passa thai: lesson #1
this is the first of a weekly post teaching the thai language (or passa thai). as well as learning to speak some essential phrases hopefully you will learn a bit of the culture as well.
so i figure the first thing you need to learn when taking on a new language is how to greet someone. salutations in thai are both more complicated and simpler in thailand. what do i mean by that? well, greeting someone involves more than just spoken words. there is the social custom of wai-ing and the ever so important smile. however, once you learn all of this things it's a lot easier because the same greeting covers "good morning", "good evening", "good afternoon", "good night", "hello", and "good-bye".
first, let me explain the wai (pronounced just like "y"). the way you wai is by holding your hands together, palms joined, in front of your body. sounds easy right? well, that's not the whole of it. who wais who first and how high you raise you hands is also defined by custom. normally a person of lower status wais first. most of the time this means younger people. as far as how high to raise your hands there aren't clear "rules" but here's what i would say as a two week observer. if it's a younger person gently touch the tips of your index finger to your chin; someone of the same age or a good friend gently touch your index fingers somewhere in the nose to brow region; an older or important person somewhere in the forehead area. for the king you should probably have the backs of your thumbs touching the top of your forehead. also the lower you bow your head the more respect is shown. if all else fails i always go with "monkey see, monkey do". all of this said the thai people are very friendly and probably won't mind if a foreigner doesn't fully get the whole wai-ing thing perfectly.
next, lets cover the spoken part. i don't know the best way to spell it in english but basically "sawatdee" or "sawaddi" are two good approximations. then to be polite you add the male or female polite particle, krap or ka respectively. so men would say "sawatdee krap" and women would say "sawatdee ka" (note: krap isn't pronounced exactly how it looks. it's more of a klup/klap with a soft "l" that sometime isn't even heard)
finally, don't forget the smile. It's the last key ingredient to a proper thai greeting. thai is also a tonal language but i won't even begin to go there right now. well, i hope you learned something interesting and check back for more lessons on passa thai.
