I have a list of topics I plan on writing about that is literally several pages long. The topics include various aspects of Lao culture, comparisons of Thailand and Laos, thoughts on learning the Lao language, humorous observations, lists of things I love, lists of things I hate, and any number of other things that have popped into my head in the past six months. At the beginning of the year I promised myself I would put up an entry of at least a few paragraphs every Friday. I even put this in my day planner. For the past few days I’ve been reading through my list and nothing has jumped out at me. One thing I’ve learned about writing is that anything you write will suck if you aren’t enthusiastic about it. So instead of forcing myself to write on one of these topics, I’m just going to jump around stream-of-consciousness style.
Let’s start with the Economic Crisis (this seems to be the agreed-upon term). I have to admit, I’m finding the whole thing rather amusing. Part of me wants the Dow to drop 2,000 points in a single day so I can watch people on the other side of the world frantically running around while I sit giggling in a Beerlao and valium-induced stupor. The New York Stock Exchange opens at 9:30 PM, making a bad trading day endlessly more entertaining than anything on HBO Asia.
And how can they call it HBO when there’s no cussing and no boobs? I thought the whole point of HBO was that there were no commercials and no edits. I’m pretty sure the guy in charge of editing is an Islamic cleric of some kind. Take Entourage. The show’s full of boobs, f-bombs, drug use, casual sex, etc. The logical thing would be to schedule a movie or tamer show. Instead, we have a program edited to the point where it no longer makes sense. In a recent episode, we saw Drama getting a prescription and later smoking it. The scene where he buys it has been cut. I mean, what kind of Keystone Kops censorship operation are these guys running? Smoking bongs is perfectly fine but OMG THEY’RE BUYING MARIJUANA!
And here’s the thing that really cracks me up: the guy editing Entourage doesn’t want anyone to know Lloyd is gay. I know what the guy is thinking: “if all these asians watching asian HBO see an asian guy who has sex with other men, they might become gay.” I’m sure if he had the budget, he would have had a CGI team insert women into every scene where Lloyd is doing something remotely gay (which is most of them).
Even if Entourage did make people gay, would that be a bad thing? China has 1.3 billion people. Luckily the government wants to avoid a Malthusian nightmare (I love that phrase) and has instituted its one-child policy to get the population under control. Why not actively encourage homosexuality? They missed a great opportunity to tie this in with the Olympics. If they had just come up with some catchy slogans (“Sodomy: think outside the box”), Beijing would be looking like the Castro district right now. And let’s face it, most Chinese girls aren’t much to look at.
But anyway, back to the Economic Crisis. It doesn’t seem to be affecting Laos much. Tourism is down from a year ago but still seems to be doing fine. I don’t know how much is the economy and how much is people not wanting to fly into BKK. Buildings are still going up. The Vientiane times says everything is OK, but what else would you expect? The population is 80% subsistence farmers, a profession that is recession-proof by definition. Most of the locals don’t understand what’s going on in the rest of the world, but if they did, they would probably just shrug their shoulders and say bo pen nyang. If things get bad they can always work on uncle Phoungsavanhathanakhamathan’s farm for a year or two.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Monday, February 9, 2009
The Man With One Watch Knows What Time It Is
Learning Lao is a lot tougher than learning Thai. It’s not that the language is any more difficult, it has to do with the absence of standardization and lack of decent educational materials.
Thailand has several dialects, but the central Thai dialect has become the standard for the entire country. Anything written in Thai will be in this standardized dialect. Any books, recordings, or other educational materials will teach you this form of Thai. The language obeys grammatical and stylistic rules that are probably written down somewhere. I don’t really care.
As an aside, I want to talk about linguists for a moment. These people are stupid. They can’t figure out a damn thing about the Lao language. All they can agree on is that there is a language called “Lao” spoken in and around Laos and that it is in the same family as several other languages, most notably Thai. They can’t even agree on what this family of languages should be called.
Lao has several dialects, none of which is the official one. I say “several” when referring to the number because I have no fucking clue how many there are and neither does anyone else. Figure range from three (north, central, and south) to a whole shitload. Various books have helpfully published dialog maps, all of which contradict each other. The major feature that distinguishes dialects from each other is differences in tone. It shouldn’t be surprising that published accounts of tones in various dialects are totally contradictory.
There are only a few books and other sources for learning Lao. All them agree you should learn the Vientiane dialect because this is more likely to be understood in the rest of Laos. Unfortunately every source, literally every source, disagrees on what the Vientiane dialect is. Some say it has 5 tones, others 6, but none of them even agree on the tones themselves.
If you want to learn Lao, pick one source and stick with it. If you buy another book you’ll just end up confusing the hell out of yourself because certain parts will be contradictory. I’m not even that great of a Lao speaker, but everything I’ve looked at has had plenty of typos and other errors. Currently I’m using this website because it’s comprehensive and free. The best book I’ve found is called “Lao for Everybody” by Klaus Werner. It’s terrible for learning conversational Lao but is an excellent reference book for grammar. Unfortunately, it seems to be out of print. I’ll be writing more about learning the Lao language in the future.
Thailand has several dialects, but the central Thai dialect has become the standard for the entire country. Anything written in Thai will be in this standardized dialect. Any books, recordings, or other educational materials will teach you this form of Thai. The language obeys grammatical and stylistic rules that are probably written down somewhere. I don’t really care.
As an aside, I want to talk about linguists for a moment. These people are stupid. They can’t figure out a damn thing about the Lao language. All they can agree on is that there is a language called “Lao” spoken in and around Laos and that it is in the same family as several other languages, most notably Thai. They can’t even agree on what this family of languages should be called.
Lao has several dialects, none of which is the official one. I say “several” when referring to the number because I have no fucking clue how many there are and neither does anyone else. Figure range from three (north, central, and south) to a whole shitload. Various books have helpfully published dialog maps, all of which contradict each other. The major feature that distinguishes dialects from each other is differences in tone. It shouldn’t be surprising that published accounts of tones in various dialects are totally contradictory.
There are only a few books and other sources for learning Lao. All them agree you should learn the Vientiane dialect because this is more likely to be understood in the rest of Laos. Unfortunately every source, literally every source, disagrees on what the Vientiane dialect is. Some say it has 5 tones, others 6, but none of them even agree on the tones themselves.
If you want to learn Lao, pick one source and stick with it. If you buy another book you’ll just end up confusing the hell out of yourself because certain parts will be contradictory. I’m not even that great of a Lao speaker, but everything I’ve looked at has had plenty of typos and other errors. Currently I’m using this website because it’s comprehensive and free. The best book I’ve found is called “Lao for Everybody” by Klaus Werner. It’s terrible for learning conversational Lao but is an excellent reference book for grammar. Unfortunately, it seems to be out of print. I’ll be writing more about learning the Lao language in the future.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
How Much Lao Should I Learn?
Passing through -e.g. Vientiane-->Vang Viang-->Luang Prabang:
Don't bother. Everyone associated with the tourism (oops, travel) industry speaks at least some English. You can negotiate prices through a calculater. A nop (or wai, a bow with the palms pressed together) with a big "Sabaidee!" basically announces you're a clueless tourist. The Lao nop way less than the Thai. A smile and slight nod is fine when entering a store.
Staying about a month:
Learning numbers and some basic food vocabulary would be helpful but not necessary.
Staying a year:
Learn some basic conversational Lao, especially pleasantries ("this food is delicious" "you have a very nice home") and names of things you use every day. Learning to read and write would be a waste of time.
Over a year:
Learn to read and write. Yes, it's hard, but it's far from impossible. It's difficult in the same way learning anatomy is difficult: there's no trick to it, you just have to memorize a bunch of stuff. Remember, it's not a race, just do it at your own pace. Life will get a lot easier when you can use a dictionary, read signs and menus, and be able to correctly pronounce names. It's worth it just to see the shock on a local's face when you write something in Lao.
Don't bother. Everyone associated with the tourism (oops, travel) industry speaks at least some English. You can negotiate prices through a calculater. A nop (or wai, a bow with the palms pressed together) with a big "Sabaidee!" basically announces you're a clueless tourist. The Lao nop way less than the Thai. A smile and slight nod is fine when entering a store.
Staying about a month:
Learning numbers and some basic food vocabulary would be helpful but not necessary.
Staying a year:
Learn some basic conversational Lao, especially pleasantries ("this food is delicious" "you have a very nice home") and names of things you use every day. Learning to read and write would be a waste of time.
Over a year:
Learn to read and write. Yes, it's hard, but it's far from impossible. It's difficult in the same way learning anatomy is difficult: there's no trick to it, you just have to memorize a bunch of stuff. Remember, it's not a race, just do it at your own pace. Life will get a lot easier when you can use a dictionary, read signs and menus, and be able to correctly pronounce names. It's worth it just to see the shock on a local's face when you write something in Lao.
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