Gay Boy Thailand

Am I lacking the motivation to use Thai? I was eager to learn Thai when I signed up for the school. I don’t’ have that sense of urgency anymore, but this is in part because I have learned survival Thai now. I know basic taxi driver Thai, chat up boys Thai, buy food on the street Thai.

Some say the best way to learn Thai is to get a Thai boyfriend. Well, it helps but less than I expected. My boyfriend “Chalerm” is ambivalent about my Thai efforts. He likes that I study Thai and in the beginning he was enthusiastic about it. But he expected me to learn and remember a Thai word after telling me once. That rarely happened. Chalerm doesn’t have the patience to repeat a word over and over, or to correct my invariably wrong pronunciation. For this I had to depend on my teacher.

Chalerm can be cheeky and pretend he doesn’t understand what I say in Thai even if he does. He says he does this because my poor pronunciation is annoying. My broken Thai can be unbearable at times, I understand.

We had an argument over this when Chalerm began learning English at the university and expected me to help him. I said he had to help me with my Thai in return. This didn’t work so for a while we were in a stalemate. But the situation has improved lately. Partly my Thai is not as hopeless as it once was, partly we speak more because Chalerm does enjoy speaking Thai when he knows I can understand it.

Even if Chalerm is a central Thai (not from Isaan) his pronunciation is a little different from my middle class Bangkokian teacher. This means he sometimes will correct what my teacher taught me. I have noticed this with other Thais too. They are convinced that their own way of saying something is the only way it should be said. But luckily Chalerm doesn’t speak with his thick and fast village accent when he is in Bangkok. I only hear that when he is on the phone with his family.

How much Thai would I like to learn? My aim is to be fluent in everyday conversation. It would be nice to read and write Thai, in particular to read street signs and newspaper headlines. Writing isn’t that important. Reading is limited too. What would I read? If you learn German or French there is a great literature to explore. But I am not aware of any literary masterpieces in Thai. Thais don’t have much of a written culture and they rarely read books.

The specialised Thai they use in news broadcasts, in government affairs or in legal matters seems difficult. I don’t think I need to learn it. Thais like to signal importance by using formal language. Thai has a whole separate vocabulary for dealing with royalty, for example. All languages have formal as opposed to informal words, but owing to the class system in Thailand the Thais seem to go further in using “high” language than most.

Since Chalerm’s English is improving quickly I don’t get to use my Thai as much as I hoped. I live in an English-speaking bubble in downtown Bangkok. Many waiters etc expect to speak English here. The only ones I speak Thai to daily (apart from Chalerm) are the building staff and the taxi drivers. This means my progress is slow. But each time I meet someone who can’t speak English, forcing me to speak Thai, the conversation is a little easier than the last time.

Thais are flattered and happy I learn their language but also strangely reluctant. They enjoy that foreigners don’t understand Thai, as if Thais are members of a secret society speaking in code. When a foreigner learns Thai he breaks into their club and they resent that. Thais like, for example, to speak about farangs literally behind their backs. They will comment on your looks, about what you buy or eat or whatever. I am not taking that anymore, I will turn and say something in Thai to make them shut up if they do this in a market or on the bus. Their embarrassement when I catch them can be fun.