Alex: Hey, do you wanna go to the royal flower festival this weekend?
Jesse: Are you kidding? You know that’s a Buddhist thing, right? It’s all about Buddhism and spirits and everything. The whole thing is totally evil.
Alex: Oh, okay… So what are you doing tonight?
Jesse: Trick-or-treating.

Everybody, no matter what language they are speaking, uses tones when they speak. The difference between a tonal language like Thai and a non-tonal language like English is in how your tone changes what you say. In a non-tonal language, saying the same words with different tones will perhaps change the connotations of what you are saying (”I play guitar.” versus “I play guitar.”), but the basic meaning is still the same. In a tonal language, if you speak using the wrong tones it will change the meaning of what you are saying entirely. This is the biggest mistake I see other foreigners make when they try to speak Thai. I’ve had foreigners comment on just how much I pay attention to the tones. I want you to understand why.

With the wrong tones, you’ll say tiger instead of shirt, pot instead of doctor, ghost instead of older brother.

“I like to study” becomes “I like money.” A request, “I need a new car”, becomes an offer: “Do you need a car?” Instead of telling someone you have a cold, you’ll tell them you’re a temple. While trying to invite someone to a movie, you’ll say, “Would you like to watch people sit?”

Oh, but it gets worse. If you don’t pay attention to your tones, you may intend to ask for cooked rice but accidentally tell the cook that she is white and beautiful. You’ll ask for medicine, and the pharmacist will introduce you to his grandmother. Ask a woman if she’s selling tickets, and she slaps you in the face for calling her a prostitute. Or ask a little boy to point to the nearest shop, and instead he pees on a caterpillar.

I hope this helps you understand just how important tones are in the Thai language. Maybe next time I can tell you about the consonants Thai has that English doesn’t, and why you can easily call your aunt crazy if you’re not careful.

Resignation.

Two and a half years ago, as faithful readers will remember, I told you about the campaign to tell me that my name is really Matt. Like some kind of sick, cosmic joke, that campaign continues. I now have a Matt living in my house, and apparently we both sound exactly alike on the phone. It’s been months since I didn’t have a phone conversation that started like this:

*Ring ring*
Me: “Hello?”
Them: “Hi, Matt.”

I hope there isn’t a sixth stage, but I fear there is and that it has the word “breakdown” in it.

I don’t know where he gets it…

“War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.” — Ambrose Pierce (1842-1914)

Also on Monday we went with them to “English camp”. Right now, the Thai schools are on vacation, so Im Jai is teaching them English and Bible stories in the mornings. It was a lot of fun hanging out with the kids, and I took some pictures. Afterwards, we went with Dave and Shirley and two of the Im Jai boys (Jack and Boy) to get some ice cream. Jack of course speaks Thai (and a little English) and Boy is deaf, so he only signs. I’m used to not being understood, but usually I can get by with the few Thai words I know plus some hand signals. With Boy I realized that I couldn’t speak with him at all, nor understand what he was saying. The only words I know in sign language are “relax”, “weird”, and a few Christian words (like “Jesus loves me”). It was an unexpected language barrier, but we had fun at least.

Our schedule for the near future looks like this. We have a friend from Hong Kong visiting us probably tomorrow, and Ray and Kaoru are coming up here sometime in the next few days. We should be starting language school next week (I’m anxious to get moving on this), and we’ll hopefully start working with Im Jai on a more scheduled basis when they get back to school around May 15th.

In the meantime, I’ve managed to memorize the Thai letters (44 consonants and 32 vowels, sheesh) and have discovered that I still can’t read because there are rules I don’t know about. That’s not even counting the rules for what tone each syllable is. Sean is in Burma with some missionary team he hooked up with and will hopefully be back tomorrow or Friday. Cindy’s been doing her own Thai studies and keeping in touch with folks back home (among other things).

God’s been doing stuff too. For me, I realized that everytime I’ve worshipped here, I’ve had an itch to take my guitar and go worship outside somewhere. I can’t go far with my guitar on my scooter, but I hope to do that around the neighborhood somewhere. You can pray for that. I also have an itch to study the Word again, and I have visions of studying it with random people we meet too. I don’t know how that will work, especially with the language, but pray for that too.

On a completely unrelated note, I read this from Dano’s blog this morning and I thought it was hilarious - definitely the loudest laugh for at least a week:

I feel that I need to hand people this disclaimer when I meet them:

The person you are about to meet wishes to be kind, respectful and courteous. Yet, he is terrible with names and has extreme difficulty recognizing individuals of Asian descent. Therefore, he will likely introduce himself to you at least three times and he accepts no responsibility for name or face recollection for conversations less than a minute in duration.

The only problem is there’d be a lot of people telling me that I already gave them one.

I haven’t been to a Large Group since 1999, and I’m now beginning to wonder if I didn’t switch name tags with Matt and forget to take it off in all that time.

And now it is time for The Airing of Grievances! I have been called Andrew (by people who know my brother), Alan (by a near-sighted highschool teacher), Aaron (by Matt’s parents - Aaron was Matt’s old roommate), and David (by my father-in-law - I can’t explain that one). But by far, the name I have been mistakenly called more than any other name is Matt.

At first it made sense. I lived with Matt for four years. Senior year in college, Matt and I were among the most vocal people in InterVarsity and known as friends and roommates. We were each other’s best man. I can understand that people who don’t know us very well, or who met both of us at the same time, might get our names mixed up (though I wonder if anyone ever called him Adam?).

But after I got married, it continued. I would introduce myself to people saying, “I’m Adam.” “Matt?” “No, A-DUM.” (And let me tell you, I don’t like emphasizing the last syllable of my name - too many bad childhood memories). When we went to Thailand last summer, it happened no less than three times on a single Sunday morning! Tracey (who shares a similar issue with the name Stacey) began calling me by my new assumed name on a regular basis (oh, she thinks she’s so funny).

But maybe it’s just the way I say it. Maybe I need to enunciate more when I say, “I’madam.” Maybe there was some minor language barrier with the European missionaries I met. But today, the name-calling has crossed over from the realm of Explainable Error to Uncanny Coincidence when Mark Sides responded to a comment of mine on Ray’s blog and called me Matt. Not once, but twice.

Now, I don’t blame Mark. I wasn’t lying or typing through my teeth when I told him, “No worries.” It’s not his fault. In fact, he may just be God’s latest vessel in the Campaign to Tell Adam That His Name is Really Matt. Or maybe he saw my name tag through the Internet. I just don’t know anymore. Maybe when we get to Thailand I should just tell people my name is Matt and see what happens. The worst case scenario is that it would save time.

Incidentally, I do want to bring attention to the comment thread in which the Grievance occurred. Mark brings up an excellent point that he, Ray, myself, and others are slowly learning to drop our political defensiveness and be more careful with our language. Because, as he points out, we are often saying the same thing on lots of heated issues even though we come from different political viewpoints. This goes back to Mark Roberts’ article on the Church and Politics where he describes his vision of the Church as a place where all political viewpoints can be discussed and acknowledged without judgment or condemnation. That article’s worth a read (or even a re-read).

I’ll get Andrew (and Lucinda, whose blog I’ve also been pointed to) on the sidebar eventually.