Page 101 - MN

101
Hitting the Language Wall
If you decide to retire and live your life in Thailand you should learn to speak the language, right? Well I thought so too and when I got to Chiangmai I signed up for language lessons at AUA, a language school in the center of town.
I didn't care about reading and writing Thai, I just wanted to speak the language and I applied myself. Over the next three years I studied there and the YMCA and I took lessons from two tutors, both of whom were excellent.
The first was a young college guy named Tanapong and he would come to my apartment and give me lessons. I learned bits and pieces of Thai culture from him. I learned the Pizza delivery boys bought their own motorbikes and earned very little money. I learned that Thai people get food poisoning occasionally from street food. I thought it was just us foreigners. One day my closet door was open and he was amazed at how many shirts I had. I felt greedy.
One day, the owner of the apartment and his wife came in my door unannounced while Tanapong and I were sitting at my table studying Thai. They said they had to check the air conditioning but that seemed really bogus. Tanapong asked if they'd ever done that before and I said no and thought it was strange. We then realized they thought I was some old gay guy corrupting Thai teenagers and they were going to break it up.
Tanapong was a great teacher and I tried hard but when he wanted to take me to a market so I could talk with Thai people I couldn't do it. Too shy.
I learned a lot of words. I learned how sentences were constructed. I learned that the Thai language is a language of tones and that a word can have five different meanings depending on the tone. I learned that Thai and English are extremely difficult languages to learn and after three years of study, including listening to Thai music in the car and Thai news at home, I still could not speak or understand Thai.