Transcript: Episode #243: A River Runs Through It

Below is the complete transcript for this podcast episode. This transcript was generated using an AI transcription service and has not been reviewed by a human editor. As a result, certain words in the text may not accurately reflect the speaker's actual words. This is especially noticeable when speakers have strong accents, as AI transcription may introduce more errors in interpreting and transcribing their speech. Therefore, it is advisable not to reference this transcript in any article or document without cross-referencing the timestamp to ensure the accuracy of the guest's precise words.

---

Host 0:21

For any Burmese language speakers tuning in today, we wanted to let you know that our better Burma mission has launched three Burmese language podcasts, Myanmar, revolutionary tales, dark era of Burma and Myanmar, peace, women and security. These programs can be found on our website as well as on any of your preferred podcast platforms. We invite you to take a listen, but For now, let's get on with this episode.

Brad 1:02

You and welcome back. I'm joined today by a returning guest, Kenneth Wong, translator, writer, and a Myanmar language instructor. And last time we spoke, we spoke more about the Linguistics of the Burmese language and various actors attempts to portray Burmese in cinema, but today, Kenneth is going to be sharing his experiences from his first trip to Thailand and the surprisingly large Myanmar community and strong Myanmar cultural imprint that can be found in cities like Chiang Mai and Merc which I'm sure is going to be a very illuminating discussion. So Kenneth, thank you very much for coming back. And even guests maybe don't remember you. Do you want to sort of be a little bit more broad in introducing yourself,

Kenneth Wong 2:48

of course. Thank you very much for having me back. Glad to be back here. My name is Kenneth Wong. I was born and raised in Yangon, right in the heart of downtown Yangon, so but I immigrated to the US about 35 years ago, so I can now just honestly say that San Francisco is my home now. But of course, I have a lot of strong emotional ties to Burma. I teach Burmese language at UC Berkeley, and I often translate contemporary Burmese poetry and short stories into English. This year, for the very first time, I went to Thailand, because many of the people that I wanted to see, as it turns out, have actually fled across the border and have now sought safety and shelter in places like Massad and Chiang Mai. So it made more sense for me to spend my vacation in Thailand. So that's what brought me to Thailand.

Brad 3:48

Excellent. And so let's, let's talk about that. Because the image that we have of Thailand, of course, is one that's been crafted largely by the Thai government and Thai, sort of, let's say PR, of a single Thai country with a single Thai culture and a single Thai identity, is that, is that what you have experienced?

Kenneth Wong 4:12

I think I was definitely impressed, impressed by how advanced some of the transportation systems are like the sky train system in Bangkok, the BTS system, and how convenient it is and how closely it mirrors to some of the high benchmarks that we think of, like the Japanese train systems and things like that. So and also it, I also recognize the fact that you know the experiences you would get, typically, as a tourist, as an American tourist, in my case, is the carefully crafted, curated experience that the qatai government wanted you to have. So you would see the wonderful, amazing mosaic facades of what Paul and the Grand Palace and he. Be mesmerized by the the the spicy but still delicious Thai food and things like that. But on the other hand, I have learned. I put myself through five to six months of basic Thai speaking learning so that I could communicate with Thai people better. And as a result of that, it seems to me like I also start to see the inequality in the Thai society right underneath the skytrain over passes, for example, you could actually see mothers and sons begging for loose change and things like that. And right by passing by them, people who are very well dressed and who are very wealthy tourists, including them, you start to see pockets of inequality. And also, because I was able to speak a basic tie, basic tie with taxi drivers and things like that, it feels like I get a different access to access to a different level of the culture and the experience. I

Brad 6:05

just want to as a curiosity you. You said you spent some months preparing Thai language skills so that you would be able to communicate when you were there. What methodology are you using, just on a personal curiosity point?

Kenneth Wong 6:21

Well, I bought some books from Tuttle publishing, and I also realized that I have to create an immersive environment even though I was in America. So one of the things that I did is I changed my default audio option in Netflix to Thai. So for example, when I watch my favorite shows like the crown or Stranger Things, the character speaks in Thai, not in English. In the case of the crown, they are very highly formalized kind of Thai speaking. But I thought that's a very good way for me to force myself to be forced myself to listen to tie, wrestle with the complex tonal system and the kind of the sound that most English users, most English speakers, would not be able to comprehend. I just get used to the rhythm of the sound system, and I also use Google Translate a lot. I would try to mimic what I hear in a TV show and speak it in Google Translate to see if it gives me the same English translation, so that I can tell that my pronunciation is relatively close to what it should be. Those are some of the methods.

Brad 7:40

Okay, so it's pretty good because, you know, people do talk about that as a methodology and just swapping, you know, your your Facebook interface into a specific language or or, you know, in your particular case, Netflix. I didn't realize the there was so much Thai language dub content available on Netflix that but, you know, there are many people who do this for Japanese. For example, with with, you know, anime in Japanese, but this is quite a passive, passive language learning. Do you? Do you find that you had like you live in San Francisco? Do you find you have much opportunity to speak to Thai

Kenneth Wong 8:16

people? I definitely had the opportunity to go to my neighborhood Thai restaurant and try to practice speaking Thai to the waiters and the waitresses. Definitely, yes, yeah. And, and I would, I would venture to say that it's not exactly just listening only I put a lot of effort into mimicking and reproducing what I hear. And also, I'm now trying to wrestle, wrestle with the complexity of the the writing system itself. So I hope that the next time I go back to Bangkok, to Thailand, I hope that my Thai is good enough that I could crack jokes and Greg crack jokes, and maybe speak at a much more interesting level than just survival level,

Brad 9:04

because that's still, it's still quite an impressive pace to to pick up language skills. So, I mean, of course, you, you as an experienced sort of translator and language teacher like you would have, you would have that advantage. But nevertheless, you so you spend quite a bit of time preparing for your your Thai language skills for your trip, and you, you rapidly discover that you're probably going to get a little bit further with your with your Burmese language skills. So how exactly did that realization dawn on you?

Kenneth Wong 9:35

Well, the first, the first instant that realization came to me was when I landed in mass airport and walked out to the tarmac, and then I saw that the departure gate and the exit gate and the check in counters were actually marked in English, Thai and Burmese. And it was quite shocking to me, because I. Outside Burma itself, my homeland, the place where I was born, outside Burma itself. I didn't expect that you would actually see Burmese language officially splattered on the wall of an institution like that, or a building like an airport, but there was Burmese letters welcoming me, and that was the first encounter, and it gave me a hint that messod Probably was in character, much more Burmese than I could expect it to be. And sure enough, when I went around town, it reminded me a lot about some outs of Mendeley and things like that. I mean, it's a border town, so it doesn't have the same conveniences and luxuries that Bangkok would offer. But nevertheless, it has a thriving Burmese refugee community, and it has Burmese style tea shop where I could, I could satisfy my nostalgia for home, and I have a feeling that many Burmese refugees go to these tea shops for the same reason too. So very quickly, when I checked into my hotel, I found out that my receptionist actually couldn't understand my time. I could understand my Burmese. And when I walked at a tea shop, obviously, of course, I could speak in Burmese by default and be understood. I don't actually have to switch to Thai. Even some of the Thai people that I encountered in masoch, in Chiang Mai, some of them actually spoke broken Burmese. To me. It seems like by by proximity, by being close to Burmese refugee population, they have picked up some Burmese language skills. Interesting. That's actually quite surprising. So,

Brad 11:45

so this is, this is going in two ways. Then the question being, how linguistically, at least for now, how is the Burmese migrant population adapting to the Thai language? But then also, how is the native Thai population adapting to the Burmese language. So it sounds that the Thai are not necessarily opposed to to learning some Burmese. Is this, I don't know, like, what? How widespread would you say that is?

Kenneth Wong 12:19

I'm not sure how fluent the local Thai population is in speaking Burmese, but I get the feeling that just by working closely with the Burmese refugee population, they have picked up some basic level Burmese. I've seen this happen, of course, in the US as well people who work with the migrant Mexican population will, over time, pick up basic Spanish speaking skills. There's no question about that. So I can see the same thing happening. But what is perhaps alarming to me is the Burmese refugee population's resistance to it learning Thai, and I have a feeling there are that there are a couple of factors contributing to it. One is that they don't look at Thai culture the same way they would look at, say, Korean that they admire, because they like k pop and the k pop bands like BTS, and they don't look at Thai culture the way they might look at Japanese, because it's full of anime and kawaii culture and things like that that inspire them to want to learn the language, but they look at Thai as a place where for the refugees, I mean, a place where they are very likely to be taken advantage of by some of the not so kind or sympathetic bosses and employers and by the authorities like corrupt policemen, who would ask for protection fees monthly so that they are allowed to stay hassle free and things like that, so they don't have A good experience. I had a good experience as an American tourist, but they obviously didn't as refugees in Thailand. So as a result, many of them don't feel inspired to learn the Thai language. And I think in the long run, that's very concerning, because I have a feeling that if you have a large population of refugees that don't make an effort to learn the language, it could foster resentment among the local population, looking at that as your lack of desire to integrate and adapt, and it for another practical reason, you won't have access to some of The Social Services. You will be able to establish social bonds with local people who could help you if you don't speak the language. So that, to me, is an not so not so comforting dichotomy that I see that local ties are actually starting to pick up Burmese, but the local Burmese refugee population is. Some very resistance to learning Thai.

Brad 15:04

So okay, but you talk about Korean, and you talk about Japanese, and I wonder specifically with regards to Japanese, because Japan, to my knowledge, is the largest donor of scholarship opportunities to Myanmar youth, and my understanding is that the Japanese have, in lieu of actually apologizing for their rampant and prolific crimes in the Second World War, have opted to quietly invest in infrastructure and development and and education opportunities for the countries that they that they victimized, and that therefore there are many Myanmar people, particularly among the youth, who aspire to go to Japan, and therefore aspire to learn Japanese, because it seems like a more viable option for them, something that they might actually qualify for and and something that comes with, you know, a country where salaries are significantly higher. Do you think that there's a role being played here by the historical interactions between countries like Japan, who have, historically post World War Two, been benefactors to Myanmar versus, let's say, Thailand, which, although historically much closer, culturally much closer, seems to resent the Burmese. There's a long history of conflict there, and the Thai government seems to be quite close to the Burmese military high command. Is that playing a role here, as well as just the prevalence sort of pop culture,

Kenneth Wong 16:53

there is definitely an image among the young Burmese people that the Japanese are the good guys, and for very good reason too, because many of these young people were born long after Second World War, so they would not even remember the atrocities that the Japanese Imperial Army committed in in In Burma and across Asia. History is now just a long distant memory, something that they read about in his history books, but they had never personally experienced like my parents generation, who actually had to live through Japanese the Japanese occupation era, short lived, but nevertheless a very brutal and cruel occupation era. But for the young people, Japan is nothing but a country that introduce kimonos and animes. And in Yangon, there are several Japanese culture centers. There are their organization that works towards the PR image of Japan, so that you have a good feeling it fosters goodwill towards Japan. So I think what you're saying is, right, the young people have a different view of Japan, and they look at it as a country that is helping Burma develop. It's not just an image, though. I have to give Japan credit also for the fact that they do invest in tangible infrastructure projects. And the Japanese ambassador, I've heard him speak Burmese in several news reports, and it's impressive. It's impressive that he is able to speak Burmese at that level. So all of those, all of those contribute to having a warm and fuzzy feelings towards Japan. On the other hand, Thailand people don't look at Thailand the same way. I think you're also right about the fact that many of the people suspect that the Thai military and the Burmese military have close collaboration in many areas, even though, if we talk about the degree of atrocity, the degree of atrocity that the two institutions are willing to commit, I would Say Burma as a completely different level, whereas Thai military, even though it's corrupt and even though it would likely use unscrupulous means to influence political systems, they still show a lot more restraint In comparison to the Burmese military,

Brad 19:40

absolutely. Yeah. I mean, that's a bit of an understatement, but there is, I think, nevertheless, this connection, even after the coup happened, we saw the Thai military still sort of welcoming, you know, lying across the border and to. Mutual meetings. We've seen Thailand with the track 1.5 dialog that they created. And I know I'm going to be very cynical here, but essentially, Thailand is running interference, and is offering a platform for Myanmar to interact with regional powers, including China, including India, circumventing ASEAN wishes and circumventing the five point consensus. So there seems to be a lot of collusion, if we can use the word collusion between the two. Let's look at the practicalities here, like, how does that impact the lives of Myanmar people who are living in Thailand across the border,

Kenneth Wong 20:44

some of the, some of the refugees and the activist type who have, who have fled to Massad and Chiang Mai, the way they spoke to me was that you have different level of mobility, and you almost have to buy these kind of mobilities. You know, for example, if you arrive without anything for any kind of legal documents, you will likely have to pay a monthly kind of fee to the local police so that you won't get deported. And then, if you want a next level of mobility, then you will likely have to work your way towards getting something that is called the pink card, something that gives you the identity as a registered immigrant worker who is allowed to work in certain menial labor industry and things like that. So all of these are heavy burdens to us. They may be like, what's a big deal if you if you have to pay 300 baht or 500 baht a month to the local police so that you won't get into trouble as an immigrant, those to an American would probably be less than the cause of an average lunch that would go out and have every day, but for refugees who have arrived in Thailand without anything, any document, and who is going to have a lot of trouble getting good paying jobs, that's a heavy burden. Some of the refugees that I met told me that they have, they have heard about people who have committed suicide, or they have heard about people who simply get sick because they struggle and work too hard in order to pay these fees just to be able to survive in Thailand. So all of these, all of these, creates an environment where the refugees don't really feel like in Thailand or in Thai government, they have a partner that they can rely on to protect them and give them safe shelter,

Brad 22:53

absolutely. So there's, so there's, there's now, there's this division between the documented and the undocumented. You know, we, I know from personal contacts, you know, you've got people who are enrolling in courses of study, like a minimal course load, that they sort of attend pro forma, but it's just so that they can have a student visa, because the student visa is the most available visa to them. You've got people who are on a student visa but never attend classes, they just sort of pay off the school. You've got people who are there on a legitimate visa, and you've got a lot of people who have either come in on a visa that has lapsed or simply crossed into places like mass hot with no documentation whatsoever, because that is the nature of warfare. What is, what is, what is the sense among these people? Because what I'm hearing is that there is just this perpetual fear that you are going to be arrested, sent back to Myanmar and handed over to military authorities to face whatever punishment is that is that what's going on, that

Kenneth Wong 24:08

there are different levels of fear. I think one, one of the activists told me that, well, if you get caught trying to cross over, so to speak. And essentially, it's a river. It's a narrow river that separates masort from nyabadi. The Burmese side, there is a river called moi River in local language. And in Burmese it'll be called thaon yang river. Thaon yang ye. It's a river that really, I went there and visited that. And if you stack two small boats lengthwise, you could probably form a bridge long enough to just walk across it. So it's that's how narrow it is. At some point I was even tempted to call it a stream rather than. A river. But you know, if you are able to cross, and that's certainly the experience with many of the refugees crossing the river or crossing that little thin strip of the land to get there, you sort of race across football feel like dry area in some good weather day, either really early in the morning or really late at night, under the cover of the darkness, in pitch black conditions. And if you don't get caught, then you would hopefully end up with some sort of refuge NGO or refugee camp organizers that help you help you with your resettlement. But if you do get caught, they say you would be taught back in Burmese, the verb that the person uses, Don Cha. Don Cha is a verb that you will use to describe throwing out garbage or emptying the content of a bucket into somewhere so and when I asked them what it means to be tossed back on to be THON chart, that means that the Thai authorities will take you to a relatively safe place away from the battle zone, away from the places where fighting is going on, and then leave you on the Burmese side there so that you can find your way back there. But if you are on, if you're on a hot if you're a hot property, like if you're a well known entity in the resistance movement or things like that, you you may actually get handed over to the other side, to the authorities, because there is pressure from the Burmese junta. As like you said, there is a lot of collaboration or collusion going on there, however you might want to characterize this. So there is an there is an element of fear that undercuts their daily lives. But maybe to say that is a constant state of fear might be a little bit too much. But for some people, for some people that have no money to pay for protection and no money to pay the local authorities to leave them alone, that probably was, that probably is true.

Brad 27:20

So okay, so let's, let's sort of go through the process here then, because, you know, there are people who have at least a little bit of money who can organize a visa in advance. I mean, it's ASEAN, so, you know, you get the two weeks automatically, visa free travel. But let's say you you go ahead of time, you can organize a bit of a visa. You land in Bangkok, or you land in Chiang Mai. That's one option. But if you've just crossed that river, you're a refugee. Maybe you're Bama, maybe you're Cain Kaya, whatever Shan Kachin you find yourself in masot, there are a lot of Burmese people around you, but you don't have any documentation, you don't have any money, you don't know where you're going to sleep tonight. What are your next steps?

Kenneth Wong 28:14

So I've heard stories of refugees who have arrived without any kind of document or things like that, just by crossing over. And then after that, they would somehow try to figure out a way to get their passport back, the physical passport. And that probably happens with friends who could legitimately and legally come to me, or Chiang Mai who would bring them their passport, and then they have one passport, so that gives him another level of mobility, so they can start to travel with that passport. If you don't have that ability to do that, then, of course, you apply for something called a pink card. A pink card is something that, in theory, is given to people who are allowed and registered to work in certain areas like agriculture or craft or things like that. But in reality, you also are able to bribe your way into getting that kind of status. And if you get that, then you are less likely to be stopped. When you're stopped on the street and questioned, you're less likely to be sent back. That gives you much more mobility, because now you can say that within a particular city, within a particular district or province, you are registered as a worker who is working in this kind of environment, whatever your document might say. In reality, though, I found out that many of them don't actually work this way. It's just either you find a kind employer who is willing to sponsor you this way, or some employers. Will sponsor you so that you can get this pink card for a certain fee for themselves. So so that way, even though you may be registered as somebody who is working in a farm in Thailand, you may actually be doing something else, and you are able to move around, and if your employer gives you some sort of testimony or document stating that, yes, you have an urgent need to travel to some district, some city, maybe, let's say, Bangkok, for work related reason, then you can even go as far as Bangkok. So you get another level of mobility. I've also met people who because when I went to massord and Chiang Mai, I posted on Facebook that I'm already here. I'm going to be hanging out at this particular Cafe from this time and this time. So if you'd like to meet me, please stop by. And some of them actually message me and says, I really want to come and meet you in person, but I cannot, because I don't have a police card. It which, which isn't really a physical card, by the way, it's a word that suggests that they haven't paid the they haven't paid the required fee in order for the police to leave them alone. So if they go out and about in town and they get stopped, they would likely get into trouble that they cannot get out of. So they they cannot come see me. I've also seen people who say like this. So So there are definitely different layers of mobility, different layers of legality that you can work towards, but each layer requires a significant amount of time money to get there. So if you're a refugee, it's really, really difficult to even get to the basic level and move beyond that.

Brad 31:52

So it sounds like it's a very corrupted system at the end of the day, where, you know, the paperwork, theoretically and notionally exists, but money is sort of what makes everything move. Yeah, but some of the perspective of the of the Burmese, though, right? Like, this is something that, like, let's be honest, Myanmar kind of works the same way. Is this familiar to the refugees, are they sort of okay, we'll accept this.

Kenneth Wong 32:26

It's definitely familiar to the Burmese culture, in the sense in the Burmese, in Burmese culture, many of the officials that you encounter, from the traffic police to the bureaucrats in the immigration office will likely ask you for LA pai Bo, literally, tea money. They'll ask you t money. And then you understand that that is a prerequisite for getting done thing. So it is a familiar feature of interacting with authorities, for sure. But on the other hand, you know, I have mixed feelings about this, this system of corruption, you have this system of corruption that takes advantage of a vulnerable population, which is very bad and evil, of course, but the systems of corruption also gives a certain amount of protection towards the people who would otherwise be forced back across the border to certain death. I don't think the I don't think if you're a Burmese refugee, you appreciate the fact that you're put between two very two very painful choices, either stay on the Burma side and face fear and possible death, arrest and torture and death, or come to Thailand's side and deal with a corrupt system that gives you mobility only if you are able to afford to pay for it. So I think there is a lot of resentment, I'm sure, among the Burmese refugee populations that they are forced to make these two difficult choices. And obviously they will choose for survival sake, going into Thailand. But still, you know, it's a very difficult choice for them. I

Brad 34:22

mean, absolutely. And they're really sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place, correct? So it's quite, it's quite an awful situation. But for better or for worse, they are now in Thailand, and masort masod It's a border town. It is a border town. The population is around 50,000 um, how? How long back does the the Burmese influence in mast extend? Is that a post coup phenomenon, or was masod already pretty heavily Burmese influenced? Uh. Prior to that,

Kenneth Wong 35:02

even prior to coup, I've heard of Burmese people spoke of mass art as a easy place to get to and resettle. And I think the population data suggests that even beginning in 1988 Mesos, population was starting to accumulate Burmese refugees and Burmese immigrants. But one of the post coup phenomenon, perhaps, is that the some of the prominent members of the inner circles of the nug are now based in mass art. So the mass art has now sort of become the hub of operation for many of the energy officials who need to work closely with the refugee population for humanitarian reasons and to support members of the civil disobedience movement and things like that. I mean, physically, it's across the border from Burma, so it makes sense that if you, if you are in an organization, whether you are an NGO, or whether you are part of the the opposition government in exile that is working towards the welfare of your people, that's the next best thing, because operating inside Burma would be nearly impossible under the current situation. That, to me, is a post coup phenomenon.

Brad 36:34

Okay, and so how do the Thai people in mass art feel about this sort of influx in burmanization of mass odd and not just that, but presumably, if you know, as you're saying, like the the national unity government has a lot of people operating out of there, that would probably bring quite a lot of negative political attention to them as well. Is there? Is there resentment?

Kenneth Wong 37:00

I don't have enough I don't have enough insights into the local Thai population method to be able to assess how their attitude towards their attitude towards the energy's presence there, or the growing population there, but it does give me a concern. It does give me a concern. It concerns me that if the local refugee population aren't able to integrate well with the local Thai population over time, that is going to have simmering resentment. We've seen this happen with the Rohingya population who have fled into different regions of Asia. So so though there are precedents there of what could happen, and I don't want to see that happen to the Burmese refugees,

Brad 38:00

absolutely, and so how then? How then is the Burmese population feeling about their, let's say, their host culture, you know, obviously we're talking about, you know, how they feel about the government and the possibility of being sent back and the corruption that they have to deal with, but more in the sort of day to day, being aware of the fact that they're living in a Thai region with Thai language and Thai culture. How are they sort of relating to that?

Kenneth Wong 38:31

Well, they look at Thailand as a stepping stone. That is not to say everybody has the same attitude. But of course, many of the activist type and the dissidents and the refugees that I met and spoke to there talk about Thailand as a place. It was a temporary stop for them. Their hope is that, in the best case scenario, in about two to three years, Burma would become Burma would be put back on the path to democracy again, and then they would be able to go back home to Yangon or manly and be reunited with their family. The other hope is that maybe through a refugee transition kind of agency, they would end up being placed in a more desirable destination, like US, Canada, Japan or Korea. So if that's the way they see Thailand, then there's less incentive to integrate to the Thai culture or learn the Thai language.

Brad 39:35

Interesting, but so here's the other question for me is the investment? Because, you know, I've, I've been abroad and, you know, working while trying to acquire sort of language skills. Now for me, as as a as a Westerner, this experience is generally going to be the easy mode version. Of that there is, there is no country that I'm going to go to, and no situation that I'm going to be in where I don't have a lifeline. But if you're Burmese, you fled warfare, you maybe don't even have proper documentation. Is it feasible? Do you think to undertake to actively learn Thai and to try to integrate with the Thai culture, while also focusing on survival?

Kenneth Wong 40:28

That's that's a really good question for me. I think I have a fascination with language, and I also have the luxury of learning learning it from the comfort of my US home in San Francisco, where I have access to things like Netflix streaming services with Thai audio that I can listen to, or Google high speed internet and YouTube, where I could find free Thai lessons and things like that. I have a lot of those resources that the typical Burmese refugees in Thai don't have so in a way, learning Thai is easier for me. I also have the advantage of being a language instructor, so I know how to deconstruct a sentence and put it back together and then use that as the model to construct my own other language sentences that I need to say things. So in that sense, I have an advantage as well. But I think it is possible, it's I say this because I've I've seen that the local Thai population is picking up Burmese speaking skills just by rubbing off Thai the Burmese refugees that they work with closely. So I don't see how. I don't see why the reverse cannot happen, where the local Burmese refugees could also pick up Thai speaking skills. And also, I notice learning centers like Joy house, for example, Joy house is located in mass art and is a place where I went there and gave a talk on Burmese poetry translation, and what's involved in translating Burmese poetry into English. It was very well received. But what I wanted to say about groups like Joy house is that they offer, among other things, basic Thai speaking skills, languages and workshop skills and those, I think are very important, because if you're a refugee, an adult refugee, you probably aren't able to just go enroll in a Thai school to further your education. So most likely places like Joy house and places like other places run by the NGOs that offer these kind of language services would be your resource for learning Thai language. So for those who do want to those who see the advantage of further integration, particularly linguistically. I think I would encourage them to take advantage of these language classes offered by groups like Joy house and other NGOs based in Mason and Chiang Mai.

Brad 43:16

And that's it's definitely a good thing that these places exist. Are these? I assume these are nonprofit entities.

Kenneth Wong 43:26

These are nonprofit, at least in the case of joyhouse, is nonprofit, and it's funded by donors. And I know the founder, Jeannie Murray Hallisey, who is a documentary filmmaker who's based in San Francisco, but spent nearly half of her time in Thailand every year.

Brad 43:47

Wow, yeah, okay, yeah. So, so it's good that that that exists. I know from one contact who's trying to learn sort of Thai while, while working in Chiang Mai, but she's working in a Burmese and English work environment, and so the need for Thai is reasonably limited in so far as her day to day life is concerned. And this is kind of that other factor that comes into it. Migrant communities, historically have naturally gravitated towards one another for the sense of familiarity and community and ease of communication. Is this leading to, in your opinion, a sort of isolation or a Burmese bubble within Chiang Mai and within masot, where Thai language just is not seen as all that necessary for your day to day operations. It's

Kenneth Wong 44:47

definitely is a vicious, vicious cycle. You don't want to make an effort to learn the language so you stay close to your primary. Speaking community, and then, because you are surrounded by Burmese speaking people in that Burmese speaking community, you're less likely to come in contact with Thai language, so you don't feel the need to learn it. I've seen the same thing happen with the overseas Burmese activist community in San Francisco. Many of them arrived after 1988 uprising, and they ended up here. But many of them also live their life in such a way, in a way they remind me a lot of the current Thai, Thailand based mascot based Chiang Mai based refugees. They live their life in us. They live their life in such a way so that whenever the military regime foldered and democratic regime, a democratic government came to power, they could just pack up and go back home and reboot their Burmese life that they left behind, so to speak. But little did they know, between 88 to 2011 when the transition period began, they had spent a good chunk of their life in America without making significant effort to learn the language. So as a result, they are not able to get into good jobs, good positions that requires professional English speaking and writing skills. And now, when they try to help the ongoing resistance movement from overseas, they can't really do effective lobbying. For example, they can't really go in front of a politician, a senator, and speak about Burma, even if they are lucky enough to get a chance to meet with them because they don't have their required English skill. I don't see that kind of mistake happen with the Thai base refugee population, but, but I see that there are fertile grounds and environment the sort of like an insulated, insulated community that is thriving in its own way, but also limiting in many ways.

Brad 47:10

Although that being said, I think there's a very interesting distinction to be drawn. You're talking about people who migrated to the United States in 88 and I mean that was over 30 years ago, and you're talking about the the limitations when it comes to talking to government figures and getting these high value jobs. The question that obviously comes then is the the Myanmar refugees living in mass hot do they actually have any chance of rising to a position where they could theoretically be working in a higher Thai job in a company where Thai is the language of operation. Do they have in their future the prospect of addressing high ranking Thai government officials, or is it more just this idea that, well, we'll never be Thai citizens. We'll never be accepted here. We'll never be given opportunities by large and important Thai companies. Will never be listened to by the Thai government. So why aspire to have the language skills to match those circumstances, if they're never going to happen for

Kenneth Wong 48:22

us. The little bit that I know, and I don't know, much I have to admit about the collaboration between the current military junta and Burma and the Thai government here, the little bit of things that I know suggest that at least both wants a way to a way to control and contain the the Burmese refugee population that is in Thailand. And I think even though within that corrupt system, there are actually level of legitimacy that you can get to where you can aspire to start to work for Thai, Thai companies and Thai employers who are probably much more sympathetic towards you and will treat you better. And I say that because in Bangkok, when I was going around, I also met Thai people who employ Burmese refugees, and they speak of their employees in a in a much more understanding and sympathetic fashion, not as lowly, low labor workers that we can just take advantage of so So, and maybe I say that because I'm an optimist as well, so I'm hopeful that even though the system is actually stacked against you. It's not impossible to get to that level, I think. Okay, so,

Brad 49:49

so that then opens up the other thing, because Southeast Asian citizenship laws are very different for. People who are Western, there's, there's a very different concept of of citizenship, and on a more personal level, this is, this is one of the reasons that it really riles me up when someone inevitably writes, you know, the 100 and 70th article decrying the fact that white people in Asia are referred to as expats, but Asians in Western countries are referred to as immigrants. And the fundamental factor is that in Western countries, we typically have a naturalization process. Many Western countries have a doctrine that is called you soli, so if you're born in that country, you gain citizenship by virtue of having been born there. The United States is a very famous example of yusuli, whereas a lot of Southeast Asian citizenship laws tend to be very strongly based on you sanguine is meaning that you have to have citizenship inherited from your parents. And even the concept of us matrimony. So citizenship acquired through marriage is often quite lengthy and difficult and complicated. Thailand, to my knowledge, is is much the same. In this regard, do the Burmese people living in in Thailand have any legal option to become citizens? Is that on the cards?

Kenneth Wong 51:20

I think in that, in that sense, Thailand operates similar to the way Burmese citizenship laws operate as well. In the way that, for example, if you're not Japanese, it would be very difficult for you to become Japanese. You know, you could become a naturalized Japanese citizen, but it's a long and lengthy process, and they are very selective about who is permitted to enter that inner sanctum. You're right that in many Asian countries operates with the assumption that the citizenship is by and large, based on your ancestry, not really based on your willingness and your desire to want to live in these countries. But I think many of these countries also offer the chance to the chance to live as long term residents. They do offer, including Burma, Burma does offer long term residency for and this is certainly an option that that will be open to people who have a lot of money and investment, dollars and investment that they can bring to this country, they will be obviously considered as special cases. But that would not be true of refugees, of course,

Brad 52:46

unfortunate reality. But, and I know this might call some conjecture, but do you do you know whether these in the Burmese system, the English translation for is just permanent residency, and I've seen foreigners who have permanent residency in Myanmar, but I've only seen it once. When I say foreigners, I mean I mean white foreigners. So I don't know how functionally accessible it is to Westerners to gain that status. One would presume that in Thailand, it's a little bit easier, because I know that the Thai are very interested in retirees from Western countries who have not insignificant retirement savings that will stretch significantly further if they're in Southeast Asia. And that's a very convenient and reliable form of investment. But would this preclude you from certain things? Here in Australia, for example, permanent residency exists, but there are a lot of government positions, for example, that are simply not open to you if you don't have citizenship. Is that discrimination likely to exist in Thailand?

Kenneth Wong 54:01

I don't know enough about the Thai legal system to be able to say this, but I have a feeling that, on the other hand, if you are a retiree with a law who wants to stretch the Valley of your American dollar by retiring in in Thailand, maybe you're not really interested in finding government jobs. You're much more interested in visiting Pattaya and lounging around a beach chair and drinking coconut juice making the best of your time.

Brad 54:34

Yeah. I mean, that's that is fair enough. But I mean more from the perspective of the Burmese people there, if they, if they were to aspire to to earn that permanent residency, would that open those doors?

Kenneth Wong 54:48

You know, I'm not sure I can answer that, because I don't know enough about the Thai system of immigration and legal laws that allow some. To to how far a Burmese immigrant could get to, yeah, okay,

Brad 55:05

that's fair enough. And just sort of in general, like not even necessarily looking at the legal aspects of it and your citizenship status, it's the the feeling of it, you know, the there's no, there's no real other way to put it, like the racism of it I'm wondering about because, you know, I think many of us remember, a good couple of years back before the coup, there was a murder that happened in Thailand, and two Burmese people were two Burmese foreign workers were arrested and they were put on death row. They would, you know it was, it was a sham trial. Everybody knew that it was a sham trial, and they were found guilty, and they were put on death row, and there were applications for commutation to life sentences from the King and things like this. And the attitude, at least around Yangon was very much well, but that's the done thing. Like, if there's a crime in Thailand, you don't want a Thai person to be guilty of it, so you just go arrest some Burmese people and say that they were the ones who are responsible for it. And that's just the way things are done. And I went to Thailand, I was talking to a Thai friend of mine, and she was very, sort of hesitant towards the Burmese and and we're talking, and she just, I don't know how we got there, but she turns around, it's like, yeah, but you know the Burmese, I was saying Buddhism, like you're both Buddhists. And then she turns out the Burmese are not Buddhist because 300 years ago, they invaded us, and they burned down this in this temple, and this very strong mentality of No, no, no, no, no. Like the Burmese are not like us, even though we were across the street from a temple where I could see Buddha next to Ganesh, next to Guanyin, next to all these other syncretic gods like that, there seems to be a very negative attitude among the Thai, at least in my experience, towards the Burmese is that contributing?

Kenneth Wong 57:06

Certainly the episode of the fall of Ayutthaya. The fall of Ayutthaya, I'm not an historian, but I think it happened around 1760 something like that, where the Burmese King simu Shin invaded Thailand, and when it put Ayutthaya under a siege, and finally, when the city fell, it essentially razed the city, destroyed Many of the fortifications, and force forced the top echelon of the Thai people, we're talking about, the wealthy merchants and people and the artisans and dancers and artisan things like that, to relocate to Burma and I, that must have been, that must have been a very traumatic experience in Thai history, and Thai people probably remember this bitterly. It's an episode that in Burmese histories, if I remember my high school history days talked about as one of the glorious moments of Burma overcoming a powerful rival neighbor. But for the Thai people, that probably was as traumatic as, you know, a British colonial occupation or things like that. Because from their perspective, I've seen that they talked about the the regaining of freedom, the king that led the movement that brought Thailand back to independence, is a celebrated hero. So so I could see the two different attitudes to it that episode. But I'm I'm also hopeful that during this trip, I also met some Thai people who are studying Burmese, who one of them was kind enough to come to meet me in a cafe and talk to me, and I get the feeling that if she is an example of a more progress, a more progressive and a more understanding kind of young generation of Thai people, I think they're less likely to hold a grudge against Burma for something that happened hundreds of hundreds of years ago, but, but you know, the old fashioned attitudes that you encountered among some Thai people, I'm sure still exists too, But because I was able to speak Thai with different cab drivers and people from different layers of the society in Bangkok, I didn't feel like I could pin I could pigeonhole the Thai attitude towards Burmese to a single type of. Of attitude. It, it has different variants, I think, from the best to the worst. Okay.

Brad 1:00:06

I mean, that's a more sort of realistic, I think, view of any any group in any nation. And I find it very interesting that you say that, you know, there are Thai people who who are learning Burmese. That's, that's quite, that's quite surprising to me, because this is Burmese would hardly be a prestige language in in the Thai community. Do you happen to know like, why she was focused on Burmese? Was it just to do refugee outreach, or just as interest, or,

Kenneth Wong 1:00:39

you know, for a very common reason that we would start learning language. Usually it happens because you visit the country and you fall in love with the culture and the people, and then you'd be inspired to learn the language. Before I went to Thailand, I must say, I also didn't think of Thailand as I thought of it as just as a fun, temporary tourist destination. I didn't think that I would be bewitched by the country, by its culture and the people, as much as I felt it did to me. So now I've got, like, six books on Thai language. I've got children's alphabet books that will allow me to trace Thai characters so that I could master the writing systems, and I have signed up for a podcast where that I happily pay a monthly fee so that I could get exclusive Thai instructional content so I see that Thai study is becoming a lifelong study for me, and all it took was just a two weeks visit to Bangkok and becoming fascinated with the culture and the people that I met. I have no doubt that the same kind of thing could happen to some of the Thai people who have had the opportunity to visit Burma. But of course, the sad truth is, under the current, under the current situation, being a country that is governed by a brutal military junta that is willing to wage war against his own people. I mean, we're talking about, you know, sending airstrikes against village schools that were not doing anything to them, there are less likelihood of foreigners visiting Burma and falling in love with the country and wanting to learn Burmese. It reflects in the enrollment in university Burmese classes like mime, because PhD students cannot go to the country to read stone inscriptions and colonial records in Burma, so they have less of a reason to invest two to three years of their life to study Burmese, and visitors cannot go experience the beautiful side of Burma because everything they hear is tragic and bloody war are a war headline, so they're less likely they want to pick up Burmese as a study.

Brad 1:03:07

Although this is sort of tangential, but it's something that, because I agree with you, I agree with you, that the focus is not is not there, and this is coming from multiple directions. I mean, the first direction is that, as you say, people are not as able to go. I do remember, when I was in my my undergraduate, we had someone from the United States who was visiting Australia, and she she had actually done a PhD on on Burma. Specifically, she was studying the experiences of educators who had fled over the border post 1988 and the ways in which those educators had been, let's say, creatively interpreting the military's edicts with regard to education content to instill critical thinking skills into students through the medium of a curriculum that was designed to crush the ability to think critically and question the government. But she she found that while the United States university that she was doing a PhD with would not allow her to go to Myanmar, the Australian university actually would have allowed her so it I don't know whether this is still the case, but it does seem that in some some universities in the United States, there is a, has been a strong hesitation to send researchers to Myanmar proper. So I don't know her research was in Thailand, but what I find as well, you know, I've just finished my my Burmese studies at my university, and I was the only student in in my class. You know, the first year class had maybe three or four students in it this year, and I finished the sort of high level stuff as as the only student. Second year is the only level that they teach to. There's only a two year course, and they're talking. About potentially coming in with a third year course, but university administration is very hesitant to spend the money to set up a course, because they're very worried about return on investment. But do you not feel that now is a more important time? If you know to learn Burmese, I

Kenneth Wong 1:05:18

like to think so. I like to think so, you know, because in order to understand the the the root causes of the long lasting military rule, or in order to more efficiently help the Burmese refugees who are stuck at the Burmese border, I think researchers, NGO workers, I like to think would would find the need to learn Burmese a greater need to learn Burmese. But it does eliminate the the traveler population that might come in contact with the culture and then fall in love with it and started learning the language. So there is still those NGO workers. There's still the researchers who are not working on archival stuff, but who would like to work with anthropological kind of research that requires speaking directly to your subjects in the border area. I would like to think that those kind of studies, those kind of research will still inspire people to learn Burmese, because people have talked about the fact that after after Russia invaded Ukraine, suddenly there is a rise of interest in a rise of enrollment In university classes, for example, for classes related to both Russian and both Ukraine history classes and also language classes as well. I like to think I, first of all, I wouldn't want this conflict in Burma to prolong any further than it needs to be. But if this, if the conflict is ongoing and sort of suffer that people like to learn Burmese language. I think it, I think since a very worthwhile pursuit to understand the root causes of the conflict and also to talk to people who are affected by the conflict directly in their own language. That way, you are not going through an interpreter to get the experience, and you get a much more accurate picture of what they went through and the trauma that they went through.

Brad 1:07:34

But I would just add to that, although I definitely agree on that point, and even more broadly than that point, just communicating to someone in their own language is such a fundamentally different experience than communicating through, you know, a mutual third language, or communicating through an app. You know, it again, as a linguist and a polyglot, when someone tells me things like, oh, you know, English is, is a universal language. There's no point studying other languages anymore. Or, AI translation technology is getting so good that, you know, language learning is sort of pointless. I just It bothers me because those comments come from people who are so monolingual that they don't understand that there is significantly more than just literal communication going on when two people speak in a in a given language, and they're missing a wealth of additional information, additional insight into who that person is, by relying On these, these, you know, transitory communication media, but more, I'm thinking, if the projections that we've been receiving are true, and we've had a couple of people come on and and have have spoken and said that, yeah, approximately six months seems to be a realistic time frame for the junta to be, at the very least corralled into napidor and for us to potentially start seeing a reopening of the country stabilization, even in the large urban centers, and hopefully potentially foreign economic investment back into the country, which is desperately needed, surely then, just For for the ability of foreign governments and foreign companies to be able to establish themselves and distinguish themselves in the new Myanmar that we we all fervently hope, is going to be established soon. Language skills are kind of something that that you need to be focusing on today, so that you are capable of using them tomorrow, when the opportunities present themselves to to come into the country and and interact with the people and interact with the systems and try to do some good.

Kenneth Wong 1:09:54

That's true. That's true too, because in order to reach a certain. Level of fluency, where you can have meaningful conversation, and not just asking for the price of a piece of fritter or asking for directions, but actually have meaningful conversation that allows you to build bonds and make social connections and have have robust discussions about history and culture and things like that, you have to invest probably about one to three years. I would think, for a skilled person, maybe one to one and a half year. But for average person, you have to at least invest about three years or so. So if, if our assumption is correct, and if your if your guest projection is correct, then it is a very good time for people who want to work in Burma to start investing time and energy in mastering the language itself. The other thing like you point out is, for me, when I go to a country putting the time to learn the language is not just for convenience. It's my way of paying homage to the country. It's also to show that my interest in their culture and their people is not cursory. I'm not somebody who would just go there, have a good time for two weeks and then never look back at this country, other than just looking back at my trip on Instagram, posts and things like that. I want this country, this culture and this language, to become a permanent part of my life. So so that's my way of showing that this is my intent, it's my lifelong commitment. That's why I'm learning a language. I'm not just a fly by tourist that will be there and then gone. So if people who people wants to people's interest in Burma is more than cursory, more than temporary, that they have a reason to they have a reason to help Burmese people or work with people in Burmese culture for a longer time. Then language learning is actually a prerequisite, and elementary step in it

Brad 1:12:19

absolutely, and it's, it's even goes deeper than that. I think I know this is a bit straying from our original topic, but I do think it's an important point to make that language doesn't just give you that ability to interact with people and get them to open up in ways that they physically are not capable of through other media or are just not comfortable doing, but additionally, the wealth of of back catalog, if you will, content you know, the the literary, the poetic, even you know movies, the consistent references that people make in their day to day communication, if you, if you can speak the language, and you can read the language, and you you can understand the poetic references and the literary references, these function as a as a very convenient shorthand for conveying very complicated sets of emotions in response to very complicated sets of circumstances that people who speak the language and live in the language can just sort of quickly convey to one another and and nod wisely and say, Ah yes, yes. You know, we all know that story, and it reminds us of this particular event, but there is no way to translate these. Like to attempt to explain these, and in the limited work that I've done, trying to contextualize and explain Burmese revolutionary slogans and content, some some things have required a page of explanation of of speeches that were given 100 years ago, of historical figures, of literary characters, of of books of poetry, of something like this, just to convey a cheap pun that in Burmese was was present in about four words. So yeah, there's this depth I think, that is being lost by people who who choose not to engage in a language. Yes,

Kenneth Wong 1:14:24

the talk that I gave at Joy house in mass art was related to that. The idea that many mono monolinguists are people who speak only a single language, seems to think that anything you can say in Lang one language could be translated to another language. That's not quite true, you know, because the way the Japanese would, before they eat something, would bow and say itadakimasu to pay homage to everything from the creature that gave up its life to make this meal happen to the farmers. It grow the rice to the cook that make the meal an expression of thank if this is not part of your culture say in English or something like that, then that phrase cannot be translated, because it's not part of the construct of the society that give birth to this language, the Burmese phrase annare, which could be an apology, but also a way to warn you that they're about to impose upon you and ask a favor that they know is going to inconvenience you, but they'll do it anyway. So they preface that with anare, that kind of phrases cannot be translated because it's very much a part of the cultural construct of that. So you first start with language, and then you actually become immersed with the culture, and you get a deeper understanding of the culture itself. In a sense, you become Burmese. When you get to that level, you're not only just speaking Burmese, but you're actually thinking and feeling like Burmese, or you're thinking and feeling like Japanese person. So when you get to that level, then, of course, you're born with the people. You're born with a culture, and your attitude towards the country and the people also change completely. It's It

Brad 1:16:20

is strange, because I find that so much of human communication, day to day, human communication is highly formulaic when we really get down to it, like I think those of us who have studied languages, we probably have memories of sitting in classrooms and reading the script of you know, hello, good day. I would like this. How much does it cost? And so on. But at the end of the day, when it gets down to it, those scripts are actually quite close to what a real life interaction is with a vendor or customer service or someone who works in these capacities. But what is surprising is the way in which these formulae change. Studying Persian, when someone asks you how you are, the correct answer to that is Thank you. You don't actually tell someone how you are, because they don't care you. Just thank them for expressing interest in how you are, and then you move on. Yeah, it was very like, you could say, you could say, like, how you are, but, but then that would be different, right? Like, if someone, if someone, asks you, you know that they're asking, like, What is your status? What is your status? What is your condition? It's quite a formal way of asking. Or you could say, like, Hola, for example, is more casual. You would generally just say mocharam. So thank you. But if someone says, Kubi, are you okay? Are you well, then you would be more likely to respond to them. I'm well, so it's the question cues you into what the expected response is. And you have to learn like it's a call and response in in the way that in Burmese Sabi villa, like no one cares whether or not you've actually physically eaten. The question is not about your dietary habits. It's it's more just a courtesy question, and it's a very, at least in my experience, is quite a pan asian thing, asking people whether they've eaten right as part of greeting.

Kenneth Wong 1:18:33

Yeah. That's true. That's true. Yeah, one of the common mistakes that language learners often make, and maybe it's not a mistake if you're learning languages that are closely related in cultures that are closely related, like English and Spanish and French, for example. But if somebody come to me with a list of English sentences that are commonly spoken, and they said I learned to learn how to say all of these in Burmese, and they'll come up with some phrases like good morning and good evening, which Burmese people don't say, by the way, you know, I could literally translate it into Gangnam and Kimba. A morning that is great, gown Yangon an evening, that is great. But you'll be laughed at it if you say that, because you won't sound Burmese, you know. So the more the more reasonable question is, what do Burmese people say to each other in the morning and then learn that phrase to be much more Burmese? That's the right attitude towards it. Sometimes, if you're not a linguist, or if you're not a learner, who have learned a language that is vastly different from your mother tongue and your native culture, you make these kind of mistakes, and it's good to know that Burmese language, or Thai language for English speakers, is a completely different specimen of language from a different culture. And it's more important to get the undertones of the culture and. Um, rather than just to get the literal translation of what you want to say,

Brad 1:20:05

Absolutely. And I find like now that you've, you've said, you know, someone might, might ask, How do you say good morning and good evening? It just occurred to me, like I've never even tried to say that in Burmese. I've never, because no one's ever said that to me. Yeah, it wouldn't, it wouldn't make sense. And so, yeah, like, if I went into it completely, sort of fresh, because the Chinese, for example, do, you know, do shahaw and all these sorts of things. So you do have phrases in Chinese for that. So people might reasonably assume, well, you know, as a general rule, Asian languages. Yeah, that's not how this works. Like, everyone is, everyone is different, everyone, everyone does it their own way. And that's the Thai thing as well. Like, that's, that's the other thing. Like, you go to Thailand, you see Thai people, and they always, you know, they, they're very heavy on the Anjali Mudra, you know, putting the hands together gesture, very rare in Burma.

Kenneth Wong 1:21:03

That's right, very rare in Burma, exactly. And the same thing with Thai too, you know, because if you could say good morning, if you want, you can say Aru sawat, but that's doesn't sound Thai at all, more likely they'll just say sabaide, sawadi kaap or sawadi Ka, and that will be it. And it, it. It's much more natural if you speak that way, rather than try to literally translate what you would say in the morning and say it to a Thai person.

Brad 1:21:35

And I found that even you go to Lao, and I think a lot of languages, particularly Asian languages where levels of formality and politeness are so important, you often find that there are regions where magically, this evaporates. So in Korea, my understanding is, if you go down to Jeju Island, the population is so small that very strictly hierarchical language is just not functional. And the thing with Thai, you know, adding these politeness markers, like Ha at the end, like, when I was in Lao, people like that, that doesn't exist here, right? There aren't enough people in Lao for that to have significance. So it's, it's just sub ID. It's not sub ID cup. You just sound like a Thai tourist if you did that sub ID. And that's it,

Kenneth Wong 1:22:28

right? Yeah, the it has to do with the fact that what society agree on as the politeness marker, or what the society agree on as a mode of speaking that is considered acceptable if you deviate from that, even though your intent might be to be polite, it may no longer serves that purpose anymore. So that's the fascinating thing about language. And

Brad 1:22:53

again, back in the Burmese context, I do find it a little bit it's it's a little bit tricky to to to make it sound natural, because you know what determines what words am I allowed to use with what person you know? Can you use min? Can you use Nin, or do you have to use Kamiya? Kamiya sounds a little bit very formal to me. And so I would naturally think, well, if I'm talking to, you know, a taxi driver, if I'm talking to a server in a restaurant or something, what the word would be like Min, and I've had Burmese friends of mine, you know, tell me off and say, like, that was, that was not an appropriate pronoun to use for for someone who is not a personal friend of yours. I'm like, Yeah, but he's not, he's not my employer. So Camille does not sound natural in this, like, what would I do? And they're just like, well, just don't use a pronoun in that sentence at all. It wasn't necessary anyway. It's like, you know, I'm a European, like, I need a subject in my sentence. I need something. So it's hard to make it natural.

Kenneth Wong 1:23:54

That's true. That's true. The Burmese will either, in the cases you mentioned, the Burmese will either skip the pronoun, or they would use a kinship term, like if you are speaking to a waiter who is relatively younger, you call him nie little brother. Or a girl who is relatively younger, you call him Yama little sister. Or if you know their name, you use their name as a substitute pronoun. And those would be considered a much more polite options and calling somebody come out or me, which, which could come across as confrontational if you do it quite often,

Brad 1:24:28

which, again, that's that's such a an odd thing, because pronoun, pronouns in western languages tend to be sort of reasonably Closed Class. It's like, this is the set of pronouns you learn them and you apply them across the board with, you know, sometimes minimal distinction between formal and informal pronouns. But yeah, then you go to Asia, where it's like a pronoun is any noun that, for whatever communally agreed upon reason, can stand in place of the name of a person. And yeah, as you said, kinship terms or even titles, you know, like sayagyi U. Teacher could just function as a pronoun.

Kenneth Wong 1:25:02

It is a pronoun. That's right. Yeah, that's true. That's true. And

Brad 1:25:06

even a personal like a first person pronoun, like my, my Burmese teacher would often refer to herself as Sayama when speaking Burmese, correct, which I thought so, so strange. Like, you know, we have Janelle And Jamal like, why are you not using the words? But no, you use the title.

Kenneth Wong 1:25:25

For some reason the sentiment that you get, particularly in the case of women in Burmese, when they refer to themselves in English, we call it as referring to yourself as a third person, which would be a very pretentious thing to do. But in Burmese, actually, it is considered a softer, a more, a more sensitive way of speaking about yourself, without thrusting the which is a very egotistical way of saying in Burmese view,

Brad 1:25:56

which, yeah, so it's the complete opposite. And so it's getting that, that mental habit of thinking of these things as appropriate ways of communicating, I myself have a lot of difficulty even using ba I don't include it in most of my sentences because it feels unnecessary. And then I find that there are some sentences where I'm being told, even if it weren't for politeness factors, just for euphonic factors, the sentence sounds incomplete without a syllable hanging at the end. So it's just nicer to throw BA in to make it sound complete and balanced. That's right,

Kenneth Wong 1:26:33

that's right. It's especially if your sentence is ending with a noun, it sounds very abrupt if you say da Yangon, this is Yangon, but it sounds much more natural, and it flows nicer and softer if you say da Yangon BA, this is Yangon. Small things like that. Those are things that you picked up. If you do what I do like, start to listen to the content of the language you want to learn. Switch of primary language and Netflix to what you want to learn, and you start to pick up these things that are not in the textbook. So those are the things as you acquire through imitation and mimicry. And you can't really learn that

Brad 1:27:17

and yet. But the the only issue here is when it comes to Burmese language itself, the content for Burmese language is quite limited. At least, I found it to be quite limited. There's a lot of media content being created Burmese journalism and so on. But beyond that, if I wanted to take media that I'm already familiar with and have it presented to me in a Burmese version, I find it's very difficult to find that it's

Kenneth Wong 1:27:43

true. You don't have the option, for example, to change the Netflix audio to Burmese for default. You can do that with Japanese or Thai, for example. And you don't have a lot of subtitle good quality Burmese movies that you can access to, but, but there is a growing there is a growing list of content creators, I must say, on both Facebook and on YouTube. We're talking about travel vloggers and or the walk and talk kind of people who would walk along a particular Burmese location, and introduce you things that he or she encounters. Those are very good for language learners, because you're looking at it in context. You're looking at things and context and hearing the Word, which allows you to put things together and understand what they're talking about.

Brad 1:28:38

But it kind of bringing it back to the Thai people who are picking up Burmese. It to me, that's actually quite impressive, because I can't imagine that those Thai people would have many options, especially living in Thailand, to undertake any sort of formal education in Burmese, they wouldn't have, I presume, access to Thai language materials that are designed for Burmese learning. So they would have to be picking a lot of things up just by trial and error and and, you know, picking it up passively listening to other Burmese around them or communicating. And, you know, when I hear that like I feel ashamed, because I spent three years in Yangon, and I spent most of that time in an English speaking bubble and and my Burmese is quite weak as a result of that, so I'm quite surprised that the Thai are finding it that easy, or some of them at least, are finding it that easy to pick up Burmese.

Kenneth Wong 1:29:38

Well, I also had a chance to meet with one of my former classmates, who used to be a NLT MP, and is now based in mass, and he said, once arriving in mass, he decided to learn Thai, and he hired a Thai person. And to teach him Thai. And over the course of a year or so, he never managed to pick up Thai, but his Thai teacher managed to pick up for me. So I have to tell you my I think you're in company. You're in good company. Some people pick up languages very easily. Some people maybe it takes more efforts and concerted efforts and time.

Brad 1:30:25

And, yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it is a difficult process. And, you know, speaking from the perspective of both the language teacher and the linguist, like it's, no matter what the language is, no matter how easy the language appears, grammatically, phonetically, structurally, no matter how similar it is to your native language. Learning to speak a language fluently is always a lengthy process. It is a heavy personal investment in time and mental effort, and it is something that although I would argue it is one of the most rewarding and valuable experiences and things that you can invest your time and your effort into. It is nevertheless a very difficult thing to achieve, and it's something to be lauded if anyone undertakes it successfully. Looking to the future, I'm wondering like you've you've been speaking to these people, and you've been speaking to people who are in a very many of them are in a very desperate situation, even even those who are paying their rent, they've got a roof over their heads. You know that they're still in a very uncertain circumstance in terms of the feeling and the sense that you're getting from getting from them looking towards the future, looking towards a potentially post coup, the post revolution. Reality. Do you anticipate that this large influx into Thailand is going to lead to a shift in Myanmar Thailand relations on the personal level,

Kenneth Wong 1:32:03

for the better, I hope, I hope, and I'm also hopeful that some of the activists and refugees I met, even though, like you said, they are in desperate situation with uncertain future, they also turning around and helping people who are less fortunate, and helping people who arrive Fresh Off the Boat, as it were, because they have had the chance to resettle to some extent so they are in a position to help. So, for example, one of the actress, one of the activists that I met, a young Burmese activist who used to belong to the Burmese student union who fled to mass autumn after the coup. She couldn't come to one of the meetings that I had at a tea shop because she was distributing Christmas gift to some of the needy people in Thailand. So when I hear stories like that, you know, I have nothing but admiration for them, for the fact that even though they are struggling situation, they find pleasure. They seek your reward in self as selfless acts like that. I think these are the people that in the post coup federal union kind of democratic kind of Burma that we envision. These are the kind of young people that will lead the nation rebuilding efforts. These are the kind of people that I hope could become rich, that foster good wills between Thailand and Burma, because if they go back, maybe they retain some fond memories of the good experiences that they've had in Thailand. Or if they continue to stay in Thailand and do something meaningful with their life, maybe they they can facilitate the cultural cultural exchanges that could happen between Thai people and Burmese people. So I'm hopeful. I have nothing but admiration for these young people, particularly the young people, because I feel like they have shouldered an unfair burden for this conflict. Many of them, within these past three years or so have witnessed brutality and torture and suffered losses that we probably could never imagine encountering in our entire lifetimes. But despite that, don't get me wrong, they show signs of mental physical trauma, for sure, but there is still also the side of them that I can see that is able to wake up and smile and just take simple pleasure in a cup of Burmese tea and fried donuts at a Burmese tea shop. So I'm hopeful

Brad 1:34:56

share some final comments now. You.

Kenneth Wong 1:35:00

My I guess, based on what we have spoken about today, I think my final thought is that you you fall in love with a culture, and then you start learning the language, and then the language leads you to fall in love with the culture more. So it's a double edged sword, but it's actually it's a worthwhile love affair, so I would say it's well worth pursuing you.

Host 1:36:00

Again, I know for a lot of podcast listeners, as soon as the fundraising requests start up, you just kind of zone out or skip ahead till it's over. But I ask that if you're taking the time to listen to our full podcast, that you also take the time to consider our spiel. Some may assume that producing a two hour episode wouldn't take much more than the conversation itself, but so much more goes into it. In advance of the interview, our content team reviews the biography and relevant works of the upcoming guests, and we discuss the best way to use our limited time together. After the interview is completed, the raw audio file is sent to our sound engineer who shapes it into working order. A single episode can take several full days of solid production work in the studio, which is carefully coordinated with our content team to ensure smooth listening further edits and post production magic. Bring the eventual episode of your ears along with extensive written descriptions of each interview which we publish on our blog and social media. Many of these steps require an outlay of funds in some way or another. We hope that each episode informs you about the ongoing crisis, and if you find it of value. We also hope that you might consider supporting our mission. If you would like to join in our mission, to support those in Myanmar who are being impacted by the military coup, we welcome your contribution in any form, currency or transfer method, Your donation will go on to support a wide range of humanitarian and media missions, aiding those local communities who need a host. Donations are directed to such causes as the Civil Disobedience movement, CDM, families of deceased victims, internally displaced person. IDP camps, food for impoverished communities, military defection campaigns, undercover journalists, refugee camps, monasteries and nunneries, education initiatives, purchasing of protective equipment and medical supplies, covid relief and more. We also make sure that our donation Fund supports a diverse range of religious and ethnic groups across the country. We invite you to visit our website to learn more about past projects as well as upcoming needs. You can give a general donation or earmark your contribution to a specific activity or project you would like to support, perhaps even something you heard about in this very episode. All of this humanitarian work is carried out by our nonprofit mission better Burma. Any donation you give on our insight Myanmar website is directed towards this fund. Alternatively, you can also visit the better Burma website, better burma.org and donate directly there. In either case, your donation goes to the same cause and both websites, except credit card, you can also give via PayPal, by going to paypal.me/better, Burma. Additionally, we can take donations through Patreon, Venmo, GoFundMe and Cash App. Simply search better Burma on each platform, and you'll find our account. You can also visit either website for specific links to these respective accounts, or email us at info@betterburma.org, that's betterburma, one word spelled B, E, T, T, E R, B, U, R, M, A.org. If you would like to give it another way, please contact us. We also invite you to check out our range of handicrafts that are sourced from vulnerable artisan communities across Myanmar, available at alokacrafts.com. Any purchase will not only support these artisan communities, but also our nonprofit's wider mission. That's Aloka Crafts spelled, A, L, O, K, A, C, R, A, F, T, S, word, alokacrafts.com. Thank you so much for your kind consideration and support.