Thai: Language Lesson 101

Language Lessons:


Though I have a full “phrase book” for speaking in Thai, my memory is not as “elastic” as it once was. Thai sounds and words have no relationship to anything familiar in English like you might find in Spanish or French or Italian. For example, though it is a foreign language, if you call me an el stupido, I can probably figure out what that means.

However, in Thai, since they don’t even use “our” alphabet, the likelihood that there is similarity in meaning of any of their words is low. I’m committing to learn at least one new word or phrase / day…and I must admit I’m ahead of schedule. However, I’m finding it useless to simply memorize meaningless sounds, so I’m trying to massage the Thai pronunciation so that it is vaguely reminiscent of a phrase with completely different meaning, but similar pronunciation in English.

Here is an example. To say Hello or Good morning, you simply use the phrase Sewat-dee (written here in phonetic English). This is fairly easy for me to remember since it happens to be the name of our favorite new Thai Restaurant in Winston. Given that I’ve memorized the restaurant name previously, it occurs to me that it would have been convenient if they had instead chosen to name their restaurant “Horng nahm tee-nai” (translated, “the bathroom, where?”). This would have been incredibly for any of their patrons who might find themselves traveling in Thailand, and I doubt the non-traveling Winston clientele would be offended as they would likely never bother to look up the translation anyway (it was not til this trip that I found our restaurant was named “hello”).

So, though I already knew Se-wat-dee, I learned that you also have to put another word on the end of the phrase. If you’re a man, you add krub. If you’re a woman, you add kaa. I misunderstood this, thinking that you added the ending word based on WHO you were speaking TO. The logic of this little add-on must be rooted in the deep tradition of cross dressing and transgendered people in Thailand. (there are many of these apparently) Thus, when you greet someone, you are basically saying : Hello, I am a man. (or woman as the case may be). Since I didn’t understand this, for the first 24 hours, I greeted all men I met correctly, but the women, I greeted saying: Hello, I’m a woman. …and to make matters worse, since Thai is a “tonal language” , “how” you say something is as important as what you say. Since I was tentative with the unfamiliar language, when I greeted the women incorrectly with my gentle and low confidence Sewhatdee Kaa, I can assume I was basically saying, hello, I’m a girly boy.
To memorize this phrase, I had to come up with a similar phrase in English. Sewhatdee Krub when said by me sounds awfully close to Say, What dee Crap! This was a helpful pronunciation and memory tool for me. But as I listened to my host say it quickly and informally to people, I realized that it was really more accurate and helpful to slur the phrase like a run-on, generating instead “Sweaty Cop”. I spent my afternoon greeting many of my Thai counterparts on the street this way…said confidently, I sound incredibly local. Sweaty Cop said with a big smile opened many doors.

Day Two: Eaaaarly in the am.

Day Two: Yesterday, I arrived in Chiang Mai Thailand at 9 am after about 44 hours in planes and airports. Tim Johnson, a classmate of mine from Eckerd College is living here for 6 months while writing a book about China, Tibet and the Dalai Lama. I’m staying with Tim, his Nicaraguan wife, Tanya, and their 12 year old daughter Sophia. Sophia has lived in Nicaragua, Colombia, Beijing, Chiang Mai and Washington, DC. Thus, she speaks 4 languages…and she’s more fluent in Chinese and Thai than her parents.

Its now 4:30 am on Day 2 and I am wide awake as a hootie owl. I went to bed about 9pm and went right to sleep, having only had about 6 hours of sleep over the last 2 days.
I feel like I am in a tree house. Tim and Tanya live in a beautiful 3rd floor condo, very westernized. Its fully furnished as they each brought only a suitcase each from Beijing. All of their other possessions are in storage in China.

My bedroom is large and two of the external walls are floor to ceiling windows. My windows are screened and I left them all wide open last night with the ceiling fan on. Its beautifully temperate here, like 72 degrees. Tim says is unusually cool.
There is a rooster crowing in the distance, though it is still pitch black dark outside.

Out of Tim's bedroom window is a dramatic mountain where the sun sets. Though, yesterday, the sun just kind of sank behind the mountain, no dramatic sunset.

Also, out of his window is a lagoon. There are lagoons everywhere. If this was Florida, they would all be immaculately landscaped, but this lagoon looks like it is being in the process of being developed built around. One gets the feeling that the jungle surrounding Chiang Mai is so aggressive, that if there wasn’t a constant battle between civilization to keep it at bay, within a few weeks of neglect, if allowed, the city would be overrun by vegetation the way that morning glory overtakes our garden every fall.

People fly around the narrow little streets here mostly on mopeds. They drive on the left hand side. Though a street may appear to have 2 lanes, people pretty much disregard any suggestion of order. Its pretty much every man for himself. Most mopeds have 2 passengers…a lot of the girls ride side saddle behind the drivers. It will be very upsetting for Allison to know that know one wears helmets here.




 

Incredible street vendors are everywhere. We saw a woman cooking something from a distance and couldn't make out what it was. As we got closer, we realized that she was frying these huge whole fish, head and all. They had first been completely coated in salt. It looked like the fish had been stuffed with herbs on their stems, the way that Allison fixes her turkey. It was then deep fried. She had about 8 of them on her cart for sale. We will definitely buy one soon

Matt just reminded me to make sure and eat mangosteens if they are in season. This is where they come from. I'm looking forward to breakfast, because we will eat the fruit that I bought. Yes, gillian, I will take pictures. This one fruit I bought is bright read and has little spikes coming off of it. It looks like it could be make of blown glass, the spikes being like pointed thorny leaves. I can't imagine what it will taste like.