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| With my 'Lanna Flag'. I totally made it myself. |
So - four months into my Chiang Mai adventure, and I have managed, just about, to not throw my hands in the air and run screaming away from the language learning. It is, however, hard not to get a little bit disheartened at how slow progress is - seriously, we are still talking about noodles and shopping. I've got a decent handle on reading now, the aforementioned vowels, which use fourteen different symbols, variously written above, below, before or after the first consonant (or consonants) of the syllable, are no longer a mystery to me, and I can more or less correctly pronounce a whole bunch of irregularly spelled words. Sadly it becomes clear that given the lack of spacing, punctuation and capitalisation in Thai script, the chances are that if I see a series of syllables that I don't know written down, not only will I not know the meaning, but I won't even know how to speak the words - basically you just have to know.
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| Traditional dress. |
And it seems, it is pretty much the same deal with what passes for grammar here. I increasingly get the impression that Thai consists of a (very large) number of what I might call 'template phrases', which allow you to express a certain sort of thing, with a few spaces into which the 'nouns' or 'verbs' can be plugged in - again, my early guess that Thai doesn't really differentiate between nouns and verbs seems to be on the money. Is there any consistent logic as to how these template phrases work? Maybe, if so I've not really spotted it yet, again you just have to know. Get the phrase wrong, and Thai people will not understand, even if every word you say is correctly pronounced - or worse, you'll say something very different to what you intended, word order is very important. On the other side of the coin, if you encounter one of these phrases for the first time, then even if you manage to recognise every word, the initial impression is often of an incomprehensible word salad. It does not help that every Thai word seems to have many meanings, with the more common words often having dozens.
I find myself asking the teachers at school questions along the lines of 'has any of your students ever learned Thai to the point at which local people can understand them?' - the answer being 'well... a couple of Chinese people maybe.' Chinese, it seems, is grammatically very similar to Thai, although the vocabulary is quite distinct. Well... studying remains a largely fun thing to do, and I continue to enjoy the culture class on Saturdays, they still manage to find a different thing for us to do every week, most recently various culturally relevant handicrafts - I have variously folded pandanus leaves to make decorous air fresheners, created a Chinese lantern from tissue paper, and cut up more paper to make a charming decoration for the Thai New Year celebration, Songkran.
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| Me and my funky moped. |
Ah, Songkran. I guess, if you do one thing in Thailand during your entire life, coming here for Songkran is probably that thing. Falling in mid April, the very hottest part of the hot season, in the past this would have been primarily a religious festival, during which the people would visit the temple, make offerings, symbolically release birds or fish, and pour trickles of holy water onto the shoulders of Buddha statues or each other. Well, all that still happens - indeed, I spend a fun afternoon watching a parade of floats, dancing, drumming and so forth, much of the procession representing the various local temples, and there is indeed much pouring of holy water onto shoulders. Mostly though what goes on now is a massive water fight taking place over four or five days and encompassing the entire country... I understand that many foreigners hide at home for the period, but I rather enjoy myself, I variously walk, cycle, and ride my moped around town, spraying water over locals and tourists alike, while getting soaked to the skin in turn, all good fun. I don't have any photographs of the festivities though - maybe if I do this again I will get a waterproof camera!
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| A pleasant spot by the Ping. |
Photos to go with this post can be found here
