Learning Thai: The Journey So Far (Brief)

All I Didn’t Know

When I first arrived in Thailand the only phrase I knew was ‘sa-wa-dee’ (the most common Thai greeting). Everything else was a mystery to me. Like many foreigners coming to teach English in Thailand, I was so preoccupied with getting my documents in order, that I often forgot I would be entering a completely different culture than my own. We sometimes can’t see what is glaringly obvious in retrospect. I guess the Google searches that I did back then made the Thai language look so complicated that I froze from taking adequate action. What I found mentioned 44 consonants and 32 vowel forms, the importance of tones and how Thai script doesn’t need spacing between words. I reasoned that I would learn what I could on the job, and the guarantee of a co-teacher eased my worries.

 

During the first couple of months, I fumbled my way through all of the situations that required Thai. With overconfidence, I thanked the checkout staff at 7-Eleven (kop-kun krap) and said that I didn’t need a plastic bag (mai ao krap). At other times, I did a lot of pointing and making gestures; Google Translate was also a companion and last resort. But as those early months came and went, I did realize the limitations of not speaking Thai. In situations where I wanted to be personal, there was always a distance. I wanted to know the commonplace conversations people had and how they talked to one another.

 

 

I don’t know if it’s possible to fully inside Thai culture if you weren’t born and raised here, but you can close the divide. You can come closer or move farther away. All too often foreigners come to Thailand and only become more entrenched in their own national identities. There is, of course, always a pull to return to what we know instead of moving into what we don’t. Learning a language is certainly an act of moving closer. It is reaching out and saying I want to understand you. I could see that even the little I did know made the native Thais I met happy. Their constant positivity and encouragement made me want to put in more effort. Every simple phrase would be like a key opening a new lock. I decided I would commit to learning Thai.

 

It's easy to be frozen into inaction by how difficult the Thai language seems. If you are coming from a European language you start at 0. But then you build...word by word... phrase by phrase. Once I committed to learning Thai I saw opportunities everywhere. I tested out phrases during my lunch break, with teachers at the school, with my landlady, and with the barista making coffee. From this early testing, I began to understand the delicacy of tone and real-life usage of phrases I learned in books. A language is a living thing; everywhere in the world, people omit things when they talk casually. Likewise, character pronunciation will often differ from place to place. All of this is only understood by the reality of trial and error. I started to become comfortable with making mistakes and even later came to welcome them. From the biggest linguistic mistakes came the most memorable lessons. 

 

By using all the available resources, I started to develop a base of Thai. I could introduce myself, ask for something basic, order some drinks, know the days of the week and apologize if I made a mistake. However, I didn’t really see a dramatic improvement until I travelled and spent long periods with my girlfriend’s family. When we went somewhere I learned the vocabulary according to the situations we found ourselves in. When we were stuck in traffic I learned rod thit (traffic jam), when I learned to drive I learned directions (qua: right, sigh: left, dtong bpai: straight ahead), and when we ate together I learned all of the vocabulary for food. 

I realized nothing could replace experiential learning. If you wanted to know something you had to live it. What was even better was that at this stage my learning was around 50% unconscious. The situation brought out the words and not persistent night-time drilling as I had done previously. 

 

All That Is Still Unknown

 

Of course, I’m still only in the infancy of my Thai learning journey. I have filled notebooks upon notebooks with vocabulary, but I know only too well that they can be scrapped in a moment with more relevant materials. My most recent focus is reading and writing in Thai. In contrast to the extension of my spoken vocabulary, reading and writing are just long hours of focused study and practice. Luckily some foreigners have already charted this territory and provided excellent resources. The Udemy course by James Kellen (How To Read Thai, Taught By An American Guy) has been a great help so far. I also have a good scattering of Thai reading books for infants which admittedly are still rather difficult for now. 

 

But to sum up, the journey of learning Thai (thus far) has been a fascinating one. To start at 0 and build the wall brick by brick to basic comprehension is no easy task, but it is an immensely rewarding one. The embarrassment of my errors has been outweighed 10-fold by the delight I’ve received from native Thais. Maybe even more important than the practicalities of speaking Thai is the knowledge gained about Thai culture and how people relate to one another. Being jai yen in the face of difficulties is certainly a worthy trait.