My spoken Thai is back to about where it was the last time we lived here. Navigating activities of daily living is easy. Thais in stores and restaurants often ask, “How many years have you been studying?”
But they’re just being polite. My vocabulary is smaller than most kindergarteners. And the words I need now are the ones I won’t use every day. So I still don’t do too well on the phone, or when conversations veer suddenly. Unfortunately, I can’t count on Jip to translate. When I talk to the caregivers, I usually want to talk about Jip, so using her as a go-between isn’t appropriate.
The good news is that unlike eighteen years ago, I’ve figured out the alphabet, so now I can pick up new words without having to hear them first. But being able to read doesn’t help when I have some complex, important idea that I really want to get across, and nobody around speaks any English.
To supplement my flashcards and audiotapes, I signed up for a tutor, to begin next week. With a little work, 2006 (or 2549, according to the Thai calendar) will be the year of speaking beautifully. Happy New Year!
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Be careful, John, about this casual flip/flop from the King James Bible Calendar year and the Buddhist year: it can be as dicey as Quantum Mechanics. You might get stuck somewhere down a black hole between the Universe of being here now vis a vis waiting for salvation...
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