July 25th to Sept 2nd 2011- No Life but Thai Lessons!

We elected to do an intensive Thai class at the AUA Language Center in Chiang Mai.  The actual class room and building were initially the USIS offices opened in 1951 and handed over to AUA in 1996. The real history of the AUA Language Center goes back to 1924. At that time, Thai students returning from their studies in the US and their American friends in Thailand started the American University Alumni Association as a purely social organization. In1940, AUAA was registered as an Association for the purpose of promoting friendship, education, culture, charity, sports and entertainment. The U.S. community in Chiang Mai dates to 1867, when American missionaries, doctors and teachers first started efforts that led to the establishment of medical and educational institutions in northern Thailand. Today those institutions include McCormick Hospital, McKean Rehabilitation Center (formerly a leprosy asylum – posted pictures of it when we did our bike ride), Prince Royal's College, Dara Academy, Chiang Mai University medical school and Payap University.  The AUA Thai Studies Department at AUA, Chiang Mai was established in 1985 to meet the language and cultural needs of foreigners working, visiting, or residing in Chiang Mai and the North of Thailand.

Inner court yard with class rooms

We signed up for the Thai 1 course which entailed 60 hours over 6 weeks and cost $140 per person. We had to study at least 2 hours for every hour in class.  Our class started with 13 students and Khun (Miss) Thuk, the teacher.  We were advised by a linguist to request and hold out for Khun Thuk because she was the best.  We did this and it meant switching from our preferred morning class to an afternoon class.  She has been an excellent teacher!  It is just us students that are the problem.  We started as 12 students with 2 females and the rest male.  Those 50+ years and older were the 2 women and 3 men. All the other students were young men. One of the 50+ males was repeating Course 1 for the second time immediately following his first course as was one of the younger fellows.  We had 2 drop outs, 1 was the younger second-time around young man and the other was another young man that was trying to run his programming business and attend/study Thai at the same time.  He was not doing well in the class and basically packed it in.  Of the “stars” in the class we have 3 men, of which one had taken Beginning Thai 2x at the YMCA and was now in Thai 1 at AUA, the second was previously an English teacher in Thailand so had studied some before, and the third was a gentleman from Venezuela, who speaks several languages and is a composer (so has a excellent ear for the tones). The Venezuelan had never taken Thai before and his pronunciation is perfect.
Is Thai easy to learn?  The grammar is very simple – the hard part is the tones! Thai is Subject-Verb-Object language. An adjective or an adverb always follows a noun or verb.  
For example;

kháw kin khâaw = He eats rice.

kháw kin khâaw niăw = He eats sticky rice.
kháw kin khâaw niăw reo mâak = He eats sticky rice very quickly.

Raphel, Bernie and Bob

There are no words for "a", "an" or "the", and generally if a word is not needed to communicate meaning, then it's omitted, keeping sentences very simplistic in structure.   Many words are used in compounds to form new words. This makes it possible to understand unknown words just by looking at the parts.

Every day in class we have to report what we did after the previous class finished.  The other day Leslie proceeded to say that we had gone for a massage at the Wat Sri Gerd (Thai temple that also has a massage school) and that we had met one of our classmate’s (Bob) ex- wife, Dhao the mother of Nina.  Bob’s 10 year old daughter, Nina has come to class several times and it has been lots of fun to have her in our class and practice with her. The word for Mother is mɛ̆ɛ but the way Leslie pronounced it she called Nina’s mother a dog (măa )!  The class burst out laughing particularly Bob and Nina and Leslie had to figure out what she said wrong!

Thai is really all about the pronunciation. The vowel length is very crucial in Thai. A long vowel, shown as double letters, is distinct from a short one. Vowel length changes meanings. Tones also are important and can change meanings. Thai has 5 tones; middle, low (`), high (ˊ), falling (˄) and rising (ˇ).  If the tone changes, so does the meaning. For example;

maa = to come

máa = a horse
măa = a dog

Eli, Kelly, Jimmy, Mark, and David

 All the students in the class are actually very amazed at how we can communicate in Thai now.  We know how to ask questions – again very simple- the question words like who, what, where, when and why go at the end of the sentence. There is no past tense in Thai you just put the time period at the beginning of the sentence (last night, last year etc.). Future tense is easy as well you simply use the word “ja” in front of the verb with or without a period of time.

Leslie and Khun Tuk

 Leslie goes to Warorot Market to do her shopping and can now get around the market with the basic Thai we have learned in class. We also now have an easier time using the local transportation consisting of Songthaew (red truck) or tuk tuk (motorized three-wheel pedicabs named after the sound their engines make).

 We have purchased the Talking Thai computer program that is a Three-Way Thai-English English-Thai Talking Dictionary.  We have it installed on the IPAD and on an old ITOUCH. On the ITOUCH we can easily look up new words while we are out and about. As it is a three way dictionary you can enter the words in English, Thai or even how the word sounds using English letters. You can click on the Thai word to hear a native speaker. This has been very helpful to repeat the vocabulary that we learn each day in class.

 Has it been easy for us? No, but neither has it been as hard as we expected! We have been out of the study mode for so long it was difficult to sit down and start memorizing words. You needed to write the words out with all the accent marks so that you were properly putting the tones into the old brains.  Also then in class exercises you needed to put in the accent marks or you would say the word wrong.  We do not think we will go on to Thai 2 which covers the 44 consonants and 36 vowels! We are very happy that we have done this course shortly after we got here so that we can fully benefit from what we have learned while we are here.