I have entered a language dead zone. I still can't speak Thai, and my English is starting to slip. No, really. After nearly nine months of seriously limited face-to-face interactions with native speakers, I guess this fate was inevitable. I slow my pace with every conversation, dumb-down my vocabulary a little bit more everyday, and, at times, use only my increasingly exaggerated gestures and a punctuated grunt to get a point across. As I lay here in bed, struggling to compose complete, coherent sentences, I have to wonder: will my linguistic prowess ever get back up to speed?
An example: I was in Koh Samet a few weeks ago, and a group of travelers wanted to get on our song taew in the middle of the road. The driver shook his head. "Mai dai, mai dai," he said, can't do, can't do. These travelers obviously didn't understand what the man was saying-- they were British, after all-- and tried to hop on. I turned to them, shook my head and waved my hands; "can't do, can't do!" I said, over and over again, baffled as to why they were giving me the same confused look that they had just given the driver. After a solid few seconds, the nice bloke rather wisely asked, "You mean we can't get on the song taew here?" Aha! Complete thoughts and sentences! So that's what they were looking for! "Oh.. haha.." I replied. "Right. No, you can't get on the song taew here. You have to go up the road."
As we pulled away and I replayed the scene over again in my head, I realized: I had just spoken English to English speakers like a Thai person might. Forget fretting over comma splices and colon placement-- I was forgoing complete sentences. Sigh. It was quite a devastating realization for a former English major and shameless lover of words. Do you think there's any sort of ex-pat support group for this sort of thing? Seeking tips/words of wisdom/guidance that will help me through this dark time.
With love and a tied tongue,
Anna
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