I’ve always been interested by languages and fascinated jealous of anyone who could speak more than one. It’s like they’re in some sort of club I really want to belong to. I’m good with words – I majored in communications and history, worked in PR and now teach English. Working with words comes easily to me, but I’ve never had an opportunity to really learn and use another language. I took several years of French in school, and can pretend to understand a bit, but definitely cannot speak it.
Before I came to Thailand I thought I would learn enough Thai to be polite and say the basics: Hello/How are you/I’m fine/Excuse me/I would like phad thai/Another beer please. The idea of being able to actually speak Thai, let alone really understand or read it, was unthinkable. Thai seemed too foreign. There’s the different tones where you can say the same word with a slightly different inflection and it goes from meaning ‘near’ to ‘far’, ‘aunt’ to ‘crazy’…and it’s in a completely different alphabet!!! I don’t even know if you call it an alphabet it’s so different.
Not only does it use crazy/beautiful/intimidating characters, but there are 44 consonants and 15 vowels. Each consonant can have two different sounds depending are where it’s located in a word and vowels can go to the left, right, top and bottom of the consonants while also being able to change creating 28 different forms. Oh, and there are several consonants that make the same sound. And there are several consonants that are rarely used. Annndddd….then you get into how they all go together to create one of the five different tones. Easy.
Though it sounds impossible, somehow, it’s not. Sure there are twice as many characters to memorize as the Roman alphabet but, believe it or not, they do work together to create real words. And when you start seeing them it’s awesome, like you have unlocked some sort of puzzle. Forget Sudoku, just try to figure out a word in Thai.
I started out slow taking ‘lessons’ through a friend. Looking back I should have just jumped in head first and feel like my initial idea of only learning a few basics was pathetic and arrogant. (Don’t get me started on the loads of expats here that don’t even make any attempt to learn Thai whatsoever.) The only way to really get to know a language is to immerse yourself in it, and if I hadn’t been taking little baby steps I think I would be much farther along now than I actually am.
Now I’ve been studying on-on-one with a Thai teacher twice a week for the past several months, but it has only been in the past few weeks that I really felt like I was starting to speak and make connections more easily. I’m finally starting to fully jump in – going over my class notes and books more often, making flashcards, making a consistent effort to say the things I know in Thai even if the person I’m speaking to understands English, talking about the language with other Westerners who are also learning, even trying to text in Thai to some new friends. (Texting in English is often difficult for me. In Thai it’s nearly impossible and between checking to make sure I’m using the correct words, looking at the spelling and not having the slightest idea where the characters are on the key pad, takes me about 15 minutes to even say “How is work going?”. My messages tend to be a mix of the Thai I know then, after I have spent long enough trying to compose a message that I could have cooked dinner and washed the dishes, I’m spent and switch to English.)
It can be frustrating, but learning a language is something where even the tiniest victories, like being able to ask how much something is and understanding the number that is said back to you, feel so huge and encouraging. Recently Rhonda over at Bamboo Boulevard wrote about learning Mandarin saying that, “Sometimes the frustration was intense but it was better than being frustrated with myself for not trying.”
It’s definitely disheartening when I look at a dictionary and get overwhelmed by the mass of words that I don’t know, but then I look at all the words I do know and ways I can now communicate what I want, think, feel to someone who a couple months ago all I could do was smile at and it’s incredible.
Images from Creativeroots.org