Comments on My Thai Friend: Learning to speak Thai.

It seems this blog and VF's own cross similar them...

2008-09-21T06:14:10.524+07:00

It seems this blog and VF's own cross similar themes, and in similar but vastly different contexts.

What do you recommend for a 'Perpetual Traveller', one who's home may be in several countries? Or for those of us whose "second lanuage" is not English but a language designed to be interpretted by computers not humans? Sadly very little computer code is written in anything by English which sort of leaves me in the 'poo' ;-)

Luckily my wife understands that in time Thai will be part of my vocabulary, but not until one of the other 'languages' subsides, leaving me with a little more grey matter free!

Thanks for submitting this post to the Expat Exper...

2008-09-20T19:16:02.721+07:00

Thanks for submitting this post to the Expat Experience blog carnival. I'm currently going through all the submissions and will notify you when the carnival gets published.

What an experience :-)

Sometimes you just have to accept the fact that you don't understand some requests or conversations. It can be frustrating, but that's the price of this awesome experience of living abroad :-)

Once again you offer some interesting insight. I t...

2008-09-20T18:52:16.517+07:00

Once again you offer some interesting insight. I totally agree with you regarding learning Thai and for me personally I consider it a must, like yourself. I know it will take time but I intent to stick at it. Thanks for taking the time to comment.

As far as it goes, that article is right, but the ...

2008-09-20T11:30:23.063+07:00

As far as it goes, that article is right, but the implied causal relationship is wrong. Those at the bottom of the food chain do often speak more Thai. It helps to stretch their meager earning and live more economically.

The higher paid expat executives are paid, not to go local, and are moved regularly to prevent that happening. Their job is to enforce and, toe the company line, of the Mother Ship.

They neglected to mention the long-term, entrepreneurial expats, who have business entities and who's Thai savvy serves them very well indeed.

From personal experience, I have Thai friends who's English is as good or better than my Thai. As a long-term resident of their country, however, we always speak Thai together. In any country, it is considered in bad taste, not speak the native tongue, especially if you have made the place your home. We don't appreciate it in our own native lands, so why should it be any different here?