Reason #6 we should go to Thailand: phom yak rian pa sa thai!

Honestly, I want to learn Thai. (hint, that's the title for this blog…) Now, forget the fact that I speak seven languages, and forget the fact that I’ve majored in linguistics at graduate school, and even forget that I have a natural inclination for language. Just remember a basic Theo Rules for Life: you will always be treated better if you speak the language. Always.

This rule comes from experience naturally, and on countless occasions, I’ve used my linguistic knowledge to get directions, make a joke to put a group at ease, and order from restaurants both here and abroad. But there’s really two things at work.

When abroad, it’s just common decency. How rude would I be to travel to a new place expecting to bathe in all the cultural uniqueness it has to offer and I don’t even learn a few words? How rude and disgusting! When I traveled to Poland backpacking through Eastern Europe, there I was at the Mexican restaurant in Krakow, ordering my meal in Polish, as butchered as it was. To be honest, even the dogs would look at me and say, “Dang, dude. Your Polish is awful.” But it was the effort that mattered most.

Even though we’ll spend most of our time in a cosmopolitan city like Chiang Mai where countless warm and friendly Thai people will strike up a conversation in English with us, part of me hopes they don’t. Part of Amber and I’s immersion in Thailand will be hearing a language that quite frankly, we’re unfamiliar with. But isn’t that prospect so darn exciting?!

Secondly, here in the States, I’m always struck dumb with how appreciative people are with Amber or me when we speak in another language. For example, just last month, Ambi and I stopped a little Korean restaurant in Fort Wayne, Indiana. For those that don’t know, Korean, much like Thai, is not the easiest language to pick up at first blush. Word order is very different than English, and the phonology of Korean is very difficult to master with an American ear. But I learned it, and gosh darn it, I’m gonna use it! Our waitress treated us so nicely and stood and chatted with me in Korean much longer than she should have been expected to. She complimented me on my rusty Korean, and mentioned how she’d not met anyone in America who spoke her native language!

While I understand that Thai is a tonal language and the orthography is far different from anything I know, I have experience in learning languages quickly and striving to use them in as many situations as possible. Granted, I may say something like, “Are thems the thoughts of cows?” But I will do so with a smile on my face.