Language

One of the more frequent questions I receive (either by email or phone) is: “How is the language coming along?” And I always answer…”Slowly but it’s coming.”

You see, Thai is a difficult language to learn because it is tonal which means the same word can mean different things depending on what tones you use. Thai had five tones (mid, high, low, raising, and falling). So for example, “hello” could mean five different things depending on if/when you raise/lower your voice.

If that weren’t difficult enough, Thailand also has regional dialects. Peace Corps teaches us Central Thai as that is what they use in Bangkok and is most common throughout the country, but Issan and the Northern Regions also have their own dialects, or languages. Think of it like the accents in the States. We have Southern and North-Western accents as well as accents from Texas, Boston, and Jersey. Now imagine if these accents were different languages.

I happen to live in an area that has two dialects (Northern and Lao) in addition to the Central dialect. So I’m not learning just one language, I am learning 3 languages at the same time…and the Thais don’t tell you which language you’re “learning” (which would be a bit like a high school Spanish teacher throwing in a week of Latin just for the fun of it without telling the students that it was Latin and not Spanish). And my village uses a lot of the Northern dialect. My Project Manager (who is Thai) came for a site visit last week & we went to visit one of the community groups. She had been acting as my translator, but during this meeting, she turned to me and said that she can’t translate because they were speaking the Northern dialect and she couldn’t understand what they were saying…and she’s Thai!

So if you’re curious, my Thai is progressing…slowly, but it is progressing.