We are in a class of 4 people, Clive and myself with a man from France and one from Sweden. Our teacher is a Thai woman named Tin.
While it is from 10AM-1PM, you cram a lot in. My least favourite subject in university was English. The professor was a woman who loved compound this and adjective that. Her hobby was to use brain scans to see how the language stimulated the human brain. Most of us older students, we had a great of difficulty in staying awake, let alone rehash subjugated verbs, noun+adjective, pronouns, punctuation and compound sentences. Clive on the other hand loved it. Now we fo to school and we begin with verbs and nouns then adjectives. It is like a bad dream, only this time in a foreign language and to make matters worse, I choose to go and to pay to go!
The community we live is is one not often seen or even known of by people who vacation in Phuyket and tend to stay in the community of Patong. As I have previously reported, we are usually the only non-Thai people we ever see in our community, stores, banks or markets. While most of the people we deal with try to communicate with us, the use of the large numbered calculator seems to be how we work out prices. We thought that it best that we be able to have at least a basic understanding.
To some people the non-Thai, referred to as Farang, are not a welcome site. Primarily as I have also reported as some tend to come here on vacation, drink too much, are abusive, disrespectful and just plain rude. The old adage about travel and simply yell louder and slower in English should work, well it just does not. One evening as I went to the shop at the end of the moo, a small boy on a motorcycle yelled something to me, that included the term farang. The immediate response from the driver, who I assume was his dad, as a hard swift smack to the back of his head. Clive and I had joked that he was probably calling me a dirty Farang. On some days Clive would agree, given that he tends to check to see how many if any showers I have had today. My rationale is that if I am going out to do yard work and sweat, I will shower later; or if we are going to the beach, why shower before I go. He just does not share that viewpoint. I can safely say that I am now sure that what he said to me was farang, sok gab bprok , which does indeed literally mean, dirty farang.
To go to school we travel to what I refer to as Sin City, or on maps it is more properly identified as Patong. It is in Patong that the Farang tend to go where the go-go bars, massage parlors and pubs are congregated. The main thoroughfare is named Bangla Road. I have seen this road is washed almost daily at sunrise with huge water cannon trucks. It is packed with bars such as Scruffy Murphy's Irish Pub, The Aussie Bar, etc. Loud speaker trucks slowly prowl the street with staged Muay Thai boxing announcing “big show tonight” and half of the combatants on the posters are non-Thai. I overheard a group of Americans discussing how they felt that if you simply put a few hundred Baht on the table you could get the poor people to kick the crap out of each other. If you know us, you can understand how being in that community is just not our style. In short, we had decided long before we moved here that we wanted to be nowhere near Patong. The downside is that the best language school is located in Patong. So we get, up and head there on our trusty Scoopy-i’s following a road that follows the contours of the coastline. We get the fresh ocean breeze and get to travel through a few small communities as they are busy getting to work or shopping for their food at the local markets. If you are up and travel early enough you can see the monks in their saffron robes walking along the main roads, receiving alms. I have also seen the people stop their motorbikes a few meters up the road from the monks and get into prayer position alongside the road and do what I call “drive-through alms”.
There are 44 consonants in the Thai alphabet but you will be happy to know that there are only 21 initial sounds and 8 final sounds u to learn. Yes, you read right! Some letters change their sound when they move from the front of a word to the end! I should also mention that you have to learn 32 vowels! Oh yes, mustn't forget the 5 tones which will change how you say a word and the meaning of a word.
There are a few distinctions in Thai language that may be of interest to you. Men use the word Khob (pronounced Cap) at the end of most sentences and women use Ka (pronounced Kaa). In questions and answers the gender of the speaker is normally used to identify yourself, in speaking the first person singular. But not identified in the plural.
So here is some basic Thai for you:
I or Me is ,Phom for a man and Chan for a woman; sounds like Pom or Chan
You, is Khun ; sounds like Koon
He or Him is, Kao, sounds like Cow
She or Her is, Ter, sounds like Tear
We or Us is, Pauk Rao; sounds like Pork Rauw
They or Them is, Pauk Kao; sounds like, Pork Cow
It for an animal or object is, Man; sounds like Man
Good morning or good evening is Sa-Wat-Dee; sounds like Swa-dee, always followed in my case by Khob. So it is sounds like: Swadekap
How are you? is, sa-bai-dee-mai. In this case each of the words is spoken individually as, SA BAI DEE MAI? The use of the word Mai at the end of sentence indicates that the statement is a question.
A favourite response to something is Mai Bpen Rai, said as, My Ben Rye, which means, never mind or that's all right. In this case the use of the word Mai in front of the noun indicates similar to Not or no. So literally you could say the statement means, not a problem, although the expression not a problem has it’s own specific phrase of, mai mee bpan haa. As it is said there is no ability to transliterate Thai to English, you can at best approximately
And what language class would be complete without numbers. Oh joy. For this kite I will go with the numbers 0-10
0 - Soon
1 - Neung
2 - Song
3 - Samm
4 - See
5 - Haa
6 - Hok
7 - Djet
8 - Bpaed
9 - Gao
10 - Sip
In our written exercises we covered from 0- Millions. In some cases the paper width was not enough to write it out. The number 485,296,375 translates as , see roi bpaed sip haa laan song saen gao meun hok pan saam roi djet sip haa. Try that one when you’ve had a beer or two. Actually it may be better after a beer or two! If all else fails there is always a large print calculator nearby to punch the number in and show it to you. This is especially helpful when the price of something is done in Thai Baht (the currency), which fluctuates against the dollar as with all currencies, but we average it to 30 baht = $1CDN for simplification. So that same 485,296,375 Thai Baht works out to about 16,176,545.83 CDN$. In more realistic terms, the dinner at the end of the moo for 2 with a beer each works out to 80Baht or $2.66, a package of cigarettes at 70 Baht is about $2.33 or a liter of gas at 29 Baht is about $0.96. While that may seem cheap in some cases, you have to put it into context as well. That Safeway cashier at home who is making about $24 an hour, here would be making about 7,000 Baht a MONTH or about $233.33. A life guard about 10,000 Baht a month or $333.33 and for a manager of a high end retail wine store makes a whopping 25,000 Baht a month or $833.33. So we tend to now learn the Thai number, convert it to CDN dollars and then we put it into the perspective of the local person.
Having gotten some of the basic words, like hot and cold, table chair and plate, we moved along to body parts (they do not teach the naughty parts) and then we began the wonderful exercise of now formulating sentences in the form of questions, then formulation of the positive and negative responses. To complicate this a bit more, there are expressions you learn in Thai that have other applications dependent on the audience. For example, saying good night to someone, in regular formal Thai it would be ra-tree-sa-wat, unless it is a goof friend, then it would be nohn-lab-fan-dee or if it is with your girl/boy friend or lover it would be, fan dee na. Confused yet? How about “wait a moment”, for formal talking it would be raw-sak-kroo, for friends it would be raw-di-aow and for your lover it would be di-aow, (possibly repeated numerous times) di-aow, di-aow.
And what language class would be complete without the rules and the exceptions to the rules. And there are many. Just when we thought we had it, the exceptions came into play. No different than in any other language is suppose. I often told people trying to learn English that anytime an English speaker gives them a hard time about their language, as then to explain how the words Rough and Dough has only a consonant change, but is pronounced so differently, and if they can explain it, then they can complain about language pronunciation and exceptions to the rules of a foreign language. Well I cannot explain the reasons for rough and dough, so I shall shut my mouth about Thai language exceptions.
Our house has become a language lab. On the dining table is a glass jar with scraps of paper with Thai words on one side and the English equivalent on the other. We open the jar, pull out a piece of paper and have to translate it whatever side comes up to the opposite language. Clive went out to get some post-it notes which are now adorning things like the fridge, chairs, mirrors with the Thai word. And we have quizzes with each other. A Thai friend has been very helpful in our pronunciation and we try everywhere we go to use it and find that people are very amused but also quite helpful in correcting or speaking more slow so they can help us to practice. Our friend Dul (pronounced Duel) has taken to text messaging us in phonetic Thai and expecting replies in the same way. Lucky for that, as to write to us in Thai language would be completely lost. As you will see, I have closed this kite with the Thai spelling of my name. There is a separate course in how to write and read that script, but I for one am not that far yet, and am still left to reading labels in the hopes of some English words or a picture that conveys the message. Potato chips for instance will have the picture of a squid and chili peppers and green leaves. This means the flavour is Chili squid with sweet basil. Slowly we are picking it up and are ALWAYS greeted with a giggle or a large toothy smile when we try our Thai with people. Dul laughs, saying it is so funny, but makes him proud that unlike so many people who come here, we are actually trying and doing well. Despite the language barriers, somehow the following sign, even translated seems to miss most people as they continue to swim in the wrong places and some find their vacation to paradise comes to an end faster than they may have wanted.
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