Johpa

She didn't look like a hill-tribe Thai.

Funny, most Thais say the same thing to my wife when they discover that she is not an ethnic Tai.

DMK is an outdated facility and I would not be surprised if the last remaining few airlines (nok and 1,2 go ) are forced to go back to BKK once they have the capacity to handle them.

Pardon me, but the last major terminal updates to DM were made less than a decade before it closed so it was hardly outdated. Clearly the Thai taxpayers did not get much for their investment as one would expect at least 30 years of usage for a return on such a major infrastructure investment. One of the very few spots at DM that qualifies for 30 years usage was the small room on the ground floor that was eventually used by Bangkok Air that was originally used as the sole domestic departure lounge. Apart from the inconvenience of having to take either the free shuttle or a long walk between the international and domestic terminals, I did not see DM as being particularly outdated. And having to travel between terminal buildings is not unique to DM as many Yanks and Brits can attest.

A typical spin on socialism

Having once spent several years living in a socialist commune, rest assured that a progressive tax within a capitalist and democratic country is not anything remotely like, nor any sort of spin upon socialism.

Early Chomskian linguistics made a case for the strong claim, but as I understand it (and I'm sure Johpa will correct me if I'm wrong), Chomsky has modified his position in light of criticism over the years to such an extent that his current view is little more than the weaker and almost uncontroversial claim for ii.

<Disclaimer: I have been out of academia for a long time and do not closely follow current trends in linguistics>

A long and still hotly debated issue by folks far more knowledgeable than myself. Chomsky was always having to modify his models ad nauseum, a boon to the academic publishing trade. But Chomsky was committed to his calling card, serial processing, a la his early work in helping with the creation of the earliest computer languages at MIT and Penn. But I really doubt that the brain is simply a serial processor, probable more akin to a massive parallel processor. Chomsky is also one arrogant SOB the few times I saw him visit for a lecture, always demeaning those with an opposing point of view as trivial or worse. But I continue to subscribe to his old school view (and perhaps also because I am a fan of an even older school child development guy, Piaget) that there is an underlying structure that children are able to utilize during their youngest years to absorb a language, but using a program method we are unable to parse form the final product, speech. Sort of akin to finding the texture of a 3-D object from a projected shadow. Thus we are left to describe our lack of knowledge about the brains programming by stepping back and saying only what we observe, that the ability to learn is innate. That we can not yet fathom the programming does not by iteslf invalidate the hypothesis.

Those are all pluses that can be had with the current budget. A property/inheritance tax IMO would cripple the poor more than the well to do.... unless we're talking about those "more fair" towards the poor taxes that folks like to tag on at the last minute of an argument.... "well Heng of course it wouldn't just be a 34% tax for you since you make X00k a month, we'd have to actually keep 97% of your monthly gross income as a tax so that you'd be making the ideal 25k a month that everyone should have in a *fair* Thailand."

A typical misrepresentation of a progressive graduated tax, whether it be estate, property or income tax, where the upper middle class clings to their identification with the uppermost classes to which they aspire. It is part of the Donald Trump school of logic where the Donald once opined that if he could only make, say, $10 million instead of $20 million due to taxes then he would rather be a greeter at Walmart. If you raise the taxes on the wealthy in a progressive manner they will still stay wealthy and be happy. The Donald will still be happy with his $10 million a year and his life will not be much affected if any additional income is taxes at 97%. And of course nobody is suggesting that a much smaller property owner like Heng be taxed at 97%.

Although there are lots of small landholders in the provinces, there are some very, very large and very, very influential land owners around Bangkok and the lower Chao Praya delta. And there are now some very, very large ag-businesses, such as CP, which also own large tracts of land up country. These people are in a position to control legislation and they most certainly do not want any property taxes imposed upon their rather lucrative, and often inherited properties. They prefer to take their rents in an unadulterated manner and then deposit the money offshore.

So when in Thailand, do as Thais do ... take as much money as you can and run

Actually what you do is obtain a contract through bribery, half finish the job, disappear and re-incorporate as another entity, and again through bribery to the same folks, get the new contract to finish the job you never completed in the first place. You don't have to run. In Thai society, as long as you dsiplay your wealth to show your higher status you will be honored, as nobody will question how you came into that wealth as that would imply a loss of face. And the concept of kreng jai does not allow for that.

The point is that all educated Thai learned the basics first which set them up to get it right,

The point is that all human beings learn to fluently speak their mother tongue, and often a second language native tongue, well before then enter the school system. And there is nothing Lamarckian about the process as any newborn baby can be relocated into any community on the planet and will become a fully functional speaker of that community by the age of three. Education has nothing to do with it apart from prescribing one dialect as being more socially prestigious than another dialect. It is pure happenstance that the "Queen's English" is the dialect that it is and not Cockney. And eventually the local elite organizes an army behind their dialect and declare it a language and the languages spoken by the lower social classes are classified as dialects and not a language. Never underestimate the socio-politics of language and national language policies. There are reasons why governments would rather have kids spend years in high school on quadratic equations and not a single moment on even the most rudimentary aspects of linguistics.

The brain is pre-wired for language. As a native speaker, you can't get it wrong unless you have an abnormal brain or suffer a brain injury. Sure you can make minor errors whilst speaking, spoonerisms being one of the most common examples. But such production errors happen to everyone and are not correlated to education.

Bottom line, as a native speaker you don't need to learn any grammatical rules as a child, your brain's wiring will take care of that for you without conscious effort. (Alas, humans usally lose this innate ability after puberty) The rules written by others are simply their best approximations, usually pretty accurate for basics, but often a bit shaky as you get into more complex syntactical structures. And often these same prescriptive grammarians go off the deep end, as when they try to pretend that because Latin, long the most prestigious language of the western world, has case endings, that case structure in English should also be taught.

First, I agree with the OP that the Thai writing system where the words run together, does greatly increase the level of learning difficulty for reading Thai. There is actually a academic word for such writing systems, a word long forgotten by this person. I think the most appropriate word would be "pain in the arse to learn" writing system.

That being said, a competent reader of any language has usually internalized, something our brains are really good at, each word into a single graphical unit. The word is parsed as a whole and is not being sounded out letter by letter, unless one encounters a relatively unique new word, not a common occurrence. So the brain is processing most words in English no differently than it processes a word represented by a single Chinese character. The word as a whole, whether composed of letters or brush strokes, eventually becomes an ideogram for the semantic meaning. So eventually, with practice, far more practice for most of us that a mere month, the Thai written words start to stand out despite the lack of separation from adjoining words.

That's really not much money to live on but I guess it could be done.

Not much money to live on? 40k? In Thailand? Have you any idea how much salary the average office worker in Bangkok earns? Christ almighty, what planet do you come from? Not everyone expects to live in a luxury condo and buy a new car every two years, you know...

It is just silly neo-sahib think. Out of curiosity I calculated my costs, including the house and the few vehicles purchased over the decades, and I still come out to a cost of living far less than half of 40k per month. Life did get a tad more expensive 20 years ago once they brought electricity to the village.

Crikey, the Thermae is still around?!?

Final note.

Steyr's name has been dragged through the mud on this contract. Three years ago they sent a letter to the BMA saying that they would no longer tolerate their reputation being smeared.

Are you suggesting that Steyr was totally naive about the endemic government corruption in Thailand? Are you suggesting that the top people at Steyr were not aware of the risks involved when signing a contract with Thai agencies? Are you suggesting that the pot is calling the kettle black? Come on, Steyr jumped into this cesspool knowingly and they have only themselves to blame for whatever smearing of their reputation has occurred.

I thought that changing the roads around the moat into one-way roads was a brilliant stroke that greatly improved the flow of traffic in the city core.

I can't even spell epidemiology but as far as statistics is concerned you are right. It is not "statistically significant"

Thailand can't yet claim the hub of scientific discoverries. Nice try I suppose but mathematicains would not buy it.

Uh, perhaps there is a correlation between poor spelling and a poor understanding of statistics. A 31% increase in prevention in a phase III study is significant in any mathematician's book. Look at the large size of the population under study and not the numbers of infected participants. In a study of that size, if the drug had no effect then one would expect nearly identical numbers of infected patients at the end of the study. Again, they are talking about statistical significance; they are not talking about having found a magic bullet like the Salk polio vaccine. If I were in a high risk group and had the option to take a drug that seemed to offer a 31% increase in protection, then I would jump at such an opportunity.

Does anyone know whether when King Ramkamheng invented the writing system did he also lay down any grammar rules?

There is at least one school of thought that claims that the grammatical rules of any language are a function of the wiring of the brain and not the result of prescriptive grammarians attempting to lay down artificial rules.

No less mentally eviscerating than a food thread. Sorry to be the one to tell you but the sixties finished 40 years ago...and you guys eventually sold out and got jobs with the establishment.

Some sold out, but really it was the kids from the 70s and 80s that really mucked things up, and not just with the bad music. Bill Gates never did experience the 60s, spent his time squirreled away in McCallister Hall. By the time he got out to begin, with others, to see the sunlight and to create this new era, the 60s were long over. You can have his/this world. By the way, I spend my time in Thailand deep enough in the rural areas where you still see kids playing with these beetles.

Given the time drive up to Chiang Saen stay in one of the hotels overlooking the Golden Triangle, up to Mai Sai to get their Burma chop and then a pretend trip to Laos across the Mekong on a longtail.

My aged p's where here 2 years ago and they said that was one of their highlights- BTW - they are in their eighties.

I agree, get them out of town. Take them up to the Chiang Dao Caves, and then up to Thaton or Mae Salong for the night. Let them take the boat down the Kok River to Chiang Rai, pick them up and spend a night at Chiang Saen. Take the road back through Chiang Rai stopping at Charin Garden for a piece of pie.

Again, the conspiracy theory about the Chinese I do not buy.

I never mentioned anything about a conspiracy. Simply that the Thai-Chinese have long dominated the media, and have presented their ideals of beauty onto both the big screen, the little screen, and in advertising. Watch the Thai soaps and it is light skinned, usually Sino-Thai women in the leading "glamor" roles and darker skinned ethnics, often Isaan actresses playing the hired help. There was no conspiracy, the people paying for the production placed their ideas of "beauty" onto the screen, and those ideals are then adopted by the masses who watch the programming and see the advertising. Everyone wants to be like and look like the movie stars. My wife still thinks that Jintara, the #1 actress of her younger years, was the most beautiful Thai woman to ever walk the planet. The masses are just so malleable.

The funny footnote is that years ago Thai Airways noticed that western travelers responded well to a darker skin tone on their stewardesses and sought out ethnic Thai women for those positions rather than lighter skinned Sino-Thais.

Planning a few days in Pai shortly and would like to go by bus. Have done a search but come up empty. I know there are several mini vans that go that way but that can be a pretty uncomfortable experinece being jammed in with people you might not choose to share with.

Have you lost all sense of adventure? Perhaps public transportation is NOT for you. But think of it from another angle, perhaps you will be jammed in with someone you might never have otherwise encountered and you end up expanding your horizons a bit.

Thais ask me this question all the time and i am unable to give any satisfactory answer.

I say, "why don't thais like darker shades of skin ?" they say it looks dirty, and are amazed at why farangs are attracted to dark skinned females. truly amazed. and they seem to think or expect me to have the answers.

Actually it is the East Asian (Chinese) concept of feminine beauty which praises lighter skin over darker skin tones. With their control over the media in Thailand, this cultural preference has now long been instilled into the Thai population who have been taught to see themselves as inferior on this mark. Let's face it, nobody does racism as well as the Chinese, although some segments of the US population are a very close second indeed.

One can only speculate over the origins of these cultural norms, but I think some insight can be gained by looking towards that greatest of American worldly philosophers, Thorstein Veblen. In China, light skin showed that one did not work out in the sun, that one was not a day laborer or farmer. It was the mark of the leisure class. In the west in more recent times, having the time to get out to a beach, disrobe to near nudity and tan became a mark of leisure. Now add in the underlying racist attitudes of melanin challenged people from the more northern latitudes towards the more melanin enriched derma of those originating from the more tropical latitudes and one can begin to see why some folks make a big deal out of skin tone.

Double pricing is a great excuse not to bother with visiting any of Thailand's somewhat dubious attractions. When they come up with something like the Smithsonian Institute or The Louvre, I might bother getting upset about it.

I find the National Museum in Bangkok to be pretty darn impressive, not the Smithsonian, the Louvre (over rated), nor the British Museum, but worthy none the less.

There is no one "efficient" or "best" way to learn a language. Different people have different learning styles. Some prosper by taking classes and others prosper just by exposure. And even within organized classes there are differing teaching methodologies.

If you do not have the time or inclination to take a class, then start by focusing on common words and nouns. Tape a transliteration of a thing onto it, such as a note on the door with "pratuu" written on it, the Thai word for door. And focus on comprehension in the beginning rather than production, but don't avoid trying to speak. I am a firm believer in Buddhist path to linguistic success: right understanding, right thought, right acts (speech production).

The character class the first character is - confusingly, these are also called 'low', 'medium', and 'high' - these have to be learned by rote, but about half are low, so really, you only need to learn which are medium and high.

It's not even as bad as that - see Thai Consonant Classes Made Simple.

The tone is not based upon the spelling, the spelling is based upon the tone. The tone of any word was based upon the original phonetic environment of the vowel and the length of the vowel.

Are you ignoring the words with tone marks, or do you know something about the origins of the three original Tai-Kadai tones? If the latter, could you please share it with us, via a new thread if need be.

My intent was to demonstrate that the tones, which were in place well before the writing system, originally derived from the phonetic environment. I was hoping to show that even in English, vowels followed by an unvoiced stop tend to have higher tones and shorter length than the same vowel followed by a voiced stop. These features are phonetic in English but not phonemic. Tone marks are needed as the borrowed alphabet was not capable of addressing tones and many words, either having been borrowed or through language change, have long lost their original phonetic environment. I know little about the origins of the hypothesized original three tones. I think only S'kaw Karen, not a Tai-Kadai language,maintains the early three tone system.

Sorry, I'm not sure what you are trying to say there. The tone is based on spelling, yes: as per the rules! It is a system, clearly designed so that the writing signifies the appropriate spoken tones - not a random occurrence of letters that somehow "makes sense."

The tone is not based upon the spelling, the spelling is based upon the tone. The tone of any word was based upon the original phonetic environment of the vowel and the length of the vowel. No different that in English when a vowel followed by an unvoiced stop leads to a short vowel with a higher tone and the same vowel followed by a voiced stop leads to a longer vowel with a lower tone such as in the pair <beat:bead>.

And the average Thai is no more able to articulate such rules on the spot as are typical native speakers of English able to articulate, when asked on the spot by say a Thai learner of English, why the plural suffix morpheme that creates a plural of a noun is sometimes an /s/ sound and sometimes a /z/ sound, again using the same pair <beats:beads>.

When I began to learn Thai I was taught all the tone rules as well as the general linguistic environments where in which those rules operate and it helped this left brain dominant retentive style learner that I am at that time. In the intervening decades I have all but forgotten the explicit rules, but for the most part I get the correct tone although it is not always produced correctly.

"No one knows exactly when illicit drugs were first brought to the party," says Nikom Somwong, chairman of the Samui-Phangan Community Strength project.

I know that back around 1981 on Chaweng Beach, the man on the bicycle selling ice cream between wafers, or into a cup if your provided the cup yourself, also sold marijuana. And Munchies guest house had a sign on the beach advertising "Magic Mushrooms Everyday". So I would venture a guess that across the water, the drugs existed on Koh Phangan well before the first full moon party. Well OK, not really a guess. The officials in Surat Thani have been making a whole lot of money from the drug trade for decades and no public pronouncement to the contrary is likely to change anything.