Language

Hello! Dad has finally signed us up for language classes!

We go to a school/organization where you can learn either Thai or English. Our class is a private class, just us and the teacher. Our teacher, Took, is very patient with us. We have learned a lot in the scant three days we have been with her.

Thai language is all tonal. If you say something in the high tone, it means something entirely different than something in the low tone. There are five tones. You know the song do, re, me, fa, so, la ti, do? Well, the lowest tone is do, middle re, and high me. The other two ones are slanting up from do to me, and slanting down from me to do. Everything is centered around re. If you lose re, you lose everything else because how the Thais judge do and me is like this- is this higher than re, or lower?

English is a strange language. We put the adjectives before the nouns, but in most languages the noun comes before the adjective. Thai is one of those. Suppose you want to say. "The red house." In Thai, you say "The house red."

Last night my father said something to me. He said "When you travel, you don't find out about where you are going. You find out where you are from." I think that that is entirely true. Seeing the world makes me realize that the English language and the English ways are amazingly strange. I hope I continue to learn all throughout this trip.