The Difference

Some thoughts about being different, inspired by ginko poop and a strange breakfast.  Check it out at Bread and Honey.

 

"Are You A Banana?" And Other Linguistic Riddles

 Basically this is my language learning strategy right now.

One of my hopes and a specific goal of my time here these three months is that I can dramatically improve in my Thai language skills.  I know it seems a stretch to think that I could actually gain any level of competence in any new language at my age, let alone one that has a completely different script and is inflected with five different tones.  But I'm ignoring the stats and forging ahead anyways.

It's slow work.

My guess is that at this point, despite all my valiant efforts at home between trips, and when I'm here immersed in it, I still sound basically like a toddler.   It would be the Thai version of  'pasgetti' instead of spaghetti, most of the time.  

My teachers are all so very patient and encouraging, which helps.  And I've perfected the tones of a very few phrases so that I seem to be understood even by strangers in the initial exchange of first meetings and small talk.  Hello.  How are you.  Did you sleep well?  Why yes, I slept very well, thank you.  Nice day.  Today I'm going to Chiang Mai. God bless you.  Please and thank you.  That sort of thing.

One of the most important hurdles to overcome in learning a new language is the fear of making a fool of yourself.  It's very humbling to realize you sound like a very young child.  Hard to manage an image this way, that's for sure.  And you have to be willing to make mistakes, which is harder for the more perfectionistic personalities like mine. 

But sometimes, the mistakes are just fun.

Handy snack dispenser.

Two words that sound very similar to my untrained ear are the word for banana - gloo-way (emphasis on last syllable with a rising tone. I think) - and the word for fear - gloo-wa (emphasis on first syllable, with a falling tone. I think).  The emphases and tones are subtle, however and hard to hear, for me.  For my Thai friends they are two completely different words.  And as an English example, say the words 'shirt' and 'church' out loud.  To a Thai that's exactly the same sound. 

I learned the names of fruits pretty early in my studies, and the word for fear came up later in a real-life situation (best learning moments usually).   Gloo-way, that is, 'banana', seems to roll off my tongue much easier. 

So when one of the children tells me they have a school test tomorrow, for example, it's actually not uncommon for me to ask them, "Are you a banana?"  This is confusing to them, I find.  Until I see the titled head and confused look, realize my mistake and correct my pronunciation.  At that point we usually have a good laugh at my expense.  "Of course I'm not a banana!  Oh Ahjahn Ruth, you are so silly!!!!"

Yesterday in the car I was trying to remember the phrase for 'good mood.'  It was how we were all feeling, I think, given Yupa's Mom only had to wait three hours to see the doctor instead of eight, and we are all happily heading back to Hot Springs with the afternoon before us. 

My mind was able to retrieve part of it.  'Aroom', which is the word that most closely corresponds to 'mood' in English.  But I added 'jai' to the end, which means heart.  'Aroom jai.' This was a logical guess given that many words in Thai seem to focus around the word for heart. 


'Di jai' means 'happy' or, in the right context, 'happy to see you.'
'Noon jai' means 'encouragement'.
'Tok jai' means 'fright', literally 'fall-heart'.
'Tom jai' means 'humble', something language learning will help you along with quite nicely.

So for me to put 'aroom' and 'jai' together seemed like it might work.

Apparently not. 

I collected my sentence and then spoke out loud "Too kuhn aroom jai wani," I said with unmerited confidence.  'Everyone is in a good mood today.'

Slight pause.  Then the car erupted in laughter.  I was corrected very quickly.  'No, no....Aroom di. Oh Ahjahn Ruth!!!'  and dissolving into laughter again.  I suspect I said something quite inappropriate and/or embarrassing, but I can't be sure because they refused to tell me what 'Aroom jai' actually means.  And here I run the risk of perhaps having just been vulgar a few times again, merely by repeating this story!

As the laughter settled down, Suradet wanted to reassure me, so he said in English, "Ahjahn Ruth, no fear.  If you no speak straight, I tell you."

My turn to laugh, not so much at the mistake but at the irony.  So I repeat an agreement we have between us already in this mutual language learning thing we're doing.  "Thank you Ahjahn Suradet.  And if you don't 'speak straight' I will correct you as well."  They got it.  More laughing, all of us.

We certainly were in a good mood, by then.

Isaiah 50:4 has been an intriguing verse for me throughout my journey into ministry.  It has taken on even more meaning now.

The Sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue

to know the word that sustains the weary.

He wakens me morning by morning,

wakens my ear to listen like one being taught.

I wonder if the point Isaiah was making was that you can't hope to have any sustaining words for weary others until you've spent a lot of time just listening and learning yourself.  It certainly reminds me that, right here and right now, I am very much in the posture of receiving, of student, of someone who can only speak baby talk. 

I will confess to a moderate amount of mental fatigue at this point in my stay.  One month in, I recognize the extra effort every conversation requires, and the new neurological pathways my brain is courageously trying to create, every single day.

But the fun of it, the joy of it, the knowing deeper my Thai family, their culture, how their thinking thinks and feelings feel....so worth the effort. 

And basically, it all puts me in 'aroom

di'.

New Territory

Today I am Samwise Gamgee, pausing at the edge of the Shire.  With a sudden stop in his stride, and not a little anxious, he marks a line.

"This is it.  If I take one more step, I'll be farther away from home than I've ever been."  

Only for me, it's not one more step, but one more day.  Tomorrow I will pass the three week mark.  That's the longest I've ever been in Thailand before.

To be honest, I almost didn't notice.  This day has been just one in a string of increasingly pleasant days as the jet lag and preparation/travel fatigue have worn off and the temperatures have come down just a little.  One day among others that are settling into good rhythms of work and rest and play.  There's a normalization happening.   I'm finding my groove, and it's good.

Leave the guest house in the dark at 5:15 a.m. to head over for morning worship.  Spend the first 30 sleepy minutes of the day focused on the Someone who brought me here in the first place, in prayer and song, and in Suradet's morning encouragement to the children.  Breakfast is always a pleasant surprise.  Then some solid concentration time at the table with my computer and/or kindle reader soulishly engaged in the learnings I've come here to acquire, ponder.  Or preparing sermons for Sunday morning or the prison visit planned next week.

By 10 or 10:30 the heat has built up and it's time for a break anyways.  So I might head down to the dining shelter and bring markers and paper and initiate a creative frenzy of sorts....if the children are not at school.  Or just sit for a few moments in companionable silence with Pi Dao (cook and nanny),  Or or go for a walk with Yupa and sundry kids in tow, to the chicken house to see how the dog-wounded ones are faring, and maybe feed the fish in the pond.  After lunch I retreat to my room, read, usually nap in spite of myself, put final touches on tonight's English/Devotional lesson.  And then almost every other day, go for my 1 km swim.  Back in time for supper, then evening worship (where we've advanced to verb tenses!), and then back to the guest house to do some processing and writing until I just can't stay awake any longer.

Embedded in the day is this perpetual language learning that presses me mentally enough that the times alone in the guest house become as much about resting my brain as escaping from the heat.  And inherent in that language learning is the need and the joy of being fully present with whomever it is I'm talking to.  Focused attention, deeply engaged, fully present; there's a lot of that.

And it all feels more and more normal.

There's always a few odd and unexpected moments when I am reminded that I'm 'not in Kansas anymore'.  Like when there are live crabs in a bag on the kitchen counter.  Or when I come across a squirming mass of large, bright orange fire ants swarming over a dead scorpion.  Or when I'm the only 'farang' at the market and it's clear, from the not so discrete double-takes and the surprised comments directed towards Yupa, that this small village doesn't get a lot of tourists.  In those moments I remember that, actually, I'm not at home.

But most of the time, I feel at home.  With the advantage of this being my 15th time here, this life is feeling more and more 'normal'.

In an odd way, maybe it's this normalization that marks this never-before part of the adventure.  I'm not sure I've been here long enough to feel quite this acclimatized.

At least, that's how it feels this side of tomorrow.  Tomorrow is a new thing.  A never-before thing.  And there are some potentially disorienting events planned, not the least of which is an overnight stay at the village where Suradet's parents live.  I'm told it's an 8 hour gut-churning drive up the mountain to stay in a one room house with no running water and the need to sleep in a mosquito net.  I'm wondering how 'at home' and 'normal' I'll feel then.  

Frodo's response to his friend seems full of the foreshadowing great stories are famous for, and make me curious as to what these next weeks will reveal.

 

"Come on, Sam. Remember what Bilbo used to say: 

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. 

You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, 

there's no knowing where you might be swept off to."