Our first order of business when traveling to foreign countries is always to learn the basics of its language. I do this out of respect to my host country, and because I enjoy the response my wannabe-integration produces among most locals. This has worked well except for in China, where even after 8 weeks, I wasn’t even able to pronounce “thank you” to the point where it elicited anything but a strange look on the other person’s face.
Thai is both a tonal language (differentiating 5 tones), and an analytic one. While this may make it sound incredibly difficult, people in Thailand do their best to understand which tone you are using − even if you are using one of the wrong ones − and are very forgiving.
In our effort to start early, we took a private lesson in Thai on our second day here. Our teacher Ron, a native who spoke only broken English, presented us with a little folder of translations covering all aspects of life. Beyond the usual Ps and Qs, the word “spicy” ranks high in the list of words we want to know while traveling. And since I love fruit, I try to get a basic understanding of what I will be looking for at markets. To this day, both Phil and I refer to papaya as “thin-baw-dee” which is its Burmese name.
In any case, our lesson didn’t stand out as being anything but informative and helpful for the days to come. Numbers are extremely easy, since after learning 1-10, you only have to learn the word for 100, 1000, etc. Then it is all about putting together building blocks; 30, for example, is “three tens”. “Thai student good at learning math” was Ron’s comment on that.
It got funny however, when we started in on the subject of “romantic conversation”. It was rather harmless at first: “have a good dream” (=fun-dee-cha), and “I miss you” (=kit-tueng-khun), but it eventually graduated to hotter sentences such as “you are beautiful,” or “you are cute”. Not wanting to embarrass Ron (who wasn’t looking up much from his folder as he read through the sentences) I said “SO, is it correct to say…” and, turning to Phil said “chun-suay-maak-maak?” (=you are very beautiful). Ron looked up with a look of horror and said “NO, man not beautiful, man handsome!”
So males are never beautiful or cute. When I think about this in hindsight, I wouldn’t really call a female handsome either, but I do wonder which adjective they use for ladyboys (the “third gender” here in Thailand). If I see Ron again, I’ll be sure to ask him.
