Back to the Past

Feeling good after doing pretty well in my first Thai languge check in almost 2 years, and basking in the praise of my language supervisor, we went to visit our old neighbours in Lopburi: Phaayboon and his wife and Dawwipaa.

Now five years ago when we first moved to Thailand, Phaayboon took us under his wing and took it upon himself to help us learn Thai. In return we were expected to help Phaayboon with his army English and assist their daughter with her school English.

Many evenings we sat with them, struggling to get the basics out, having our pronunciation corrected, our tones set right, etc. Sweating. Struggling. But learning. And now, 5 years later with Nick having passed Level 3 proficiency (which is good) and me on my way to that goal, we fully expected to wow them with our wonderfully improved fluency in Thai, our superb range of vocabulary, and our impeccable tones.

For some reason they seemed to barely understand a word we said, just switched off when we started chatting. And when they spoke to us it was in v e r y s l o w Thai or else incomprehensible, broken English....

I realised that in their minds we are still those struggling students of Thai and so they don't expect and therefore don't bother to understand us. It was a lesson to me not to do the same to others! Fortunately they were so delighted with our children that the sub-standard communication taking place didn't marr a very pleasant evening!