Learning passa Thai

[Oliver2]

No doubt the archivists will tell me that we've discussed this before....but what the heck, I'm stuck here thousands of miles away and, for the moment, have nothing better to do.

Learning Thai. How many of us can speak Thai a little? comfortably?. or fluently? After two years of travelling to Thailand, I took out a CD course in spoken Thai, a collection which I played constantly in my car. I was able to pick-up some basic comments, enough to answer the Big Three Questions...." What's your name? Where do you come from? Where you stay?" in a manner which appeared to impress my chosen companion.

But that was it. I hit a full-stop and was reminded just how damn useless I was at school with languages- French, Latin, Greek- subjects that I staggered through with embarrassing 'O' level results.

When P came along, I thought that it would provide a good opportunity to pick-up some more Thai. After all, he was forever nagging me to forgo my favoured Thinglish and speak "proper" English to him.

Would he assist me? No. While he had described my faltering Thai as "cute" when he was merely an offed guy, now he was embarrassed by my mistakes. Or worse, amused. My pronunciation of " naam kaeng" (Ice) provided twenty minutes of merriment on a taxi journey to Pattaya, the driver almost losing control of the car amidst the hilarity of the moment. To this day, I'm not sure why.

My futile attempts to speak passa Thai came to a full-stop when I mis-ordered in a restaurant.. No more attempts were allowed. Either I'd order in English, or P would in Thai.

How do other boyfriends, partners or offed-guys cope with us falangs when we- as I put it to P without gaining his approval- try to respect the local language?

Similar Threads:

• Learning Thai.
• Learning Thai
• Learning Thai
• Learning Thai