I am pretty sure that on any given day, I learn a hell of a lot more than my class does. I don't know if that's just life, or if it's just me. Here's what happened..
My wife won't teach me any Thai dirty words. At first, I thought it was because she was just an old prude, but then I realized that Thais don't really have a lot of curse words. Your expression or tone of voice does more for emphasis than any particular explicative that you could use. They have some, but not a great selection.
Today, one of my better students was trying to dazzle me with her latest batch of barely understandable vocabulary. After she had run out, she smiled real big and said "I speak ang-grit very well". "Ang-grit" is the Thai word for English. I rolled my eyes and said "Yes, I can see that". I then reminded her that she should practice her English every day. She thought about it for a second, and said "fuk ang-grit!" I had a moment of panic, and then calmly asked her what she had said. She smiled and replied "Chan fuk ang-grit".
Well, that's what I though she said. I figured that it would be much more fun to have an audience, if I could get her to say that again. This was better than South Park. I headed over to the teacher's office with little Miw in tow. Miss Nong happened to be in there, so I asked her to listen to Miw's latest verbal accomplishment.
On command, Miw loudly said "Fuk Ang-grit!". I looked at Nong, who looked back at me, smiled, and said "that's good". I was a bit confused. I asked Miw where she had gotten that, and to my surprise, she said she had gotten it from me. I admit to having let a few borderline words slip occasionally because no one understands what I am saying anyway, but never that one. I think Miw noticed my confusion, because she grabbed a dictionary and quickly looked up the word "fuk". In Thai, it means "to practice". When she said "Fuk ang-grit", she was telling me that she practiced her English, as I said she needed to do. I smiled and told her how proud I was of her, thanked Nong, and took a smiling little miss Miw back to class.
I guess the moral to the story is that if you really want to learn a new language, and be able to speak it well, you have to "fuk" a lot.
