The Land of Smiles

2010-04-22 - Eileen Edwards

Smile, Please!

Idly watching TV a while ago, I noticed an advertisement intended to encourage tourists to visit Malaysia. Splashed across the screen in bold type were the words, “Where the smiles are still genuine”. Ouch.

That less than subtly negative reference to Thailand’s long held nickname, “The Land of Smiles”, set me thinking. I’d already began to wonder if foreigners really understood the “Thai Smile” as, several weeks earlier, a friend had told me that her housekeeper had announced the death of her much loved mother with a grin on her face which would have done justice to a beauty pageant winner!

The same topic was brought to mind again recently, when a UK friend forwarded me, amazingly, an actual analysis of the famous Thai smile, (or, in this case, smiles plural), which explained everything, although unfortunately it did not include photos of the various types of smiles!

It would seem that, whatever situation occurs in a Thai person’s life, to smile is the only appropriate reaction. As a result, it’s easy to understand why a smile when announcing bad news would need to appear different than, say, a smile when announcing a lottery win. Smiles can be used to show or hide almost any emotion, be it joy, misery, embarrassment, anger, sorrow, confusion, disagreement or even fear.

I remember a supreme example of this, witnessed during a hospital visit to a good friend who had just undergone a spinal operation and was in a great deal of pain. Her teenaged Thai “granddaughter”, a very talented and very tiny girl, had realised that my friend required stronger painkillers and had asked to see a doctor who, when he arrived, refused her request.

Astonished, I watched the tiny girl stand up, face right on to the doctor, raise her arms high in the air and tell him, in a stream of obviously very emphatic and sharp-voiced Thai, exactly what he had to do! All with a huge smile on her lovely little face. I was even more astonished to see the doctor scuttle out and return in double quick time with the necessary medicaments. Unbelievable.

The “smileometer” tells that there are 13 different types of smile (yim, in Thai). The first, and most familiar is the “yim tak tai” – the polite smile used to greet a stranger or distant acquaintance. No problem there, then. Also recognisable is the second type, the “feun yim”, the “I don’t want to smile but I’m being forced to” version. A quick look at the roadside during the monthly check on non- helmet-wearing motorcyclists by local traffic police should provide plenty of examples!

The third smile, the “yim cheuat chauan”, could probably be referred to in the West as a smug grin, as it’s used by a winner to a losing rival. Suitable, therefore, for politicians the world over. The fourth example, the “yim tang nam dtah” is the real thing, the “I’ve just won the lottery” smile. It might be useful to be able to identify the fifth, the “yim tak tan”, as it’s the “Sorry, but you’re wrong and I’m right” version – do any particular occasions spring to mind? Think about it…

The next few smiles are the difficult ones—for various reasons. Firstly, the
“yim sao”, used, as my friend found out with her housekeeper, to mask feelings of unhappiness, grief or sadness. Western women have a similar concept--the sad little smile accompanied by the words, “nothing, really”, when we’re asked “What’s the matter?” by a person who hasn’t yet realised that we’ve spent the previous hour howling our eyes out.

This next is the one we expats really do need to be able to recognise—the
“yim mee lay-nai” --, the worst of the lot! It’s used to conceal evil intention, particularly in the sense of “I’m about to rip you off, and you don’t know it because I’m smiling”. Live and learn, guys! The next example isn’t good news either, as the “yim yor” is used to mock, taunt or laugh in an unpleasant manner at another person.

Having got the bad news over with, the last five are at least not threatening! The “yim cheun chom” is used when a person is really impressed with or admires another person; the “yim mai ork”, literally translated as “smile not go out”, means just that--I really want to smile, but I just can’t.; the “yim yair-yair” is the apologising smile, used to defuse potentially upsetting or embarrassing situations, and the “yim hairng”, the dry smile, is the really nervous apologetic smile used with words such as “I’m sorry, I know that’s one of your favourite vases I’ve just broken, but please don’t get angry with me…”

However, the smile that we foreign residents should take lessons in how to use is the
“yim soo”- “ everything’s hopeless, so I might as well smile” – very useful at immigration, the auto shop, or in any situation where one’s rudimentary Thai simply can’t cope!

The above should give us at least some idea how to evaluate the famous ‘Thai Smile’, and realise that not everyone who is smiling at us is either happy or friendly, and that, on rare occasions, there may be a number of other less pleasant motivations. As a result it’s often a good idea to keep one’s guard up in unfamiliar situations.

I recently read that nowadays in Bangkok and Pattaya, the beautiful, genuinely welcoming smiles are seen far less often; here in Chiang Mai, most of us would, I suspect, agree that there are still plenty enough of the right kind of “Thai smiles” to go around!

How to preserve language

2010-03-22 - Steve Brooks

There are about 6,000 languages in the world at the present time. According to the National Geographic’s ‘Enduring Voices’ language survey, by the year 2100 more than half of these languages will have disappeared. In fact, this survey estimates that right now one language is disappearing every 14 days.

This erosion of language diversity has been going on for several hundred years, and the reasons for it are not hard to understand. Essentially, there are ‘big’ languages and ‘small’ languages. ‘Big’ languages belong to those countries whose size, economic power and cultural development enable them to promote their languages at the expense of others. This is a process which modern communications technology, in the form of print media, radio, TV and the Internet, has accelerated. The ‘big’ languages have greater prestige, and therefore the younger generation of minority language speakers will gravitate towards them, believing them to be the pathway to greater opportunity.

Against these social pressures the ‘small’ languages can only survive in those wilder, inaccessible places the global economy has yet to discover. It is no surprise then that the area of greatest linguistic diversity on the planet today are the deep, jungle-choked valleys of Papua New Guinea, where an astonishing 830 languages survive in a population of only five million people.

The question is, of course, how long can this variety of languages survive? Once, almost everywhere was as inaccessible as the mountains of Papua New Guinea. In England, the last monoglot speaker of Cornish died in 1665, and as a spoken language it disappeared altogether by the end of the eighteenth century. The development of coaching roads, and the enforced monopoly of English as the medium of government, law, and education, put an end to it.

What can be done to preserve these languages? And should they be preserved at all?

There are those who say that this loss is a natural process of evolution that should not be interfered with; that the survival of these languages is a barrier to progress and development. Others say that a people’s culture is embedded within, and only truly expressed, through their own language. The loss of a language therefore represents the loss of an entire culture.

The two keys to preserving minority languages appear to be: firstly, to preserve and record them in a written form; and, secondly, to protect their status through government intervention.

For example, Cornish is now beginning a slow revival, now that scholars have finally agreed on a written form. And recently, the EU gave Cornish the status of an official language.

In Thailand, Christian missionaries have created written forms for many of the ‘hill tribe’ languages of Northern Thailand; while some university scholars in Northern Thailand are promoting use of the local Thai Lanna dialect, and creating new fonts for its use on word-processing programs. Given the centralising impulses of the modern Thai state, however, government intervention on behalf of either of these projects will probably have to wait!