Advice About Learning The Local Language

[george]

Managing the Cultures ... Inspiring the Team: A little Thai can sure go a long, long way

“What’s your advice about learning the local language?”

BANGKOK: -- This wasn’t the first time we had been asked. This was a young British couple, recently arrived for a two-to-three year posting. What’s the best answer we could give them to help them strike a good balance and get a lot out of this assignment?

Eventually, Roger and Stephanie would make their own decision on these questions. How much would it matter if they could communicate in Thai? Should they indeed learn Thai? If so, how much Thai would they aim for? Just enough to get around, or to actually do some business in this famously difficult language? What if we make ###### fools of ourselves? And so on. . . .

It wouldn’t be too difficult to lay out two or three sample lesson plans for newcomers to choose from. But if we are going to get our minds – and hearts – around the issue, that isn’t the place to start. Better, I think, to relate some examples of foreigners who have faced the same decision, and built their lifestyle upon the choice.

Charles is now in his 30th year in Thailand. This isn’t his first overseas posting, but it’s the one he has enjoyed the most. At first, he was frustrated by the fact that not many signs are in English, and compared to Singapore not many people speak it very well. On the other hand, the Thais were often eager to practise their English, and most important, they were much more eager to please him than people anywhere else he had been. This place was going to be really comfortable! Luckily for Charles, too, the company had a long history in Thailand, and in the office there were a dozen senior Thais with whom he could communicate. Mighty comfortable, when you come to think of it.

Probably the biggest stroke of luck for Charles was that because of the outcome of World War II, English came through as the primary international language. And that’s Charles’ mother tongue.

His company arranged for a membership at a local sports club, where he could entertain customers and play a round of golf. Here, again, there were many Thai members who had studied overseas and were quite comfortable using English with Charles.

Among themselves, of course, they didn’t seem all that comfortable with English, so Charles couldn’t penetrate that rapid-fire Thai conversation. But again, the Thai members were polite enough to include Charles in most of their conversations.

When it came to directing a taxi to his home, he could manage that pretty well. But any other destination could present problems, and once in a while he’d end up in Chinatown!

Our second example is actually two Frenchmen, whom we’ll call Christophe and Gilles. On the day of one of our cross-cultural seminars, these two chaps walked in, practically arm-in-arm with two Thais from the same company. There was obviously great friendship here, and – as the course leaders – we were really eager to find out more about it.

The two Frenchmen were going to be working in a tyre plant, a Thai-French joint venture out toward the Eastern Seaboard. The French company believed that if these men were going to be fully successful as managers and coaches at all levels, they should not expect the locals to communicate only in English or – heaven forbid – French. With a good grounding in Thai, these managers could also hope to enjoy a really good social life with their colleagues, as well. (For who wants to speak in a foreign language after work?)

So the French company, in its wisdom and with a great deal of staff planning, fixed up one full month of full-time language study for both men, outside of Bangkok. Only after that month would they have to “start work”.

One didn’t need to be a genius to see the effects of that month where they had been off somewhere “scrambling their brains with pasaa Thai”. Where it takes many of us a year to 18 months to establish trust and good two-way communication, these guys had made an enormous leap forward. Already, at the seminar, they seemed close to their colleagues, and were making small talk with ease and humour. The Thais, clearly, were appreciating how enjoyable it was to work with these Frenchmen; and the French were obviously off to a flying start, and well ahead with their new life in Thailand.

The decision had been made that speaking Thai, with pretty good fluency, would be a requirement in order to be really good at this job.

--The Nation 2005-06-06