Category Archives: language

Thai Swearing 101

October 9, 2017 – 7:39 pm

Like most farangs I had a hard time learning Thai. I can tell a joke, although my wife says that I speak with funny accent. “You should hear my German.” Speaking a foreign language with a Boston accent has never been easy. One on one I catch the drift of the speaker’s meaning, but in […]

By Peter | Also posted in etiquette, Thailand | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

ES TUT MIR LIED by Peter Nolan Smith

July 3, 2016 – 11:44 am

My high school German professor smoked cigarettes in the classroom. Ashes from his dying butts dropped onto his black cassock, as I read Kafta’s DAS URTEIL from a blue book. “Du sprechet wie Arschloch,” accused the toadlike brother with a tobacco-ravaged voice. “Jawohl, Bruder.” Spelling like an asshole was not good for my grades. Boston […]

By Peter | Also posted in semi-fiction, Thailand, Traditions | Tagged | Comments (0)

EL TOPO

November 22, 2015 – 2:06 pm

I’ve been working with Mexicans at the metal shop for the last year and a half. As always I try to improve my language skills and I help them with English. The other week I gave Oscar, who has prevented my fingers from getting ripped off my lathes or pierced by drill presses, the movie […]

By Peter | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Love is Never Having to Say You’re Sorry

August 25, 2014 – 12:01 pm

Love is Never Having to Say You’re Sorry is a famous line from the 1970 film LOVE STORY. Farangs are amazed by the infrequency of times that Thais saying they’re sorry. The word does exist as Khor-Todt, whose etymology stems from two Thai words; Khor or throat and Todt or fart. Throat-fart. Sorry, but maybe […]

By Peter | Also posted in Education, Thailand | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

WHAT MUST BE SAID by Gunther Grass

July 14, 2014 – 4:14 pm

Poetry by eighty-four year-old Germans is rarely read by anyone, however in 2012 Gunther Grass’s WHAT MUST BE SAID has reaped the Nobel Prize winner a firestorm of condemnation from Israel and Germany. The Israeli interior minister went so far as to declare the writer of THE TIN DRUM ‘persona non grata’ and demand that […]

By Peter | Also posted in Middle East, peace, Poetry | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)