Thailand Experience

This is the power cut off switch to my house. You can’t miss it, it lives on my living room wall. Not sure what the red and green alarm lights are for but, given that the power here is 220v, enough to kill me under the right circumstances, I am comforted by the lights even if they don’t really do anything. Certainly, I would be able to find the thing in the dark if it went off. No namby-pamby plastic ceiling alarms here. Now if only I knew how it worked. Actual size 11-12″ high.

Written Thai has no spaces between the words (what were they thinking?) and no capital letters.
There are 44 consonants, thirty-two vowel combinations, and five tones although a reliable source says thai as actually spoken has six tones. Don’t ask me, I can’t tell from nothing’ unless maybe they are talking about the very high, almost falsetto, tone I hear with certain words like “loerie”. When said, which is often, it harkens me back to the days of rooting for the Arkansas Razorbacks and the Oooooo, pig, souiiiiiiiii cheer.

Not sounding a vowel properly (how long you hold the vowel) seems to be more confusing to Thais than if you use an incorrect tone. Well, except for the people in Moo 6 where I live. Most of them are from Isaan (northeast Thailand) with Lao roots. They don’t understand me no matter what.

Unlike in English >), it isn’t funny when Thai words are spelled and pronounced the same but mean different things.

Thais often leave out the subject of a sentence if they think is will be understood from the context. They understand “drink water” if you mean you want to drink but might be confused if you mean ‘do they want to drink some water’. Nothing confuses them more, though, than forgetting to say the verbs or question words.
“You house?”
“No, I’m not a house. I might be going to the house though, is that what you meant?”
Yeah. Confusing.

Thai is a tonal language but there are songs in Thai. Really? How do they manage that? So, is the melody determined by the tones, or is the lyric determined by the melody or what? My thai teacher says “we just know what they are talking about”. Again I say – Really?

The word for boyfriend/girlfriend is also the common word for husband/wife. so, if they say “I have a faan” (like the a in sad but held longer) you still have no idea if you should ask if they have any children.

People speaking louder doesn’t help your understanding but it usually also makes them speak slower which does help. And, it’s fun to watch.

Thai people (any people for that matter) don’t think they speak fast. They’re wrong.

On a similar vein, did you know that there is no pause between words when people speak (english included)? We hear the spaces because we know the words and our brains parse them each as discrete entities. Hahahaha. Parse, discrete. Hahahaha.

Thai dogs don’t understand English

Here are some simple tricks  for bridging the Thai language gap.

Speaking
When they don’t understand you, try saying the same thing in a variety of tones, maybe you’ll get lucky. Saying it again, only louder doesn’t really work.

Get really fast at looking things up in the dictionary. A career in an archive or library can help with that.

Get someone in the group that can understand your mangled Thai to translate. For me it works  like this:
I say something like “di chan chawp a-haan thai” (I like Thai food). This is followed by blank stares or furrowed brows often accompanied by everyone in the room leaning forward as if getting closer will make my accent better. I frantically look over to Khun L., my host mother, who then says to the crowd: “kao chawp a-haan thai” (She likes Thai Food). Okay, didn’t I just say that???? This utterance however is followed by knowing nods and broad smiles. Saved again.

Listening
Listen for a key noun or verb and then use the context of environment, current events, or people present to figure out to what they could possibly be referring.

Or, failing that, listen intently, lean forward (see above), nod periodically and when they look at you expecting a reply, repeat the word that sounded like it might be an important noun. If everyone laughs hysterically and repeats you’re answer (hahaha I said this and she said……hahaha) the noun trick didn’t work and you’ve been busted. You’ll have to say the dreaded “I didn’t understand” which will be followed by five minutes of them restating the sentence in a variety of ways with the rather optimistic assumption that you’re not so stupid that you won’t eventually figure it out. They’d be wrong about that.

So, about 11 A.M. Thursday morning one of the 220 volt power lines feeding the SAO office where I work shorts out and catches fire. Loud crackling noises and the power going out was pretty exciting so we all go out to watch the line burn while we wait for the fire department. The fire truck got to us in about five minutes and the events that followed went something like this:

The truck arrives driven by one fireman, possibly a volunteer. He pulls up next to the burning power pole but never gets out of the truck. One of the SAO officers (probably a volunteer fireman himself) climbs up on the back of the truck, grabs the portable fire extinguisher and sprays the small, localized fire until it goes out. This is followed by an animated discussion between the official fireman (truck driver?) and the SAO officer ending with the truck backing up and pulling in closer to the pole – to inspect the line perhaps? Uhhh, no. He moved so the SAO officer could more easily pluck some mangoes from a nearby tree. Once the hubbub was over and enough mangoes for the office were harvested we all went to lunch. It’s what Thais do, they eat.

A few nights ago I found myself walking down the street with this guy (not my photo).

Fortunately he didn’t mind sharing the road. When I realized what it was, I stopped and got a good, up close look at him. Those who know me know I wouldn’t be able to resist saying hello. Research says he/she/it is an Asian Forest Scorpion and, despite his size, his sting is no worse than a bee sting. When looking this up on the net though, I also found multiple articles of foreigners who died from scorpion stings in Thailand so I’m going to err on the side of caution and stay well away from the business end. The bad news is that apparently, they like to hide in shoes and clothing. Hmmmmm.

Since the above photo doesn’t really give folks a good idea of their size I give you the Scorpion Queen. Mi Madre!