Women Learning Thai… and some men too ;-)

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Thai Tales: Bananas, Papayas, and Angry Thai Feet… Last week I introduced a new section, Thai Tales. The first story introduced Mangoes, Mangosteen and Angry Thai Feet. In the comments Carsten pointed us to the full version, ทำไมกล้วยจึงเรียก Banana มะละกอจึงเรียก Papaya (megga thanks Carsten). As Carsten’s version went into more detail I took a stab [...]

Happy New Year 2012!… Happy New Year everyone! 2012. Wow. That went fast. Are you ready for a new year? I’m not. Not really. And forget about the backlog of posts from the pre-flood days, when you scan through the holes in my longstanding Thai language wish list, you’ll agree that I’m running terribly behind. [...]

Thailand has 50 million blue whales flooding Bangkok… Obviously, there are not 50 million blue whales flooding Bangkok. Not even one. And the flood is not only about Bangkok. But as bonkers as 50 million whales flooding Bangkok sounds, the contradicting flood information bombarding us daily seems just as wacky. Anyway. This post is for [...]

Basic Thai flood phrases… In my last post, the Primer on Thai Disaster Words, I shared flood vocabulary found in Thai conversations, TV, and Thai Newspapers. If you’ve found yourself in Thailand during the floods, the few phrases below will help you to communicate at a basic level with your Thai neighbours and friends. Please [...]

Thai reading project: learn Thai with SpeedUpTV + AUA Thai… I’ve got some exciting news. I love the AUA Thai language videos. They are great fun as well as packed with Thai vocabulary and phrases to learn. And here’s the exciting news. Awhile back I got a wild hair about reading along with the AUA [...]

HouseTalk: Learn Thai washer and dryer phrases… The last laundry post focused on mostly useful laundry phrases. It also introduced Thai manners and a few more things such as do not and must. Amongst the laundry phrases in this post you’ll find the difference between can’t, don’t, and forbidden. And you’ll soon see that the [...]

Google Translate, the challenge… In 2009 I ran two sets of Thai phrases through Google Translate. One I shared and one I kept to myself. Here’s the first set: 2009: The First Google Translate Challenge. In 2010 I reran both sets of Thai phrases through Google Translate. I also created another set to keep to [...]

HouseTalk: Introduction to the laundry section… If you are a gal a percentage of the chats with your Thai housekeeper will focus on the care of your laundry. And if you don’t, you just might find yourself with an eye-raising wardrobe. If you are a guy, well, I’m not a guy so I don’t have [...]

So you have a Thai maid. Yeah! Now what?… Thailand, like the majority of SE Asia, has a deeply embedded culture of employing house help. Housekeepers, cooks, gardeners, nannies and drivers are a normal part of the daily fabric of life out here. My cherished Filipina amah in Borneo even had a maid back home. [...]

Kinship terms for Thai housekeepers, nannies, drivers, and more… In the last post, What Do You Call Your Thai Housekeeper?, we learned about alternative names for maids in Thailand. During the research, Sarawan (The Parent Vine, Thailand) and I engaged in a discussion about the different terms used for not only housekeepers but drivers, cooks, [...]

What do you call your maid?… When I lived in Japan I was just a short bit of stuff. It was too long ago to remember what our maid was called so I asked someone who would know: Tony Joh from thai-faq.com. Tony informed me that maid in Japanese is either ote or kaseifu. Nice [...]

Miscommunicating with your Thai housekeeper… Have you been to your High Commission or Embassy lately? I have. I won’t say it was a treat, but it was certainly an eyebrow raiser. Did you happen to notice their counter windows? You know, the ones similar to those found in banks? The windows work the same but [...]

Luke with Farang Pok Pok: Episode 2… Thanks to everyone for taking the time to watch the first episode of Farang Pok Pok and to leave comments. One comment, from Emil, stands out in that he asked if it was possible to turn off the subtitles. The subtitles are added by me to the video [...]

The first episode of the Thai TV show that I co-host, ฝรั่ง ป๊อก ป๊อก (Farang Pok Pok), aired in January 2011. In this episode I traveled to Samut Sonkram to live with clam farmers. Filming the first show was much harder than I expected. Speaking Thai with friends is easy enough, but having to perform [...]