Talk fourteen.
Bagan, 08 th December
- The flight with Myanmar airlines Air KBZ from Yangon to Nyaung Oo turned out to be a nice surprise.
- And those service people!
- Both girls and boys were sweet beyond measure. Not a bad show for the country!
- But the passport control was like the one during good communist times in Poland.
- You remember them, don’t you? What did you expect? No computers, everything written by hand in those little books… It had some charm, though.
- But those grim faces of the boarder officers were not welcoming.
- There were smiling kids welcoming us singing regional songs as soon as we got out of the passport control room. And outside the building there was another band playing to welcome us.
- Not only us.
- Are you sorry for that? It wasn’t any exclusive concert for us.
- We even use the word „ekskluzywny” in Polish!
- You are provoking me because you know how much I despise transferring English words into the Polish language in the areas where we can manage without such loans!
- You are the linguist!
- Well?!
- What’s your opinion about English of the people in Myanmar?
- They do their best but they don’t know much. Not many of them have access to the language training. You can’t compare them with the Thai whose English is acceptable.
- Do you understand the Thai speaking English?
- Sometimes I’m in trouble. Their pronunciation is difficult to follow since Thai is a tonal language which roughly means that no word ends with a consonant. This makes problems.
- How do they pronounce „fried rice”?
- That’s a good example. In the Thai way is sounds: „fri ri” [frai rai].
- I’m at times in trouble to understand Seth.
- His English is rich in vocabulary, but as anybody else in Thailand he’s got problems not only with the pronunciation but with the grammar as well.
- Does he make more mistakes than I do?
- It’s not a matter of mistakes. A language is used for communication, so possible grammar correctness works for that purpose, too, and makes the communication easier. The Thai don’t have grammar tenses except the present tense. They say: „I go yesterday”, that’s why there appear many mistakes which hardly ever impede the communication.
- Easy for them! English should be that way, too!
- What prevents you from studying Thai?
- Why aren’t you doing this?
- I’d love to, but I don’t have too much time to spare. I’ve got so much to do nowadays, and we are not going to settle down in Thailand, anyway. For those short stays, the languages I know, should do.
- Which of them may be useful in this part of the world?
- Do you want me to mention them all? There’s still three forth of our trip in front of us.
- Show off, show off.
- And you are sorry you can’t! In Asia English is indispensable. Russian is useful too, because there’re many Russians everywhere. I can’t speak Chinese, but it would be good to know.
- And on Bali?
- Definitely English. I hear, Indonesian is quite easy but I didn’t have opportunity to learn it.
- And on Fiji?
- English.
- In the USA?
- English and Spanish, and French in New Orleans. Spanish is the second language in the States. In western States live the Mexicans, in the eastern ones the Puerto Ricans, and in the southern States the Cubans.
- The Polish are numerous as well.
- However, we didn’t manage to introduce Polish to the US schools as a second language.
- What do you need Swedish and Portuguese for in this trip?
- Absolutely for nothing. Oh, I’d forget. To be able to write e-mails to my Swedish acquaintances, and talk Portuguese with Marcel - the Brazilian who lives in Washington D.C.
- Say something in Swedish!
- Jag älskar dig. Get it? It means I love you. All I can say that it wasn’t an easy language for me. Before I found myself in Sweden for good, I had studied the language on my own for six months. I thought I’d only need another six months to be able to easily cope with it.
- And what? You failed, didn’t you?
- You want to hear about my failure, don’t you? Yes, after a six-month course for the advanced (it was their second or third year) I sat for the national exam in Swedish, which was the condition to do any post-graduate studies, in case I wanted to study. I failed three out of five parts of the exam. I was very disappointed with myself.
- After one year of studying?
- You know, in this matter I set standards very high for myself.
- Did you eventually pass the exam?
- After four months of studying eight hours a day, I passed it.
- You scare me.
- I liked it. I must, however, admit that a full liberty of using Swedish I achieved after another year. Acquiring the language was more difficult than ever before because I didn’t use it at work and my personal contacts with Swedes were minimal. Especially in the first years of my stay.
- Were they more frequent in the following ones?
- Not frequent enough to be able to practice everyday language used at home, in the bedroom, and so on. If this is what you want to hear.
- So, how did you learn it?
- Mainly thanks to the television. In Sweden English and American films are always have subtitled. We should be sorry that Polish television doesn’t apply this easy form of teaching the nation foreign languages.
- Just like this, as an extra bonus?
- Exactly. Do you know when I eventually felt I possessed Swedish?
- When was it?
- When I realized that I could understand accidentally heard conversations, on a bus for example, or I could follow radio programmes while busy with something else.
- It’s true. It’s not bad for a test.
- Let’s go back to the place where we are now.
- Seven hundred kilometres north of Yangon, in Bagan.
- Maybe you already know, but let me tell you what you could’ve skipped while reading about Myanmar: Bagan[1] is one of the greatest attractions in Asia. It’s there where you can find two thousand temples and stupas (a stupa is a Buddhist funeral structure). Back in the past they were thirteen thousands of them. They are located on the area of forty thousand square kilometres.
- How many of them have we seen up close?
- Many. Maybe too many. We’ve been very ambitious and rode by bicycle quite many kilometres on sandy roads to see them all. After the excursion I felt pain in all parts of my body. Particularly in one of them.
- I admired you how you were managing despite the natural lack of form. We don’t go biking in Poland, do we?
- We could’ve chosen a horse-drawn cart, but that would’ve been below our ambition.
- Seth, too, was doing find cycling hard keeping the pace. It means he managed “ to stick to the wheel”.
- Visiting all the Buddhist temples wasn’t any special attraction for him, but watching the sunset from the top of Mingalazedi[2] pagoda, made him as satisfied as it did to us.
- I enjoyed watching the people who’d gathered to do same with us.
- Obviously, there were many good-looking boys from all over the world.
- Young local monks were the best-looking.
- I might agree with that but they all chew betel leaves, as very many men and women in Myanmar do, which makes their teeth look dark brown. What’s more, they spit out something disgusting red in colour.
- An official ban of spitting was imposed in Yangon, to no effect. Red and brown spittle spots can be seen everywhere on the streets. Atrocious.
- I was pleased to see you talk with the kids who surrounded you and wanted you to buy postcard or little drawings made by them. I was amazed how well you were doing with seven, eight-year old children.
- Beautiful kids. They told me they were collecting money for school. It wasn’t essential whether they were tellingme the truth or not.
- You asked one of the girls to draw you a postcard on the spot to see whether it was she who drew the ones she was selling. You and the kids together formed a nice picture setting. There are photos of that moment.
- Do you find Myanmar people more beautiful than the Thai?
- For sure they present a greater variety of faces. I saw many really beautiful ones. Keeping all the proportions, I think that the Myanmar people, as far as the looks is concerned, are less „Asian”.
[1] Bagan
[2] Mingalazedi Pagoda
