Learning Thai

So I know we owe you all an update, especially considering the last few doomsday-esque posts on our subscriber site, but truthfully, there’s not too much new information. Burke outlined our plans in the last post, and we are happily carrying them out. Meanwhile, we are giving thanks for the blessing of our expectations matching our reality (not taking that for granted anytime soon!).

My part of those plans was to buckle down and learn Thai, and the language school I signed up for came highly recommended by some friends. It’s three hours a day, five days a week and sandwiched by an hour and a half commute on each side. And you know what? I’m just loving it; here’s why:

• The pace at which we move is beyond impressive. Think one month of GHS Spanish per day (or even a week of college French) per day.
• It’s taught almost completely in Thai, and our teacher only breaks out English if we are really stumped. It blows my mind a bit that I taught Slovak first graders this way!
• Thai is a tonal language and while the tones should be killing me, I struggle more with the nuances between the eighteen vowel sounds (i.e. having not differentiated between pin/pen, been/Ben/bin and ten/tin all my life has caught up to me.)
• Rather than reminding me of any foreign language class I’ve ever taken, my  experience so far has been more akin to the time I took anatomy + physiology and zoology the same year in high school.  (Muscle, function, origin, insertion = khit waa pasaa thay mak mak!)
• After 15 months of living in Slovakia, I was really excited when I finally had a dream that included a few Slovak words.  I had a dream with Thai words on day three.

Sounds fun, right? Well, for every tricky bit of the language, there are equally simple concepts. (note: I could be saying some of the following in ignorance.) For example, Thai’s don’t conjugate: you go, we go, he go.  Also, I think they only have one tense: yesterday I study Thai, today I study Thai, Tomorrow I study Thai. There are no cases: give paper to who, who paper is this, who is she.  Equally important as the shortcuts is the fact that I love my teacher and my classmates.  In addition to Thai, I am learning quite a bit of my classmates’ cultures and I am excited to share both with Burke every day when I get home!