Every few years over winter break, my family and I would fly across the Pacific Ocean to visit relatives in Thailand. My spoken Thai was choppy—elementary at best—and so my interactions were limited to respectful greetings, thank yous, and admissions that I was hungry or needed to pee.
After college, I was determined to level up my language fluency. I was tired of reacquainting myself to my aunts, uncles, and cousins and getting comfortable with Thai, only to leave and have to start over in another two to three years. I wanted to be more to my extended family than just the American cousin. My goal was to come back to Thailand and have an actual conversation with my relatives instead of politely listening and stuffing my face the whole time.
So for two years, I studied with a teacher. I memorized the alphabet, the tones, the grammatical structures. I watched Thai soap operas, or lakorn, read children’s books, and added a Thai keyboard to my phone and laptop. I went to a Thai temple for Songkran, the Thai New Year, and timidly ordered food in my ancestral tongue, relief washing over me when the vendors understood what I meant.
The next time I visited Thailand, I was no longer the American cousin; I was the American cousin speaking conversational Thai in an American accent!
It felt really good to chatter with and learn slang from my cousins and see my uncles’ faces light up, but one particular interaction meant a lot to me.
My dad has an older sister who I always saw as the matriarch of my extended family. She had a high-ranking position in the government, expressed her opinions with indisputable confidence, and carried herself with the grace and poise of a woman in her element. Add on a language barrier, and I was naturally intimidated by this mysterious, powerful person.
One day, it just happened to be me and my aunt at the house. She asked me if I wanted to tour the building she’d worked at for decades and I obliged. We’d never spent time just the two of us, but it wasn’t awkward at all. As we idly chattered, I realized a couple key things.
First, she actually knew quite a bit of English—it was required of her to know Business English for her work. She just hadn’t attempted to speak it around me because she was self-conscious, and after she retired she went out of practice. Seeing me trying conversational Thai encouraged her not to judge herself so much with her English. Which led me to my second realization: my big shot aunt was just a person with insecurities like anyone else.
I felt both happy and sad at the same time. Happy that I got to know my aunt as a person, and sad at the years lost because we didn’t know enough of the same words. But at least we were here now, in her car talking like I’d imagined an aunt and niece would; saying hello to her colleagues and telling them where I was from and what I was studying; walking around the outdoor market afterward and pointing out the clothes and food we liked and wanted.
Neither of us were fluent in the other’s native language, but now we were unguardedly filling in and trading words, building a bridge rather than holding close to perfection.
Arriving at a truer understanding of the other, and in turn, a gentler one of ourselves as well.