Ok, it’s really not that hard to grok.

So I decided to split this blog into two, I’ll keep personal and photo related stuff here on blog.luke.org and then all language-related stuff will be moved to goldenland.luke.org. The email subscriptions are totally separate, if you want to receive emails when there are new posts to the language blog, you will need to head over there and subscribe now.

Ogilvy and Mather (the advertising firm) invited me to give a talk to their creative dept tomorrow (Wed) about my show and on my thoughts relating to using photography and language as communication tools. I also plan on talking a bit about what art is, what an artist is, etc ….

The poster they put together to advertise the talk is above, a rough translation is as follows:

“A Picture Says Only Some words.
Pictures, Words
Luke Cassidy-Dorion (sic)
A foreigner who speaks Thai will come speak on the subject of words in photographs and photographs that surround words.
The rest just tells the location, time, etc ….”

There is definitely one aspect of the poster that makes me feel like a circus monkey … “yup, time to pull out that white blond guy and make him rattle off some Thai” … that aside, I am looking forward to the talk. It should be interesting to hear what everyone thinks about the work.

Anyway, if you work there, please do come. If you’re interested in something similar at your place of work or university, feel free to contact me.

The week before my opening, I did an interview on a Thai TV program called artscenetv.net about my show … here are the youtube clips.

I wrote an article about my trip to Tokyo for the Thai version of Yoga Journal, click the thumbnails below to see the full version of the pages. Photographs are mine too.

Last night I was a guest on Bangkok Radio For Men, a weekly Thai radio program for gay audiences. Originally I was invited to talk about the differences between gay society in Bangkok and San Francisco, but once this news came out they wanted to expert opinion on whether Yoga could make people straight. We covered a few other things, then opened the phones for calls …. most of the calls were from kids complaining about problems in love, and two calls from people whose boyfriends were forced to marry women by their parents. Anyway, my part starts around 24:30 of the first clip and carries through to the second clip.

• http://www.luke.org/BRFM/Aug-3-09_1-2.mp3
• http://www.luke.org/BRFM/Aug-3-09_3-4.mp3

Of course, listening to my voice on the tapes I hear all sorts of problems with my Thai, vowels said the wrong length, a tendency to say แบบ excessively, much in that annoying way that Americans say “like” constantly.

So it’s no secret that I love vocabulary (in any language), and that I think a study of a country’s culture is impossible without really understanding their language. In Thai, when asking what someone had to eat for dinner, the literal translation of what we normally say (กินอะไรบ้าง) is “what all did you eat”. With the implication being that the person obviously didn’t eat alone, and that the dishes were all shared. While digging into a language’s vocabulary these small cultural observations start to become rather obvious, it continues to amaze me that, unfortunately, most people don’t see this link. I’ve talked to countless people who bitch about not understanding the way that Thai’s think, but when I ask them how far they have taken their Thai language study, they don’t seem to understand the point of my question.

Anyway, where I am going with this is that as you get deeper into any language there are tons of words (and phrases) which are very specific to that language. A while ago, I posted a series on Thai proverbs and showed how their literal translations had cultural foundations. What many languages have, in addition, are words which don’t really translate into other languages at all. Words which you can only understand by looking up in a standard (non-translation) dictionary. Whenever I come across words that I don’t know, I try to look it up and then figure out a way to work them into my speech. The thing with many words, is that their obscurity often means that your listener may not understand it either … if you use words like that too often, you run the risk of sounding like a pompous asshole (aside: there is a certain risk in using swear words excessively too, but in many cases they provide just the right accentuation) .

What follows are two lists, one of English words that I’ve picked up recently and another of Thai words. After both lists of words, scroll down to see the definitions … you might want to test yourself before scrolling down. Ohh, If you feel inspired to leave sample sentences in the comments section, go for it … bonus points if you can use more than one in the same sentence.

• Saturnalia
• Faustian
• Pedagogy
• Calque
• Tergiversation
• Apostasy
• Vituperate
• Fallacious
• Alacrity
• Orthography
• Sagacity

• ครองราชย์
• มุนิ
• สังวาส
• อาละวาด
• อร่าม
• ประติมากรรม
• เพ้อเจ้อ
• พรำ
• ครึ้มฟ้าครึ้มฝน
• เอือมระอา
• ทะเยอทะยาน
• เขี่ย
• ทะนุถนอน
• ทะยาน
• หักโหม
• ตึงเปรี๊ยะ
• ลือ
• คึกคัก
• ครึกครื้น
• ละลานตา

• Saturnalia: the ancient Roman festival of Saturn in December, which was a period of general merrymaking and was the predecessor of Christmas.
• Faustian: characterized by spiritual dissatisfaction or torment; possessed with a hunger for knowledge or mastery.
• Pedagogy: the method and practice of teaching, esp. as an academic subject or theoretical concept
• Calque: a loan translation, esp. one resulting from bilingual interference in which the internal structure of a borrowed word or phrase is maintained but its morphemes are replaced by those of the native language, as German halbinsel for peninsula
• Tergiversation: to change repeatedly one’s attitude or opinions with respect to a cause, subject, etc.;
• Apostasy: a total desertion of or departure from one’s religion, principles, party, cause, etc
• Vituperate: to use or address with harsh or abusive language; revile
• Fallacious: containing a fallacy; logically unsound
• Alacrity: cheerful readiness, promptness, or willingness
• Orthography: the part of language study concerned with letters and spelling.
• Sagacity: acuteness of mental discernment and soundness of judgment

• ครองราชย์: ครองแผ่นดิน
• มุนิ: นักปราชญ์, ฤษี
• สังวาส: การร่วมประเวณี (sex)
• อาละวาด: แผลงฤทธิ์, ออกฤทธิ์ออกเดช
• อร่ามซ: แพรวพราว, สว่างไสว
• ประติมากรรม: ศิลปะสาขาหนึ่งในจําพวกวิจิตรศิลป์เกี่ยวกับการ
  แกะสลักไม้ หินอ่อน โลหะ
• เพ้อเจ้อ: พล่าม, อาการที่พูดมากในเรื่องที่เหลวไหลไร้สาระ, อาการ
  ที่พูดพล่ามจนเสียประโยชน์, อาการที่พูดไม่รู้จักจบ
• พรำ: ก. ตกน้อย ๆ เรื่อยไป (ใช้แก่ฝน) ในคําว่า ฝนพรํา. ว. อาการ
  ที่ฝนตกน้อย ๆ เรื่อยไป ใช้ว่า ฝนตกพรํา ฝนตกพรํา ๆ
• ครึ้มฟ้าครึ้มฝน: S.ครึ้มฝน A.โล่ง, ปลอดโปร่ง
• เอือมระอา: เอือม, เบื่อหน่าย
• ทะเยอทะยาน: อยากมีฐานะหรือภาวะสูงกว่าดีกว่าที่เป็นอยู่
• เขี่ย: ใช้ไม้หรือสิ่งอื่น ๆ ทําให้สิ่งใดสิ่งหนึ่งเคลื่อนที่ไป
• ทะนุถนอน: คอยระวังรักษา, คอยประคับประคอง.
• ทะยาน: เผ่นขึ้นไป
• หักโหม: ระดมเข้าไปด้วยกำลังให้แตกหัก, โหมหัก ก็ว่า; เอากําลังแรง
  เข้ามาหักเอา, ทํางานโดยไม่บันยะบันยัง
• ตึงเปรี๊ยะ: ตึงมากจนเกือบจะปริหรือขาด
• ลือ: พูดกันทั่วไป แต่ยังไม่มีอะไรยืนยันได้แน่นอน เช่น เขาลือว่า
  จะเกิดเหตุที่ท่าน้ำ,
• คึกคัก: แข็งแรง, กระปรี้กระเปร่า, มีชีวิตชีวา,
• ครึกครื้น: สนุกสนาน, ร่าเริง,
• ละลานตา: ตื่นตา

Back in the states, I used to tell my Asian friends that they were “speaking asian” when they would do things like forget to pluralize nouns (I ate three apple) or conjugate verbs incorrectly (I’m eaten already). I’ve noticed a similar (albeit reversed) thing happening when I speak English lately. In Thai and Japanese, it’s very common to soften your comments by adding a bit of uncertainty to them. For example if you ask a starving Thai person if he’s hungry, his reply will generally be “Ohh, I could eat but no rush”. I was talking with a Japanese friend recently and broke out laughing when he said to me “yeah so this friend of mine sort-of maybe died, I think”.

Where I have noticed this uncertainty appearing most is in teaching yoga, I’ll say things to students like “yeah, it might be better if you moved your foot forward some” which literally means “you’re doing the asana wrong, move your foot now”. I’m not totally sure why it’s creeping into my teaching; it could be that I’m use Thai so much in class and when I use English, my brain is still stuck with Thai grammar patterns.

This all brings up an interesting point about translation issues. In the example about being hungry, were that dialog in a Thai movie, translating it into English could be tricky. If the two people were speaking in Thai, they would understand that “Ohh, I could eat but no rush” means “Yes, I’m starving” and the plot could continue along (in which case, the English subtitle should read “Yes, I’m starving). If one of the speakers was not native Thai, there is a chance he would misunderstand the implied meaning, in which case it wouldn’t be so obvious how to translate into English.

On my way back from the USA, I spent five days in Tokyo, which I think is about as close to another planet as I will get to in this lifetime. I’ve spent time in places like India and Nepal and it’s rather easy to accept that they are totally different given that they are still developing countries. The deal with Tokyo is that it is a huge, developed megalopolis, but it developed in a way that is totally different from the way that New York or London developed. What really stands out about Tokyo is how similar it all looks, I mean there are really interesting buildings and (what seems like) people with really interesting style, but once you dig a little deeper you realize how everything fits into some very well-defined category. What is especially noticeable is that all of these categories are uniquely Japanese, there is some random outside influence but the Japanese tend to make their own unique version of it.

The photograph above was shot in the park near Harajuku is Japan’s answer to the 1950s greaser culture that we had back in USA. The deal here tho is that Japanese greasers get dressed up in the same gear, except they make their hair even bigger and then do choreographed dances. Check out this video if you don’t believe me.

Anyway, I will be back in Tokyo for the month of May. Leaving BKK on April 29th and coming back on June 2nd. I rented an apartment near Komogome, I will be practicing yoga with Tarik in Shibuya and will be studying the Japanese language from 9-1 every day near Takadanobaba. My original goal was to find an apt and Japanese school near the yoga school, but the best I could do was to find them on the same subway line. If you’re over there and want to hangout, shoot me an email … Recommendations on galleries, museums and other fun things are always appreciated too.

So I started school back this week, taking five classes which mostly seem pretty fun … in case you’re interested here’s the workload:

• JA211: Japanese Conversation
• TH247: Introduction to Readings (seems to teach critical reading and analysis skills, probably not too hard)
• SN343: Introduction to Spanish Literature (looks really fun)
• FL346: Northern Thai Languages and Writing Systems
• JA201 LEC: Japanese Reading Skills
• SK202: Sanskrit 2
• JA201 LAB: Japanese Listening Skills

The Japanese coursework represents a change in their curriculum for this year, they had previously started the second year by teaching 600 or so Kanji characters but now they focus on reading the characters and understanding the grammar first. I’ve only had one class so far, but it seems like they want us to be able to understand passages writing at about a 3rd grade level, be able to translate them into Thai, stuff like that. They don’t seem to interested in our ability to translate Thai back into Japanese just yet (well the conversation class does that but at a different level).

The Spanish lit class starts with early writings by Columbus and moves through modern writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Julio Cortazar and Juan Rulfo. In some cases, the texts have been simplified for a foreign audience, other times they just provide notes to help us understand more.

In FL346, we will study three different dead languages which were used mostly to write stone inscriptions like this one 500+ years ago in Northern Thailand (and parts of Burma and Laos). I will post more on this as I understand it, it’s fascinating to see how the early writing system and grammars all influenced this modern system. I don’t really grock enough yet to explain it tho.

Part of me was a bit worried that studying five (well eight if you could all three languages taught in FL346) different languages in the same term would be hard, or more so that I wouldn’t have enough time to dedicate to all of them. This blog posting makes some good points that it is actually a good thing to do. Basically it says that studying more than a few languages at once might make things slower going at first, but that it would pay off in the long-run by forcing your brain to work in new ways. I think that this is especially true for languages with different writing systems and radically different grammars. (My friend Alan claims that I am the only person he knows who is making linguistic preparations for his past lives by studying four different dead languages).

That being said, I am going to focus on just these languages for now … I’ll keep working on Lao / Issan with the girls at work, and will keep working through the Pimsleur Vietnamese CDs in preparation for my trip next week, but am not going to spend too much time on anything other than my coursework for a while.

In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the vast majority of the “enlightened” world hangs out taking drugs (Soma) and ignoring reality.

All members of society are conditioned in childhood to hold the values that the World State idealizes. Constant consumption is the bedrock of stability for the World State. Everyone is encouraged to consume the ubiquitous drug, soma. Soma is a hallucinogen that takes users on enjoyable, hangover-free “vacations”.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World)

The dominate society leaves little room for its members to have any form of creative thinking, artistic ability or individuality. The government pretty much makes sure that people are kept happy with massive doses of Soma so that they stop thinking and don’t cause problems.

They are told that there is another group of people called Savages who they are pretty much raised to think are stupid people who live off the land, away from technology and away from Soma. There are Savage villages setup for people to go see, kept almost like a human zoo where the dominate society can go see how the lesser-people live. The book goes on with some characters meeting the Savages and their lives being changed by them. That’s not really the point of this post, the point is that when I was taken to a Hmong village in Laos, I totally thought of the book.

The Hmong are a hill tribe who live in the mountains of Thailand and Laos (and a few other countries) and who were royally fucked by the USA government during the Vietnam war.

In the late 1950s, southeast Asia, including Laos, was viewed as an important region to the West. With the fall of China to communism and the rise of Communist rebellion in Vietnam, the US sent elite soldiers, the Green Berets, to train Hmong guerrillas to oppose the Vietnamese and the Pathet Lao communists of Laos. Though the Hmong had no desire to play political roles for other nations, they loved freedom and know that there would be little freedom under Communism. They were threatened by the intrusion of North Vietnamese troops into Laos, so the U.S. then encouraged them to fight and provided training and weapons. With CIA assistance, General Vang Pao became the leader of a secret army of 9,000 Hmong men in 1961. Laos was officially neutral as the Vietnam War broke out, and the US had signed an international agreement, the Geneva Accords, intended to keep Laos neutral and prevent fighting there. In reality, this agreement gave the Communists the upper hand, for they flagrantly violated the agreement. Responding to the presence of active North Vietnamese troops in Laos, the US tried to oppose them without appearing to violate the Geneva Accords by secretly recruiting freedom-loving locals to fight the Communist — and these freedom-loving locals were the Hmong.

…

The loss of 60,000 American lives for a no-win war in Vietnam was a tragedy to the huge nation of America, but it was a relatively small percentage of the nation compared to the loss the Hmong people suffered. In 1969, at the time when Congress first learned of our secret war in Laos, about 18,000 Hmong soldiers had already been killed in battle died, and many women and children had died as well. The Hmong were taking a great risk in boldly fighting for the United States, trusting that we would stand by them. But in 1973, the U.S. began to pull out of Laos, leaving the Hmong on their own to fight thousands of North Vietnamese troops in Laos. By 1975, Laos had fallen completely into Communist hands, and the lives of all Hmong people who helped fight the Communists were in jeopardy. More than 100,000 Hmong fled to Thai refugee camps. Many would be killed along the way, especially when crossing the Mekong River to get to Thailand. An estimated 30,000 Hmong would be killed by Communist forces while trying to reach Thailand. Over 100,000 Hmong people died as a result of the war, and today nearly every Hmong family in the US has terrible tales of loss and tragedy relating to the war.

After taking over Laos in 1975, the Pathet Lao Communists stated that they would wipe out the Hmong. A Vietnamese broadcast apparently called for genocide against them. From 1976 to 1979, there were credible reports of chemical warfare used against Hmong villages. The world tried to ignore these reports, and some influential voices in the United States tried to discredit the evidence, claiming that the “yellow rain” that had been used to kill Hmong people was just natural bee feces, not a chemical toxin. By the time overwhelming evidence had been gathered to shatter the “bee feces” theory, the media no longer seemed interested in exploring charges of genocide by Communist forces.

The United States, recognizing the sacrifice made by Hmong soldiers to fight for the U.S., began accepting Hmong refugees into the United States in December of 1975. By 1990, about 100,000 refugees had entered the United States. Today approximately 250,000 Hmong are in the U.S., and a similar number still live in Laos. Over 5 million Hmong people are in Southern China, also under Communist rule.

(http://www.jefflindsay.com/hmong.shtml)

As we were nearing the Thai border on our boat trip down the Mekong river, we stopped at a Hmong village that was setup along the river bank. The village in many ways felt like the Savage village in
Brave New World. As each boat parked, the big tall white tourists were greeted by dirty, brown naked kids who took tried to sell us handicrafts. I was lucky in that most of the kids seemed to ignore me for the adults, who would easily buy the stuff they had for sale. The village was setup to look very traditional, but to me it felt like it was setup to handle tourists and didn’t really show a traditional way of life. Of course, as I write this, I am wondering that if perhaps dealing with tourists in this fashion has become a traditional way of life; replacing traditional slash-and-burn agriculture and the need to frequently move that comes with it. In a country where there education is still developing and where ethnic minorities often struggle for full recognition, this may be one of the few ways to make a living.

The only photograph that I shot is the one above, of the western ball-cap sitting in a pile of grass. It seemed to sum up the contrast of the whole place, and also leave open lots of questions. Was the ball-cap a gift from a Westerner, or was it made in China or Burma by one of the Hmong and brought back once the factory work stopped.

Anyway, most of the people I met there either didn’t speak Lao or just didn’t want to talk to me. Hopefully I’ll be able to study Hmong language before I head back.

« Older Entries