Imagine: An email address to the police for complaints about MacDonald's. How civilized.But don't get me wrong... I'm not poking fun here. I'm sure the laugh would be on me if I attempted to translate a Thai phrase into English. For instance: A common greeting in Thai is, 'Sabai Dee Mai?' It translates, literally, to, 'Feel good, not feel bad?' The correct English translation (keeping the sense of the greeting) would be the common, 'How are you?' If I tried to translate 'How are you' literally into Thai, I would end up with a nonsensical jumble that would certainly bring on smiles and a bit of head scratching.
Communication is crucially important to the tourist/expatriate economy of Phuket and Thais who are involved with foreigners on a daily basis (the vast majority) seem to deal with us in layers.
The first layer is pretty easy to manage. It is comprised of travelers who have a Thai phrasebook in hand - really unnecessary on this island, where most of the Thais tourists encounter speak enough English to provide their needs. (But if you move away from the tourist haunts, you had better keep that dictionary handy.) Most Thais speak a helluva lot better English than you speak Thai, and I think they prefer you spoke English, rather than trying to impress them with your beginner's Thai. They are doing business, after all, and could care less about your clumsy Thai (although they are far, far too polite to say so). Well... not always...
We had some keys made in Phuket Town a few weeks after we arrived. It's a bit off the typical tourist scene. After the fellow made the keys, A nodded to him and said, "Cup Khun Ca," the feminine for 'Thank you.' Well, the fellow looked a bit down his nose at her and said, in good English, "Yes, yes, you speak Thai," obviously tired of hearing non Thai speaking foreigners quoting from phrasebooks.
The second layer of the Thai/foreigner language thing is complex. Thais and foreigners who are living here for the long-term, and who are serious about learning the language, enter into small contracts of trying to help one another learn their respective languages. In the process, a clumsy kind of Thainglish is born. My sense of it is that the entire island, because of the large number of expatriates, is a language school. Thais appreciate and respect those who attempt to learn their language and it's a bit of an honorific when a Thai offers to help you learn their language. Many, if not most, foreigners don't bother learning more than the basics, because, as I said, one can get by easily, albeit clumsily, with only English.
And then there is the top layer: It hosts the foreigners who take the time to learn how to read and write Thai - maybe not expertly, but well enough to really know what is going on in this environment. It's our goal, but we have miles to travel before getting there. In the meantime, we are caught in the limbo of smiles, gestures, dictionaries and Thainglish.
