My Thai is perfect already. It is so good that professors from Chula call me for help with rare Sukhothai period words.
There is nothing more I can learn in Thai. I know it all. The only minor difficulty which remains is that the Thais, being a tad slow, often don’t understand their own language when I speak to them.
With Thai out of the way I have decided to learn Malay, the language of Malaysia and Indonesia. I bought a CD course. For a linguistic genius like me this is a piece of cake. I already know how to count in Malay. Satu, dua, tiga, tempat, lima. That was from one to five. Are you impressed? I am too. It only took three weeks to learn this. Another month and I can count to ten.
Malay has no tones. Thais invented the five tones to make it harder for foreigners to learn their language. Malay is written in the Roman alphabet. Thais stick to a version of ancient Indian letters to confuse us.
Even so words in Malay are hard to remember. I have to invent an association with each word. The sillier the association the better. For “tiga” I think of a tiger.
I also found that obscene associations are easier to remember, so having a dirty mind helps. Ten in Malay is puluh. “Pul” is also in the English word copulate. See? Now you remember it.
However, much as the Thai ‘heart’ beats in favour of closing...
Well, the...
March 15th, 2007 at 3:36 am
Lets see, it has to be about 2 am in Bangkok…and you are listening to a language CD?
Hmmm….
Of course, I am sitting in my office reading your posts and remembering all the fun I had in Bangkok over 20 years ago!
I guess we are even…
March 15th, 2007 at 6:15 am
When you are done with Malay, try Vietnamese.
They still use kind of Roman letters (French have spoiled them with all that diacritic stuff) and you will meet that familiar five-tonal vocals, you’ve so easily mastered in Thai. And I promise you a lot of dirty associations there. 
After that you’ll find Chinese as easy as getting frozen “sa-tek gai” chicken burger at 7-Eleven. They have only 4 tones for vocals! For the mature specialist in the Sino-Tibetan language family (you will be one at that moment!) it will be a question of hours to learn it…
What?… Those funny pictures they are using?.. Which one do you mean?… Oh, i see… Well, you will be quite fast comfortable with first 4000 symbols after learning the composition rules. Use on-line dictionary for the rest.
March 15th, 2007 at 8:05 am
I don’t know if I am motivated to learn Chinese. It sounds too easy.
I am looking for a challenge. How about that clicking language the pygmys in Africa use? The one where they click their tongues when speaking? I hope they have complex grammar and many words for hanky panky.
March 15th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
Why not learn English first? Your grammer and, certainly, your punctuation, are in need of a brush-up. Your otherwise witty, interesting, refreshing stories and comments are a joy, but to pedants like me (few bf’s now), frustrating in the extreme with the more-than-obvious lack of good English in your writings.
Send Chalerm for a week, and I promise to forgive all your errors, - and never mention them again. (that’s compound punctuation; - the use of two punctuation marks together). I would swallow all my frustrations, and probably Chalerm too. After that I’d be fine. For a while.
March 15th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
That should be “grammar”, not “grammer”.
March 15th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
Game, set, and match to SF.
March 15th, 2007 at 11:12 pm
Well, you could learn LAO, which has 6 tones and
is what Thai’s stole from to get their language (this
is the Lao telling of it, though)…then you can
speak Isaan….you’ll finally know what your BF
is really saying about you….hahaha…
After that, try Cambodian
March 15th, 2007 at 11:56 pm
My bf is not from Isaan, he is from Lopburi and speaks central Thai. Still a good idea to learn Lao…
March 16th, 2007 at 1:04 am
Finally! The “anyburi” from your previous posts already reavealed! I love the suspense! Now we know.
March 16th, 2007 at 10:45 am
Bora da, Siada chi heddiw.
Gynt chi cael Malay cais Cymraeg