Fulbright redux

It is now July 25th. I have been in the US for 7 weeks and I still feel as though I am not caught up or I am completely behind schedule on everything.

My schedule is picking up again, serving on the senate, a committee to determine the fate of Nole Hub and mentoring for Startup Quest. Teaching and service duties, publications, all the usual work is creeping back into my calendar. All good. I am working on several ideas for a program of some kind in Thailand. The most likely and the best candidate will be the FSU international summer program, with digging for grant money will be the next job that I will undertake.

I cut my Thai lessons back to twice per week, and have decided that working with Noi (the young lady from Chaing Mai) is just about right. She plows through material and listens to what I need to do then alter plans accordingly. She is always ready on Skype when it is lesson time. I'm going to sign up for another 20 hours and hopefully by then Kratai will have data and be able to get online so I can practice Isaan (Thai-Lao). Anyway, it's pretty tough.Thai is a foreign language. Japanese is foreign in the same sense -- it's not related to Latin. While Japanese is quite foreign, it is still not a complicated language to pronounce or speak. For example, there are 5 vowels and the language is spoken with a mild staccato rhythm that sounds quite similar to Spanish.

Thai on the other hand has 32 vowels -- yes thirty-two. Add five tones to the vowels ... you get the idea. The combination of these two factors (tone/vowels) can cause speech patterns that sound counterintuitive. For example, so many combinations of sounds and ptches, well, then each word must sound completely unique, right? Not to a Native English speaker. To our ears complete sentences can sound as though one non-sense syllable has been repeated after another -- for example:  Maai mai mai-mai [ chai ] mai   (new wood doesn't burn [ right ]?)  Huh. Learning Thai is yet another exception to Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule.

Complaints aside - after I had learned a small amount of Thai - literally a handful of sentences that I had worked up -- the Thai are extraordinarily and genuinely appreciative of the effort. All politeness aside, I think Thai people really do appreciate the effort -- I suppose that's because less than half of the Falaang that I met could speak the language. And Thai people are shy when it comes to speaking English. My experience has been that if you insist on English and only English you won't get as far if you speak Thai, even if you use rehearsed sentences. I have observed that one ice-breaker is all it takes for newfound friends to reciprocate with their skill in English equally. Thai people are very kind, especially if their customs and culture are respected.

Along these same lines, many Thai students have said to me that they wished that I could speak Thai, even though their English language ability was more than adequate. There are just some things that perhaps can only be expressed in Thai.