Thai class is
still plugging away, and apart from the whole “get up early and drive
to the other end of the city” thing, I’m actually quite enjoying it.
We’re down to a good core group now: a ridiculously friendly Aussie
couple (I keep hearing my friend Moray’s voice in my head, saying despairingly of
Australians, “They’re so nice, they’re just so nice…” :)),
a globe-trotting Swiss techie, a fun British guy who’s been here for
about ten years and has a Thai wife (just as a disclaimer, there are
times when foreigner-Thai relationships can have some pretty squicky
power dynamics, and times when they don’t, and this seems like the
latter as far as I know), and a British (him)/American (her) couple who
remind me of my two best friends.
The lessons are cool, too, even if I’m struggling with the alphabet (Y HALO THUR, 32 vowels!). I think my favourites are the days when we focus on food and terms used in restaurants. Last week, we spent three hours on different ways to order noodles.
Thailand has a LOT of noodles.
Today, our teacher, who is energetic and completely adorable and looks about twelve, even though she’s an accomplished scholar of English and Japanese, told us, “Every Thai person prefers farang (foreigners) who puud pasaa Thai mai chat (don’t speak Thai clearly).”
After a pause, one of the class asked, “Why?”
“It’s cute,” she said.
So, in that spirit, here are a few stories about language.
***
I was here for almost four months before I started taking Thai classes, so for a while, I was getting by on scraps I picked up and what my friends were kind enough to teach me over dinner. Plus miming. A lot of miming. One of my friends here, T., sat me down over ice cream and took me through some of the basics of the language in a more structured way. After half an hour or so, I had a few notebook pages full of useful phrases, and I asked her to help me practice them.
She got as far as she could before she burst out laughing.
Apparently, I was confusing the words “chan” (the feminine form of “I”) and “chang” (elephant). So, basically, I was bellowing, “The elephant is hungry! The elephant would like some pad thai!”
I’m glad she corrected me, but I kind of love the image of myself barrelling around Chiang Mai, confusing and terrifying people by obliviously demanding food and amenities for my invisible elephant. Thai people would totally accommodate me. You know they would. “O-okay… um… would the elephant like chillies in that?”
I’d be a legend. :)
***
The other day, we were going through some basic letter combinations in class. This is a good way, not just to learn how the consonants and vowels affect each other (the combination determines tone and so on), but also to pick up obscure vocabulary, as our teacher explains whether the combinations are actual words and what those words mean. This particular day, she announced, “‘Bpoon’ is mean ‘semen’.”
The entire class gaped at her. “What?”
“You know. Semen.”
She looked out in confusion at our horrified faces, and mimed plastering the nearest wall.
We all simultaneously sat back in relief. “Oh! Cement!”
… at least, I hope to God she meant “cement”. :)
***
Speaking of my Thai teacher, she thinks that one of the funniest things about foreigners is the way we eat fruit.
Thais never just pick up an apple and bite into it. They’ll peel it, slice it up, and eat it with a spoon. So to Thai eyes, Westerners eating fruit whole with our hands looks barbaric. Or as my teacher put it, “You look like students who have been stealing off fruit trees, and now you need to eat it all before someone catches you!”
(Btw, if you really want to crack Thai people up, walk down the street eating a guava. It’s a visual pun – the word for guava is farang, as well, so you’re a farang with a farang. Thais love this stuff.)
***
When it comes to studying Thai, I just can’t get away from elephants.
One of our exercises in class was to answer the question, “What do you like to do?” by listing a few different things. Now, my memory for vocabulary in other languages is pretty lousy, and so the list of things I like that I could actually say in Thai was disappointingly short. (My neighbours probably think I’m the most boring person imaginable, since whenever they ask where I’m going, I always tell them either that I’m going to work or that I’m going to eat – those are the only two answers that I can reliably remember!) So I threw in, “I like to drink tea,” because, well, I do, and I could even remember the words for it.
Kind of.
The teacher’s eyes widened. “What?” she asked.
“Duum chaa,” I said hesitantly. “Drink tea?”
She started giggling like mad. “I thought you said ‘duu chang’ – look at elephant!”
“I like looking at elephants, too!” I protested, over the class’s laughter. “It just doesn’t come up very much!”
(Of course, I don’t get to look at my hungry, pad-thai-loving elephant. Because he’s invisible. :))
***
Naturally, some words are more difficult to translate than others, whether from Thai to English or vice versa. Either they’re difficult to define in simple terms (today, the whole class got in on the effort to explain to our teacher what ‘niche’ meant, without success), or they’re so culturally rooted that even a basic definition has to start by explaining the cultural differences.
But sometimes, those are the words that stick with you, and that you find yourself using even in conversations in English. Because they’re not directly translatable, it often means that they describe something that English doesn’t quite have a word for – whether that’s something universal that Thai just puts very well, or something specific to that culture that you need to be able to discuss if you’re living here.
In Thai, a lot of the phrases that I end up occasionally adopting have to do with the word “jai”, or “heart”. Thais describe an awful lot of feelings and character traits as some kind of heart. There are the ones that are easy to explain: “jai dee”, for example, is literally “heart good”, and means exactly the same as in English – good-hearted, or kind. “Mii naam jai” sounds a little weirder to English speakers – it literally translates as “to have a water heart”. It means generous, which actually makes sense if you think of having an overflowing heart.
And then there are the “jai” phrases that really are tough to explain, like “kray jai”. There’s no direct translation for that in English, although I imagine quite a few southeast/east Asian languages have an equivalent. “Polite” is probably the closest we could get, but that doesn’t even begin to cover it. “Kray jai” basically means that you’re afraid of offending people, so you act deferentially and do everything you can to avoid showing anyone up – although it can get to the point of being so deferential and self-effacing that you’re showing people up by default. If you offer to buy me dinner, you mii naam jai. If I spend the whole time at dinner patting your hand and listening sympathetically to your troubles, I’m being jai dee. If, when the bill comes, we spend an hour going oh-but-you-MUST-let-me-pay-I-simply-COUL
(Incidentally, the same concept exists in the indigenous language many of my Burmese colleagues speak – the word there is “anna”. Occasionally, when my boss takes the staff to eat family-style and no one is willing to finish off a dish on the table in case someone else might want some, my boss will tell us, “Don’t be anna!” It’s kind of like, “Don’t be shy!” or “Don’t stand on ceremony!” – but the difference is that, unlike those phrases, “Don’t be anna!” is one-time permission. It implies that, of course, you’ll be anna at all other times. Why wouldn’t you be?)
The two “jai” phrases that probably come up the most are deceptively straightforward: “jai ron”, or “hot heart”, and “jai yen”, or “cool heart”. Pretty easy, right? I bet that if I asked you to guess at the definitions, you’d assume that someone who’s jai ron is hot-headed or emotional, while someone who’s jai yen is even-tempered or undemonstrative – and you’d be right. But what foreigners won’t immediately realise about these phrases is that you’re always supposed to be jai yen. Jai ron is absolutely, unequivocally BAD – probably the worst social sin in Thai culture. It’s not like in Western culture, where to be passionate, even angry, for a good cause is often considered a virtue, and a lot of our favourite fictional heroes are hot-headed young things.
Obviously, both cultural frameworks have their ups and downs – even as an adult, I still don’t do very well with raised voices and blatant anger, so I find the emphasis on jai yen here soothing. On the other hand, I’ve heard male colleagues tell female colleagues, “Jai yen! Jai yen!” in the same tone that a British guy might use to say, “Oh, calm down, dear,” and that makes me bristle.
(Incidentally, a depressing example of language reflecting culture – our Thai teacher told us this morning, “This is not a good country for women,” and pointed out that it says a lot about Thai attitudes that the language has an incredible variety of words for “bitch”.)
It’s just interesting that, once you get used to these concepts, you end up using the phrases because nothing else really fits (at least when you’re talking about life here). I remember going out to dinner with T. and a few of the women from the office, and we ended up talking about a dispute one of them was having with a male colleague. T. – who’s from Canada, and was addressing a group of Burmese women, in English – asked, “Why’s he being so jai ron about this?” Because that was the real question – not, “Why is he angry?” but, “Why is he being so unwarrantedly pissy about this that he’s willing to go against cultural norms and expectations?”
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to drink tea. Or possibly look at elephants.
*NB: The Thai part of this post title means, "I speak a little Thai." It does NOT mean, "The elephant speaks a little Thai." I think.
The lessons are cool, too, even if I’m struggling with the alphabet (Y HALO THUR, 32 vowels!). I think my favourites are the days when we focus on food and terms used in restaurants. Last week, we spent three hours on different ways to order noodles.
Thailand has a LOT of noodles.
Today, our teacher, who is energetic and completely adorable and looks about twelve, even though she’s an accomplished scholar of English and Japanese, told us, “Every Thai person prefers farang (foreigners) who puud pasaa Thai mai chat (don’t speak Thai clearly).”
After a pause, one of the class asked, “Why?”
“It’s cute,” she said.
So, in that spirit, here are a few stories about language.
***
I was here for almost four months before I started taking Thai classes, so for a while, I was getting by on scraps I picked up and what my friends were kind enough to teach me over dinner. Plus miming. A lot of miming. One of my friends here, T., sat me down over ice cream and took me through some of the basics of the language in a more structured way. After half an hour or so, I had a few notebook pages full of useful phrases, and I asked her to help me practice them.
She got as far as she could before she burst out laughing.
Apparently, I was confusing the words “chan” (the feminine form of “I”) and “chang” (elephant). So, basically, I was bellowing, “The elephant is hungry! The elephant would like some pad thai!”
I’m glad she corrected me, but I kind of love the image of myself barrelling around Chiang Mai, confusing and terrifying people by obliviously demanding food and amenities for my invisible elephant. Thai people would totally accommodate me. You know they would. “O-okay… um… would the elephant like chillies in that?”
I’d be a legend. :)
***
The other day, we were going through some basic letter combinations in class. This is a good way, not just to learn how the consonants and vowels affect each other (the combination determines tone and so on), but also to pick up obscure vocabulary, as our teacher explains whether the combinations are actual words and what those words mean. This particular day, she announced, “‘Bpoon’ is mean ‘semen’.”
The entire class gaped at her. “What?”
“You know. Semen.”
She looked out in confusion at our horrified faces, and mimed plastering the nearest wall.
We all simultaneously sat back in relief. “Oh! Cement!”
… at least, I hope to God she meant “cement”. :)
***
Speaking of my Thai teacher, she thinks that one of the funniest things about foreigners is the way we eat fruit.
Thais never just pick up an apple and bite into it. They’ll peel it, slice it up, and eat it with a spoon. So to Thai eyes, Westerners eating fruit whole with our hands looks barbaric. Or as my teacher put it, “You look like students who have been stealing off fruit trees, and now you need to eat it all before someone catches you!”
(Btw, if you really want to crack Thai people up, walk down the street eating a guava. It’s a visual pun – the word for guava is farang, as well, so you’re a farang with a farang. Thais love this stuff.)
***
When it comes to studying Thai, I just can’t get away from elephants.
One of our exercises in class was to answer the question, “What do you like to do?” by listing a few different things. Now, my memory for vocabulary in other languages is pretty lousy, and so the list of things I like that I could actually say in Thai was disappointingly short. (My neighbours probably think I’m the most boring person imaginable, since whenever they ask where I’m going, I always tell them either that I’m going to work or that I’m going to eat – those are the only two answers that I can reliably remember!) So I threw in, “I like to drink tea,” because, well, I do, and I could even remember the words for it.
Kind of.
The teacher’s eyes widened. “What?” she asked.
“Duum chaa,” I said hesitantly. “Drink tea?”
She started giggling like mad. “I thought you said ‘duu chang’ – look at elephant!”
“I like looking at elephants, too!” I protested, over the class’s laughter. “It just doesn’t come up very much!”
(Of course, I don’t get to look at my hungry, pad-thai-loving elephant. Because he’s invisible. :))
***
Naturally, some words are more difficult to translate than others, whether from Thai to English or vice versa. Either they’re difficult to define in simple terms (today, the whole class got in on the effort to explain to our teacher what ‘niche’ meant, without success), or they’re so culturally rooted that even a basic definition has to start by explaining the cultural differences.
But sometimes, those are the words that stick with you, and that you find yourself using even in conversations in English. Because they’re not directly translatable, it often means that they describe something that English doesn’t quite have a word for – whether that’s something universal that Thai just puts very well, or something specific to that culture that you need to be able to discuss if you’re living here.
In Thai, a lot of the phrases that I end up occasionally adopting have to do with the word “jai”, or “heart”. Thais describe an awful lot of feelings and character traits as some kind of heart. There are the ones that are easy to explain: “jai dee”, for example, is literally “heart good”, and means exactly the same as in English – good-hearted, or kind. “Mii naam jai” sounds a little weirder to English speakers – it literally translates as “to have a water heart”. It means generous, which actually makes sense if you think of having an overflowing heart.
And then there are the “jai” phrases that really are tough to explain, like “kray jai”. There’s no direct translation for that in English, although I imagine quite a few southeast/east Asian languages have an equivalent. “Polite” is probably the closest we could get, but that doesn’t even begin to cover it. “Kray jai” basically means that you’re afraid of offending people, so you act deferentially and do everything you can to avoid showing anyone up – although it can get to the point of being so deferential and self-effacing that you’re showing people up by default. If you offer to buy me dinner, you mii naam jai. If I spend the whole time at dinner patting your hand and listening sympathetically to your troubles, I’m being jai dee. If, when the bill comes, we spend an hour going oh-but-you-MUST-let-me-pay-I-simply-COUL
(Incidentally, the same concept exists in the indigenous language many of my Burmese colleagues speak – the word there is “anna”. Occasionally, when my boss takes the staff to eat family-style and no one is willing to finish off a dish on the table in case someone else might want some, my boss will tell us, “Don’t be anna!” It’s kind of like, “Don’t be shy!” or “Don’t stand on ceremony!” – but the difference is that, unlike those phrases, “Don’t be anna!” is one-time permission. It implies that, of course, you’ll be anna at all other times. Why wouldn’t you be?)
The two “jai” phrases that probably come up the most are deceptively straightforward: “jai ron”, or “hot heart”, and “jai yen”, or “cool heart”. Pretty easy, right? I bet that if I asked you to guess at the definitions, you’d assume that someone who’s jai ron is hot-headed or emotional, while someone who’s jai yen is even-tempered or undemonstrative – and you’d be right. But what foreigners won’t immediately realise about these phrases is that you’re always supposed to be jai yen. Jai ron is absolutely, unequivocally BAD – probably the worst social sin in Thai culture. It’s not like in Western culture, where to be passionate, even angry, for a good cause is often considered a virtue, and a lot of our favourite fictional heroes are hot-headed young things.
Obviously, both cultural frameworks have their ups and downs – even as an adult, I still don’t do very well with raised voices and blatant anger, so I find the emphasis on jai yen here soothing. On the other hand, I’ve heard male colleagues tell female colleagues, “Jai yen! Jai yen!” in the same tone that a British guy might use to say, “Oh, calm down, dear,” and that makes me bristle.
(Incidentally, a depressing example of language reflecting culture – our Thai teacher told us this morning, “This is not a good country for women,” and pointed out that it says a lot about Thai attitudes that the language has an incredible variety of words for “bitch”.)
It’s just interesting that, once you get used to these concepts, you end up using the phrases because nothing else really fits (at least when you’re talking about life here). I remember going out to dinner with T. and a few of the women from the office, and we ended up talking about a dispute one of them was having with a male colleague. T. – who’s from Canada, and was addressing a group of Burmese women, in English – asked, “Why’s he being so jai ron about this?” Because that was the real question – not, “Why is he angry?” but, “Why is he being so unwarrantedly pissy about this that he’s willing to go against cultural norms and expectations?”
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to drink tea. Or possibly look at elephants.
*NB: The Thai part of this post title means, "I speak a little Thai." It does NOT mean, "The elephant speaks a little Thai." I think.
