Saturday, March 04, 2006

CM continued

After two weeks of Thai classes I can now say "I like chicken" and a few other useful sentences. Whether any Thai people can understand me is still open for debate. Cue quick Thai Lesson:

Thai langauge depends heavily on tones. There are 5 tones - low,middle,high,falling & rising. So "glai" with middle tone means far and "glai" with a falling tone means near. Unfortunately unless you are used to listening in for the tones they both sounds identical.

Although sometimes it is easier:

Nam - water
Som - orange
nam som - orange juice (i.e. water from orange)

pla - fish
nam pla - fish sauce (water from fish)

kaang - hard
nam kaang - ice (water hard)

nam dahn - sugar (water from erm.. sugar cane??)

And that concludes todays lesson.

There was a total of 12 people starting the course, but 2 swapped to the morning class, one opted for private lessons (as he could already speak some thai), another one dropped out, so down to 8 people. Supposed to study an additional hour for each other in the classroom, as the course goes quick. Need to try and remember lots of new words each day, although I'm finding that they soon drop out my head after a few days :( We even get homework! Writing a short story each day 7-10 sentences.

The weather is getting HOT, hardly ever see a cloud. Although sometimes a bit hazy maybe from smoke as the fields get cleared with fires.

A big festival happens next month, Songkran, seems to consists of people running about with water pistols, sounds like fun.