ฉันไม่สามารถพูดภาษาไทย (pood pasa Thai mai dai)

One of my least favorite questions is "Do you know how to speak Thai?".

I get this a lot from my friends who visit from The Third World who think (rightly so, I should say) that because I've lived here for more than a couple of years now I should speak a decent amount of Thai already.

Well, define decent. The only Thai phrase I know quite well is "Make you loving long time mistah".

My utter incompetence in speaking Thai is perhaps the biggest tragedy of my life in Thailand, a thing that continuously embarrasses me.

I think it's really insulting to the Thai people I meet. Bloody two years and I've not improved at all!

On my first months here, I sort of studied a few phrases here and there but never really took it seriously coz at that time I did not have any idea if I'd live here more than a year so I thought there'd be no purpose of me intensively learning it.

I still tried though. I even found a website that has like Thai lessons and stuff but it only took me about three minutes of going through those difficult tones before I'd proceed to watching porn instead. What did I tell you about my attention span?

It's a given of course that Thai is very difficult coz it's tonal and they have a script that does not look anything I've seen before.

Can I talk about the script for a moment here?

When I arrived in the airport two years ago I was seriously surprised to see the signs in those squiggly texts. I thought to my self: "They still use them?".

Well I knew beforehand that Thailand has its own script but I said still above coz I honestly thought that they have since moved on to using Roman script. I'm serious.

(Gosh, why am I subjecting my self to this embarrassment?)

And then, when we were on the highway I saw every bloody sign was in Thai script with a tiny English translation, or sometimes none at all.

I realized how insanely little I know about this country. I swear I did some research but obviously I was way too ignorant still.

And I was bound to work in an NGO on Southeast Asian culture! Oh, the irony of it all!

All along I thought the rest of the world speaks and writes (if that makes sense) English!

It's like going to Mars and expecting the all Martians to look like Naomi Campbell or Guinevere Van Seenus. I know, I have stupid written all over me.

So anyway, I was thus confronted with the horror of not being able to communicate properly to most people I met. Thank God my colleagues are English speakers but once I leave the confines of the work place I'm practically mute or at least people cannot hear me.

You'd think that is motivation enough for me to learn Thai? Well, apparently not. Believe me, I'm not in any way proud of that.

My excuse had always been: but it's bloody difficult!

Maybe it really is not. I know dozens of foreigners in Thailand who have learned how to speak AND read Thai.

My best example is BFF Heidi, who after five months of living here had started conversing in Thai and READING the menus in Thai. Now the bitch speaks Thai like he was raised in Klong Thoey!

The amazing thing about Heidi is he studied the language on his own and simply practiced it with his friends. OK, maybe it's not that simple, but obviously Heidi did it by sheer determination and hard work.

Which means that learning Thai is not like learning how to walk on a tight rope or how to give your self a blowjob.

But poor, lazy me, I've never gotten beyond the first dozen phrases I learned when I first came here. Jing jing!!!

And honestly, I don't see my self progressing any further if I keep on dillydallying. I pick a few new phrases here and there but I know I should do better.

Talk to Me, Krap

Before I left Manila I was dead sure that the biggest hurdle for me in Bangkok would be the language. True enough, a fusion of body language, miming, and pseudo sign language has been more useful than attempting to engage anyone in any basic conversation. It does not help as well that the Thais have their own script. Most street signs and the Skytrain have small English translations at least. But the rest of the time, well, it’s as good as reading hieroglyphics for me. I was in a Seven-Eleven once and I had to ask the cashier if it was shampoo or body wash I picked up from the shelves.

I don’t want to make a joke of the English skills of Thais, who I can see are trying their best to communicate with me, but apparently there are just English sounds that do not exist in their language, which result to unusual sounds coming out from their mouths instead. “Fish” would sound like “fitch”, or “east” would come out as “eats”’ or “ice” would be reduced to “i”. You can also totally forget about sentence construction. A vendor from across my office when I ask her if she is selling soy milk would reply “no have” (soy milk is not available); and if I ask for additional sugar for my coffee I would be replied with “can” (meaning “you CAN add some sugar of course, you bastard”).

I was in a bus at the height of rush hour last week. To make sure that I got on the right bus, I asked the conductor if I was on bus sixteen. “Sikteen?” she asked. I nodded my head several times, which she returned with more nods and a sweet smile. Not taking my chances, I asked the lady across the aisle if I was on bus sixteen, even drawing the figures one and six in the air between us. “Ah, sikteen?” she confirmed. I replied “chai” (yes). I received several nods again and of course the perfunctory smile. So I settled in my seat until I realized several minutes later that I was in fact on bus 163.

My officemates advised me that I should try talking to students instead coz most of the time they can speak better English. My experience however says that while students can comprehend English with ease, they still don’t have the confidence to speak English. They are still limited to one-word replies or a fragment at best. I was also surprised when even people behind the McDonald’s counter in Khao San Road – probably where there is highest concentration of tourists in Bangkok – can hardly speak English.

When my officemates prattle in rapid Thai during lunch break, I’m left staring at the contents of the condiments rack or swirling my bowl of noodles with chopsticks. It’s like being alone in the midst all the noise. I feel excluded from this secret language.

Thai, for the foreigner, is a very difficult language to learn. It’s extremely tonal. I know “mai” can mean a host of things based on whether the tone is rising, falling, or neutral. The term “kai” can either mean chicken or egg, depending on how you pronounce the “k”. It couldn’t be more tricky than that. Their word for “I” and “you” comes in different forms. You use the appropriate one when talking to a superior, an acquaintance, or a friend.

An officemate had been kind enough to give me Thai lessons 30 minutes after work every day. So far we have covered how to order food, shop, and take the cab. Yesterday I was introduced to numbers.

I know two Singaporean colleagues who can have a decent conversation with the locals. I am totally green with envy. But that can only mean that learning Thai is definitely possible. But I would not attempt to decipher the script yet; it’s just too complicated at this point.

So far I’ve managed to learn a few key phrases such as “hello” (sawadee krap), thank you (korp khun krap), “not spicy” (mai peht krap), and “how much” (thao rai krap). [Notice how each sentence ends with “krap”? This is a form of “I” that would denote you are being polite to the person you are talking to.] I’m not sure how I sound when uttering these phrases but I’m afraid I sound very strange to the Thais.