Divorce Is Good Medicine - Yah - Yah - Yah ~

The grammar of the Thai language is considerably simpler than Western languages. Words are not modified or conjugated for tenses, plurals, genders, or subject-verb agreement. Articles such as "a", "an", or "the" are also not used. Tenses, levels of politeness, verb-to-noun conversion, and other language concepts are accomplished with the simple addition of various modifying words to the basic subject-verb-object format.

Expats who hunker down to the task of learning Thai are frequently told that Thai is simple to learn because of its uncomplicated grammatical structure. Well okay… Thai is not about grammar, but it is most certainly about song and sound. That’s the formidable wall most Western ears and mouths confront and the sound barrier that must be broken through before one can master Thai.

Thai is a tonal language. This means that each word has a certain pitch characteristic with which it must be spoken to be properly understood. The Thai language uses five tones, called mid, low, high, rising, and falling. That makes it very easy to call someone’s mother a dog, because Maa, with a falling tone, is 'mother'; Mah, with a rising tone, is 'dog'.

This tonal language careening around our foreign ears sometime creates humorous situations. To wit: Yesterday I was sitting with an expat friend who has been trying to convince his Thai wife that they should get a divorce. He has lived here eighteen years, can read and write Thai (a commendable feat in itself) and has a relatively good command of the language. His mobile phone rang. It was his wife. I listened to his end of the conversation, but didn’t understand what was being said. After he hung up, he said, “She said ‘divorce’ – I think she's finally agreeing to a divorce!” It was good news indeed. It is a marriage that should have ended years ago.

I saw him again this afternoon and he was glum. “Nope, she doesn't want a divorce. She didn’t say ‘divorce’ on the phone yesterday; she said ‘medicine.’ He has diabetes and his wife was calling him to tell him that she had prepared fruit and vegetable salads for him when he got home, because they were good medicine for his diabetes. Yah (middle tone) means ‘medicine’, Yah (low tone) means ‘divorce’ and – for what it’s worth – Yah (falling tone) means ‘grass.’

Here is a case where a divorce would indeed be good medicine and, while they might sound like damn near the same thing, they are worlds apart and for my friend, the grass still looks greener on the other side of marriage.

View Through The Fence

The expatriate exercise is littered with land mines. I suspect that every expatriate, regardless of the country he’s come from or landed in, eventually realizes that he will only superficially adapt to the society he has chosen to adopt. Even if he could somehow waltz past the physical appearance and language hazards, the powers of ancient cultural subtleties blow him away bit by mysterious bit, even though he has studied hard, sincerely wishes to become a member of the new tribe and believes he thoroughly understands what it takes to be a blurred chameleon on a new-fangled leaf.

Well sure… some engaging friendships with local folks evolve, but discourse with them hovers in the upper levels of amity. A greater understanding of local mores is required to reach lower, more meaningful, depths and one always has the sense of being a bit patronized. It's natural and unavoidable.

A number of years ago, I ate breakfast every morning at the same café with John, a middle-aged, intellectual and amiable Australian fellow. John had lived in Thailand twenty-five years, spoke the language with little accent and seemed to embrace the Thai culture and its customs. One morning he said, “You know… you can live here for years trying to figure things out. And just when you think you’ve got it straight, something happens to make you realize you haven’t bloody figured out a damn thing!” The next morning he announced that he had had enough and was going back to Melbourne, but he was apprehensive about his ability to readapt to Australian culture.

"I've lost something," he said. "My roots have lost their ability to recognize their most nourishing soil."

To live in a country other than the one you were raised in is to live in a country that can never be your own. Your experience of its novel landscape will always be superficial and can only be viewed through a hole in the fence. (It would be a pity if John is now also looking at his native land through a hole in the fence.)