said that she still has 'para'. Sorry i can't type Thai, but the last a is short, not long. Does anyone know what this means?

She told you she cannot think of marriage, because she has family obligations. She is probably looking after her parents or siblings.

Ideally, Thais marry when they are established in their careers, and have money for a wedding and a house and the works. If as Sutnyod says she has to look after her parents or siblings or something along those lines, she would consider herself as yet unready/unable to marry. This would be a common response, I imagine. Depends, though--there are some (usually very poor families) who look at marriage as a financial opportunity (either to get a dowry or at least have someone else assume the financial burden of caring for their daughter), and encourage their daughters to marry young, sometimes in their mid-teens. I know families from both schools of thought.

There are some families who indeed see marriage as a financial opportunity. But those same families still often adhere to the ethnic Tai tradition of the youngest daughter staying at home to take care of the parents in their senior years. In earlier times this would have also included inheriting the house and land, but in modern times it is often, at best, a very small plot for the house with no associated padi or orchard land.

In this case it most likely means burden/responsibility.

But I have heard a similar sounding word used as follows:

YAANG PAA-RAA - - -- - - - - latex rubber

DTON(l) PAA-RAA - - - - - - - rubber tree

They used English writing “para” in the documents. This term was also used by the lawyers in verbal conversations at the time.

'Paraya', or more precisely, 'pun-ra-ya' ภรรยา means wife. It is used for both wife #1 and mistress. But it is not used in abbreviated form as 'para' though.

This is the closest I can think of.

Cheers.

They used English writing "para" in the documents. This term was also used by the lawyers in verbal conversations at the time.

I don't doubt you about the usage; obviously different occupations, and even work places, develop their own jargon based on their particular needs. When discussing foreign law and concepts it sometimes makes good sense to borrow terms wholesale instead of trying to confine them into a local one. That way everyone will be on the same page.

But unless the woman in the OP is a legal expert I doubt she would use that word.

Have you heard it anywhere else since then?