STORIES
The Dreyfus Affair
It all began with a crumpled piece of paper. The case against Captain Alfred Dreyfus was rubbish in the most literal sense. As part of routine surveillance, cleaning ladies at the German Embassy in Paris were bribed to sort through the wastepaper baskets of the German staff and pass on any letters to the French counter-espionage service. On 26 September 1894, the elderly Madame Bastiane became perhaps the most famous cleaning lady in world history when her rubbish collection yielded a document that ripped the Republic of France apart and almost brought the nation to the brink of civil war.
She had found and handed over a note (later referred to as the ‘bordereau memorandum’) which listed five items of military information that an anonymous writer was offering to sell to the Germans. The memo was unsigned, and the secrets offered were not particularly important. But it was obvious that someone in the French officer corps was spying for the Germans, and from the evidence of the note, had clearly been doing so for some time.
In looking for a culprit, counter-espionage alighted first on Captain Alfred Dreyfus, and the intelligence agents never looked any further. For Dreyfus was Jewish, the son of a wealthy family of Alsace textile manufacturers, and something of a phenomenon on the French General Staff. The highly snobbish French army officer corps considered itself to be an elite aristocratic body – and no Jew had penetrated its upper echelons before.
In fact, Jewishness was the main thing that his accusers had against Dreyfus, along with the fact that he was an artillery officer and the secret information offered for sale chiefly concerned heavy guns. Dreyfus was tricked into providing a sample of his handwriting, and when it seemed to bear a faint resemblance to that on the memo, he was arrested and charged with high treason on 15 Oct. 1894.
Alfred Dreyfus was born in Mulhouse, Alsace on 9 October 1859, the youngest of seven children in the family of a Jewish textile manufacturer who stayed in France and kept their French nationality when Alsace was annexed by German troops in 1871. Alfred was accepted into the Ecole Polytechnique for initial military training in 1877 and graduated in 1880 as a sub-lieutenant. For the next two years he attended an academy at Fontainebleau for specialised training as an artillery officer. On graduation he was attached to the first division of the 32nd Cavalry Regiment and promoted to lieutenant in 1885. In 1889 he was made adjutant to the director of the pyrotechnical school in Bourges, and promoted to captain. Though highly intelligent, young Alfred’s oddly cold and aloof manner later proved a deterrent to some of his would-be defenders. “In some ways, he was his own worst enemy,” said one.
The court martial of Dreyfus, held in December, was a squalid charade. M Gobert, chief handwriting expert to the General Staff had been asked to compare Dreyfus’s handwriting with the incriminating note. He flatly declared that the writing was not the same. This would not do at all as far as the investigators were concerned, so they looked elsewhere for evidence against the young officer. They called in the celebrated Alphonse Bertillon of the Surete, a pioneer of police identification methods, but not a handwriting expert. Told beforehand that Dreyfus was unquestionably guilty, and being a firm anti-Semite, Bertillon provided the positive identification the prosecution required.
Other evidence was also flimsy. One witness was permitted to testify that some nameless individual, an ‘honourable person’ had told him that Dreyfus was a traitor. Another described how, when accused of treason, “the Jew went pale”. Dreyfus’s fate was sealed when forged evidence was presented to the judges by Major Henry, deputy chief of counter-espionage, without the knowledge of Dreyfus’s lawyer.
Declared guilty as charged, Dreyfus was sentenced to life imprisonment and subjected to ritual degradation. On 4 January 1895 the prisoner was brought out onto the parade ground of the Military Academy in Paris, where troops formed a hollow square around him. His officer’s insignia was ripped from his uniform; his sword was broken and theatrically tossed to the ground. Then, in tattered jacket and cap, Dreyfus was marched around the square to face the jeers and anti-Semitic taunts of his fellow officers. He had declared himself not guilty from the outset of this ordeal, and now, enduring the march of shame, he shouted, “I am innocent!” with almost every step.
Dreyfus was sent to the infamous Devil’s Island in the notorious French penal colony of Cayenne, French Guiana. In solitary confinement and under heavy guard, the disgraced officer was left to rot away. Back in France, there were many who considered him lucky to have escaped execution.
The French military brass was quite prepared to forget all about Dreyfus but for the continued campaign of protest by Dreyfus’s family and the integrity of one man at the War Office: Lieutenant-Colonel Georges Picquart. Appointed head of counter-espionage in July 1895, Picquart found that leaks to the German Embassy were continuing. Another document was intercepted (an express letter which became to be known as ‘petit bleu’) which clearly incriminated an officer named Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy. As he investigated the new suspect, Picquart obtained specimens of his handwriting; and was amazed by its similarity to the handwriting on the ‘bordereau’. The more he looked into it the more Picquart became convinced that Dreyfus was innocent of treason. Esterhazy, a man of dubious past and often in debt, was surely the culprit in both cases.
Picquart duly informed his superiors. To his horror they seemed not to care. “What has it got to do with you if a Jew is on Devil’s Island?” queried General Gonse.
“But surely, sir, if Dreyfus is innocent....?” said Picquart.
Gonse waved dismissively. “If you say nothing about it, nobody will know any different, Picquart,” he said. “Drop this matter immediately. That’s an order!”
But Picquart refused to drop the matter and proved to be such an embarrassment to top military staff that in Nov. 1896 he was removed from his post and ordered off to Tunisia where France was fighting another colonial war. He was cynically posted to an area of fierce fighting where he was most likely to get killed.
Picquart survived his ordeal in North Africa, and the Dreyfus family continued to campaign for a retrial. They too had concluded that Esterhazy was the real villain and the case was becoming a public issue that provoked questions in Parliament. Then a bombshell was dropped when ‘Le Figaro’ published some letters written by Esterhazy in which he openly expressed his hatred for the French army.
At this stage, military brass began a cynical cover-up. An inquiry and court martial was stage-managed for Esterhazy, and handwriting experts gave evidence to testify that Dreyfus had disguised his own handwriting to make it look like Esterhazy’s! In January 1898, Esterhazy was acquitted of treason and Picquart, ordered back to Paris, was jailed on the charge of forging evidence against him.
This mismanagement of natural justice infuriated many, including the famous novelist Emile Zola (1840-1902) who weighed in with the most famous newspaper manifesto in history. Printed on the front page of ‘L’Aurore’ and headed ‘J’Accuse!’, Zola savaged the whole list of people involved in the Dreyfus cover-up, from the government and generals downwards. It was a brilliantly written appeal for justice in the affair, but Zola’s brave bid only brought him to near ruin. He was charged with criminal libel by the authorities, tried and found guilty. Fined and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment, Zola twice appealed eloquently only to be ignored. He fled across the Channel before he could be arrested and continued his campaign in England. He settled in the leafy suburb of Norwood in southeast London, where he ‘developed’ (!) an interest in the new art of photography.
The whole of France was now in ferment over ‘The Dreyfus Affair’, and the fate of the innocent man toiling away on Devil’s Island was almost forgotten as the nation polarised. Factions fought largely according to the traditions of left and right in French politics: for Dreyfus were the republicans, the anti-clericals, the Protestants, Freemasons and Jews. Ranged against Dreyfus were the military, monarchists, Catholics and rabid anti-Semites. But there were more complex alignments, too, as families split and lifelong friendships were broken. The famous novelist Marcel Proust (1871-1922) was both Jewish and a fervent campaigner for Dreyfus. But his father, a successful and fashionable doctor, was firmly anti-Dreyfus, being a personal friend of government ministers. When Marcel organised a petition of intellectuals on Dreyfus’s behalf, his father refused to speak to him for months afterwards.
The final turning point came when the War Office blundered by initiating the prosecution of Picquart. This inevitably led to a close scrutiny of all the documentary evidence against Dreyfus; and by now the army clerks had built up a fat dossier. But the ‘evidence’ was counterfeit. The intelligence officer Henry had taken it upon himself to compile a whole set of forged documents to incriminate Dreyfus and on close inspection it was obvious that they were blatantly false.
In August 1898, a new War Minister discovered Henry’s incriminating data and ordered his arrest. Under questioning, the forger broke down and confessed. The next day he slit his throat with a razor and died. Esterhazy now realised that his game was up, and prudently fled the country to Germany.
The tide had turned, but it ebbed at a painfully slow rate. In June 1899, after four backbreaking years on Devil’s Island, Dreyfus was brought back to France to face the retrial that his supporters had campaigned for. The prisoner was now grey-haired and in the dock he looked to be a broken man. There was rioting outside the courthouse and an attempt was made to assassinate the defence lawyer, Monsieur Labori. The fate of the nation hung in the balance as the seven judges considered their verdict. In the end, they decided by a majority of 5 votes to 2 that Dreyfus was ‘guilty with extenuating circumstances.’ He was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment.
It was a preposterous verdict: if Dreyfus was guilty, what circumstances could possibly extenuate his treachery? In reality the court’s finding was clearly designed to soften the blow to the morale of French army chiefs, and perhaps defuse an incendiary situation. “Not good enough, gentlemen!” shouted Dreyfus’s supporters. Only ten days later, on 19 September 1899, Dreyfus was pardoned by President Emile Loubet.
But the pardon was also controversial: it implied some measure of guilt, and Dreyfus accepted it on condition that he was free to go on fighting to prove his complete innocence. And so, eventually, he did. In 1906 the Rennes verdict was finally quashed and Dreyfus fully exonerated. Restored to the army with the rank of major, he fought with distinction in World War 1, from which he emerged a lieutenant colonel and was awarded the Legion of Honour. His son Pierre also served in numerous engagements as an artillery captain and was awarded ‘Le Croix de Guerre’ for his services.
One casualty of the affair was Major-General Max von Schwartzkoppen, spymaster at the German embassy in Paris. It is now known that Ferdinand Esterhazy had furnished him with 162 important military documents, listed as ‘top secret’, and that the French traitor had been on the German payroll for 12,000 marks a month. Schwartzkoppen had been forbidden by his superiors to speak out at the time of the great ‘affair’, for French chaos only aided German military interests. But the burden of silence had obviously told on the one-time military attaché.
In 1917, as Schwartzkoppen lay dying in a Berlin hospital, his wife heard him crying incessantly: “Frenchmen, listen to me! Dreyfus is innocent! He was never guilty! Everything was intrigue and falsification! I tell you that Dreyfus is innocent!”
Two days after the death of Alfred Dreyfus in Paris in 1935, his funeral cortege passed the Place de la Concorde through the ranks of troops assembled for the Bastille Day National Holiday (14 July). His body was interred in the Cimetiere du Montparnasse, Paris. The inscription on his tombstone is in Hebrew and French. It reads (translated): ‘Here lies Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Dreyfus; Officer of the Legion of Honour; 9 October 1859 – 12 July 1935’.
There is a statue of the deeply wronged Dreyfus holding his broken sword at the entrance to the Museum of Jewish Art and History in Paris.
IF YOU need a check on my True Crime series of stories, published in the Hua Hin Observer, here is a complete list to date:
April 2002 -The Green Bicycle case, 1921. May 2002 - The Craig/Bentley Case, 1952. June 2002 - The A6 Murder Case, 1961. July 2002 - Murder of the Earl of Errol, 1941. August 2002 - The O J Simpson murder trial, 1995. September 2002 - The Aileen Wuornos case, 1989. October 2002 - The Ronald Opus case, 1993. November 2002 - Madame X, 1929. December 2002 - The Spree Killer, 1984. January 2003 - Shootout at Smiths' Club, 1966. February 2003 - The Christine Dryland case, 1991. March 2003 - Poisoned Pie in Essex, 1982. April 2003 - The Heydrich assassination, 1943. May 2003 - The Diana Davidson Murder case, 1969. June 2003 - The death of Alkibiades, 404 BC. July 2003 - The headsman of Colmar, 1780. August 2003 - The Ruth Ellis case, 1955. September 2003 - The Mel Jones Murder case, 1975. October 2003 - The Bluebeard of the bath, 1915. November 2003 - Murder in a combat zone, 1966. December 2003 - The Barn Restaurant murder case, 1972. January 2004 - The assassination of JFK, 1963. February 2004 - Judge Falcone and the Mafia, 1992. March 2004 - Gilles de Rais/Bluebeard, 1404-1440. April 2004 - The hand in the sand case, 1885. May 2004 - The body in the bag, 1979
Thailand a key to new Myanmar sanctions
By Andrew Symon
As international condemnation mounts against Myanmar’s military government and its recent armed crackdown on street demonstrators, the country’s money-spinning oil-and-gas sector could soon be the target of new and tighter Western-led sanctions. Should new bans on energy trade and investment come to pass, more than any other regional country Thailand will find itself caught between a diplomatic rock and an economic hard place.
Natural gas exports to Thailand are by far the Myanmar government’s largest source of foreign revenues, accounting for nearly US$160 million per month in take-or-pay contracts negotiated before the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis - and well before the recent spike in global energy prices. According to statistics from the Asian Development Bank, gas exports contribute nearly one-third of Myanmar’s total official export revenues. And there are several big new bilateral investment plans underway to pump up further natural gas and electricity exports from Myanmar to Thailand.
Under former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand came under US criticism for expanding its business ties with Myanmar’s junta. His government’s so-called “forward engagement” policy towards Myanmar was out of line with US- and European-led trade and investment sanctions, but was in accord with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which, since admitting Myanmar into the grouping in 1997, had preferred economic engagement over isolationism to influence the regime.
Any new sanctions against Myanmar’s energy industry are likely to have as marginal an impact on Myanmar’s ruling junta’s staying power as the punitive measures the US first imposed in 1997. China and India are both bidding to negotiate greater access to Myanmar’s untapped energy resources. And both countries have notably refrained from criticizing the regime after last week’s crackdown. Energy analysts note that if Thailand were to abandon its contractual arrangements in Myanmar, China and India would likely move to take up the slack.
Natural gas is Myanmar’s hotly contested prize, with several regional countries bidding to explore new blocks up for tender. In the early 20th century Myanmar, then known as Burma, was an important regional oil producer from its deep onshore fields. However, oil production had dwindled in recent decades and large - although not massive - natural gas resources have more recently been discovered and foreign investments have helped to boost output.
New sanctions targeting existing rather than only new investments in Myanmar’s energy industry would at least temporarily dent the regime’s ability to profit from these resources. Potential targets of Western-led and ASEAN-upheld sanctions could hit some of the largest energy companies in the world, including France’s Total, the US’s Chevron, Malaysia’s Petronas, South Korea’s Daewoo and Korea Gas Corp, and, hypothetically, Thailand’s PTT Exploration and Production (PTTEP).
There are also several small and medium sized Western upstream oil and gas companies - including so-called larrikin outfits - which currently operate below the political radar, but if forced to withdraw due to new sanctions on existing investments would at least temporarily disrupt Myanmar’s ability to tap offshore wells, until China, India or another non-Western-aligned country moved in to fill the technology gap.
The politics of imposing new sanctions against Myanmar would be highly complex and potentially damaging to the Thai economy if Bangkok were to take part. Myanmar is already expanding its energy export base, emerging as a key new supplier to China and possibly also to India and South Korea. China and India are locked in competition for gas supply from fields now operated by South Korean companies offshore near western Myanmar.
China has secured at least the initial advantage for a gas pipeline plan approved by the Myanmar government to send supplies to southwest China and the idea for another pipeline taking product landed in Myanmar from Africa and the Middle East - giving China an additional supply route to the congested Malacca Strait - is also on the table.
India has mooted a similarly ambitious pipeline plan with Myanmar, which conceivably would send gas through Bangladesh and supply areas in eastern India. But it’s still unclear if Dhaka, which has stonewalled other energy projects with India, would support any India-Myanmar initiative which passes through its territory.
Thailand’s own supplies of natural gas, which currently fuel 65% of the country’s total electricity output, are fast diminishing at a time industrial demand for the resource is simultaneously rapidly rising. According to BP figures, proven gas reserves in the Gulf of Thailand will likely run dry over the next 17 years. There are still untapped resources in the joint Thai-Malaysia development area as well as in the contested overlapping claims area with Cambodia - but even if maximized are not expected to bridge the emerging shortfall.
Meanwhile, state energy company PTT predicts that national natural gas demand will grow from 3.32 billion cubic feet per day (cfpd) at present to 6.1 billion cfpd by 2015. Thailand’s power generation capacity, meanwhile, is projected to increase to 58,000 megawatts by 2021 from its current level 28,500 megawatts in the current power plan. Myanmar gas currently meets over 25% of total Thai demand and plans to steadily increase those volumes are now on the cards.
Gas is now piped from the offshore Yadana field, operated by France’s Total in partnership with the US’s Chevron, as well as from the offshore Yetagun field in the eastern Andaman Sea. These two fields alone supply an average of 900 million cfpd to Thailand. Volumes from those same fields are set to increase by another 300 million cfpd by 2011 in a big new offshore project operated by Thailand’s PTTEP.
Additionally, there are a growing number of joint Thai-Myanmar hydropower projects planned or under development on the Salween River, which forms part of the shared border between the two countries. These include the 7,110 megawatt Tar-Hsan and 1,500 megawatt Hut Gyi dams, both of which were signed by Myanmar’s junta and Thai companies, including the state-run monopoly the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand.
Both controversial projects are designed specifically to supply power to Thailand, but analysts say could conceivably be rerouted to China if Bangkok were to back new Western-led sanctions. China is currently backing other hydropower projects on the upper reaches of the same river designed to supply power to its fast growing south-western regions.
So far Thai officials have sent mixed signals about their intentions and have downplayed Thailand’s significance to new sanctions imposed against the regime. Defense Minister Boonrawd Somtas told reporters that the current protests were unlikely to unseat Myanmar’s junta and that political change was unlikely unless China, India and Russia exerted “serious pressure”.
Meanwhile, top Thai energy official Piyasavati Amranand has said Myanmar’s recent troubles have prevented his officials from negotiating any new gas supply deals and that any planned talks would be delayed until the political situation stabilizes. At the same time, he said that Thailand’s intention to secure new natural gas supplies from Myanmar remains unchanged.
Copyright 2007 www.atimes.com
Learning Thai the Natural Way
Innovative Approach to language learning
By Antonio Graceffo
When someone suggested using a method called “The Natural Way,” to learn Thai, I was skeptical. From my experience, there is nothing natural about learning Thai. It is one of the hardest languages in Asia. But if you master it, whole new worlds open up to you. And maybe someday, you’ll be able to join in with your Thai friends at karaoke.
In a classroom in Bangkok, Two Thai teachers stand at the front and act out a scene from an ancient Thai legend. They speak at normal conversational speed, using appropriate vocabulary. They haven’t pre-taught the lesson. They didn’t check to see what the students already knew, and they won’t give a comprehension test at the end.
The students, a room full of Europeans, Americans, Japanese and Koreans, listen. This is their one and only job, to simply listen to the Thai dialogue.
No books, no notes, no tests, no writing, no speaking, and best of all, no homework; students can enter the classroom at the beginning of any lesson from 7:00 to 8:00 PM, and stay for as many hours as they wish. If they are tired, they can skip a day, or a week. If they are motivated, they can study ten hours per day.
This is the innovative language program called Automatic Language Growth (ALG), a listening-based language learning method developed by Dr. J. Marvin Brown, an American linguistics pioneer. At the core of his theories was the concept that listening is the basis of learning.
The idea that listening is the key to learning is not new. How many of us heard our parents say “keep your mouth shut and your ears open.” Actually, in an Italian family it was something more like, “Keep your mouth shut, or you’ll sleep with the fishes.” But the concept was the same, children should be seen and not heard.
Going back to the ancient universities of Germany, the lecture halls were called Hoersaal, or listening rooms. The people who attend a lecture in English are referred to as the audience, the listeners. The nuns at Catholic school used to smack us with a ruler and say, “If you are talking, you can’t possibly be listening.”
Thai is unbelievably difficult for most foreigners. But then, you walk out your apartment and here little Thai children speaking their native tongue fluently. And you think, I must be an idiot. I am older and smarter than these kids, so, why can’t I learn their language.”
You are absolutely right! Not about being an idiot, but that the secret to language learning lies not in the adults and college educated PHDs, but in observing the children. Dr. Brown’s work was based on an earlier theory called “The Natural Way,” sometimes referred to as “The Natural Approach.” Natural here refers to the way children naturally learn their mother tongue.
First of all, it is called your mother tongue because children learn language from their primary care-giver, usually the mother. In cases where a man and woman from two different countries marry, the child will usually speak the mother’s language better, until they begin school, at which point, they may become more fluent in the local language. The father’s language becomes just an added bonus to the child’s enviable linguistic array.
“Babies begin to speak their native tongue after exclusively listening for 22 months.” Says David Long, the head of Thai program at AUA Ratchadamri. David originally came to Thailand and studied under Dr. Brown, nearly twenty years ago. Since Dr. Brown’s death, he has continued to research and develop the ALG program. One of his core beliefs is, not only is language learning not a mystery, but it can be broken down and analyzed numerically.
“Assuming that babies are awake and being spoken to only twelve hours per day, they will hear 84 hours of model speech per week, for about one hundred weeks. Babies will hear their native tongue about 8,400 hours before they attempt their first words.” explains David.
At which point, the children will begin speaking, but they won’t have a foreign accent. I actually knew a couple in New York, who adopted a Chinese baby. When she began speaking, two years later, they were surprised to find out that could pronounce Ls and Rs as well as all the other children on Long Island. Of course, she couldn’t pronounce terminal Rs, so water became wata, but that was the same as other children born in New York.
One of the most important rules of ALG is that students should not attempt to speak until they have had sufficient listening. The speaking is a model which students must learn to copy. They will only be successful if they have heard the model enough times.
Think about your favourite film star. How many times have you seen him or her in a film? Can you imitate his voice perfectly? If the answer is no, do believe you would improve more by listening to him speak or by practicing your imitation? What if you locked yourself in a room with his films, for several hours a day. Would that help? One more consideration, if a film is 90 minutes, how many of those minutes is your favourite star actually speaking?
This is one of the key questions ALG asks about other language learning methods: how many minutes of language do students actually hear?
In advanced language teaching courses, teachers are taught that they should limit their own talk time to 15% of the lesson. They are taught that this ratio maximizes student talk time. ALG proponents would argue, the students are there because they don’t speak the language. So, why should most of the time be spent focusing on the one who doesn’t know anything, rather than the one who does?
In simple terms, if you had a visa issue and only ten minutes to discuss it with someone, would you focus on your friend who decorates closets for a living and knows nothing about visas, or would you focus your attention on a friend who works at the immigration department?
In case you guessed closets, you can have a second guess.
David breaks it down mathematically. “15% of a one hour lesson means, students are only hearing the target language for 9 minutes.”
If someone asked you to pay money for a program called “Thai in Just 9 Minutes Per Day,” you would laugh at them. Then you walk across the street, pay money for Thai lessons, and only get nine minutes per day of listening.
Some Thai teachers talk 80% of the time, but they are speaking broken English, which most of us don’t need to learn. If we wanted to learn bad English, we would just move back to Brooklyn and listen to my parents complain about the unions. For example, “They are trying to sell us out cheap dirt! Them union guys don’t care nothing about nobody.”
At nine minutes per day, it will take more than six class hours before the student has heard one hour of model language. It will take more than 56,000 class hours for a student to have the same exposure to model language as a baby gets before he begins speaking.
Most Thai lessons cost about 300 Baht (around $10 USD) per hour. So, you would be looking at an investment of $560,000 USD to learn to speak Thai at the level of a two year old. Fortunately, my cousin can get you a discount. He knows a guy, who knows a guy, who can get you lessons for an even half million.
Obviously these numbers are a little extreme. Or, more accurately, learning a foreign language is not a hard science, based strictly on numbers. We all know people who have become fluent in a foreign language, and they didn’t study for 56,000 hours. So, a number of other factors come into play. But the spirit of ALG seems to be accurate; we need countless hours of listening to learn a language.
“In Thailand, if you say anything at all in Thai, people will smile and compliment you. They will say Oh, your Thai is so good.” Says David. “At the beginning, this is just a polite, empty compliment.” Thais are friendly people, and they want to encourage you. But, as your Thai progresses, and you speak better, and the compliment becomes more sincere, the phrase takes on a new meaning.
“What they mean, but don’t say is, you speak Thai very well, for a foreigner.”
“But, I didn’t want to study for four years and then speak Thai like a foreigner. I wanted to speak Thai like a Thai.”
And how can you become as fluent as the eight year old who threw water and powder on you during Songkran? The key is listening.
In traditional classrooms, where students speak 85% of the time, they are listening to each other make mistakes. Having language learners speak to each other fossilizes mistakes, until they become permanent. The same is true of students who try to speak too early. If you haven’t listened to enough hours of Thai model, you will speak incorrectly, and the more you speak, the more the mistakes will become permanent. The worst case is when you realize that Thai people usually understand you. Then you have decided that you must be saying it correctly, and you will stop learning.
“We need to create a removable understandable experience. Experience is the best teacher. Something taught through experience is infinitely better remembered than something taught through school.” Says David Long.
This is why the range of lectures in the AUA program include subjects such as dance, cooking, fairy tales, religion, history, culture, and superstitions. Creating an interesting and entertaining context helps us to remember language. Being able to chose the material we hear also personalizes the lessons. I hate lessons about how to buy fruit at the market because I don’t even know the names of exotic fruits in English. But I love studying about Thai religion and culture. When I listen to these lectures, I am forcing myself to understand, straining to take in everything, so that I could get the content.
This is an important aspect of the program. Students are taught not to listen for words or vocabulary, but instead, for understanding of content. Brand new students, with no Thai language at all, will sit through a story about an ancient Thai king or some type of legend. They are convinced that they understood nothing, but after the class, they realize that they understood a good bit of the story, without understanding any of the language.
What words or language they learned that day is up to them. Each student learns what he learns, naturally, at his or her own pace, getting whatever he needs from a lecture. Once again, you might remember your mother teaching you to count. I learned counting from Sesame Street, about two weeks ago. But do you remember your mother or a schoolteacher telling you to use he for boys and she for girls, or she also for ladyboys and katuys? No, you probably don’t. That was a linguistic concept that you just absorbed, through seeing your parents create countless models.
In fact, if you run through all of the words in your adult vocabulary, you won’t have any memory of where or when you learned the basic elements of speech. The answer is, you learned them as a child, simply from listening.
Every time I figure out the answers they change the questions.
ALG teaches that there is a saturation point in language learning. For most people, once you understand 60 – 80% of what is being said, you shut down your listening, and stop learning. Students are asked to assess their own abilities. when they feel they understand the majority of a lesson, it is time for them to move up a level, where teachers will speak faster and use more advanced vocabulary. Suddenly, the student goes from listening comfortably to struggling with the language again. It is this straining and battling to understand, however, which keeps us on our toes and keeps us learning.
So, how many classroom hours of listening does it take for the average person to learn Thai? According to David Long, students need to listen for approximately 2,000 hours before they begin speaking. After speaking comes reading, and finally comes writing. The whole program takes around 3,000 hours.
Once again, the numbers are not hard science. How fast an individual student learns will depend on a lot of factors. For example, David believes that understanding comes more from culture than from linguistics. So, a student who has lived and worked in a Thai environment for several years, but doesn’t speak Thai, may learn faster than someone who has some Thai language background but no cultural understanding. Obviously, knowledge of similar languages such as Lao, Tai, Burmese, Tai-ai, or Khmer will also shorten a student’s ramp-up time, but that doesn’t come up very frequently.
However you slice it, learning a foreign language requires a lot of hard work and dedication. One truth does seem to hold true, if you want to learn a language well, you really need to go to school. Many foreigners believe they will learn Thai by osmosis, simply by living in Thailand. David Long disagrees.
“Immersion is overrated.” Says David. “Kids come in the program and say, I lived with a Thai family for three months. But what did they do for three months? They hid out in their room, listening to their MP3 player because they couldn’t communicate with anyone. So, where is the immersion?”
For most foreigners, even if you say you speak Thai everyday, what are you saying? You talk to the taxi driver, but you are telling him the same things every day. You talk to people who sell you things. And, when you order in Thai, they compliment you, so you think you speak Thai. Don’t forget you are paying them money for those compliments. You exchange other niceties and pleasantries during the course of the day, but how much of your Thai interactions represent new language? How much did your Thai improve between your sixth month and your second year in the country?
To learn, you need lengthy, frequent, high quality exposure to the language. If you sit and watch Thai TV with no Thai language background, your brain will immediately shut down, and you won’t learn anything.
The ALG method may take a long time, but after so much listening, students have a chance to become fluent. If you did half or even a quarter of the program and then quit, to enter a more traditional program, you would still have a major benefit because of all of the listening you have done.
Antonio Graceffo is an adventure travel and martial arts author, living in Asia. His specialties include ethnic minorities, languages, and martial arts. He is the Host of the web TV show, “Martial Arts Odyssey,” The Pilot episode, shot in the Philippines, is running on youtube, click here. The Monk From Brooklyn - Kuntaw in the Phillipines Antonio is the author of four books available on amazon.com Contact him Antonio@speakingadventure.com see his website www.speakingadventure.com
Get Antonio’s books at amazon.com
The Monk from Brooklyn
Bikes, Boats, and Boxing Gloves
The Desert of Death on Three Wheels
Adventures in Formosa
Obscure Tour – Republic of Cape Verde
So you have been everywhere have you? You have faced up to missing luggage, dodgy taxi drivers, kids using the back of your seat for football practice, boring in-flight movies and connecting flights that do not connect.
You sit back with a smug look on your face comparing destinations with other grizzled, seasoned travellers. Been there, there...and there!
Well we are delving into those last few destinations left on the planet you may not have been to, fasten you seat belt for your journey to... cape verde.
The Cape Verde islands are situated off the coast of West Africa, in the Atlantic Ocean about 300 miles (480 km) west of Dakar, Senegal. It is an archipelago made up of ten islands and five islets.
Praia, located on the island of Santiago, is the capital and largest city. Other towns include Mindêlo on São Vicente, Ribeira Grande on Santo Antão, Sal-Rei on Boa Vista, and Espargos on Sal.
The islands fall into two main groups, the Barlavento (Windward) in the north, which include Santo Antão, São Vicente, Santa Luzia, São Nicolau, Boa Vista, and Sal, and the Sotavento, (Leeward) in the south, which include São Tiago (c.600 sq miles, 1,550 sq km, the largest island), Fogo, Maio, and Brava.
The islands are mountainous and volcanic however the only active volcano is Cano (c.9,300 ft/2,830 m), located on Fogo. Cano’s most recent eruptions were in 1951 and 1995.
Sometimes the islands are subject to severe droughts and the fierce harmattan wind. The islands have considerable underground reserves of water, but the extraction of this water has proved too costly for the islanders.
Farming is the main economic activity on the islands but is restricted by the small annual rainfall and extensive soil erosion therefore about 90% of the country’s food is imported. The main crops are bananas, corn, beans, sweet potatoes, coffee, tomatoes, peanuts, and sugarcane. Livestock include goats, hogs, cattle, and sheep with tuna and lobster as the main fishing. The islands have a potentially rich fishing industry, which could be developed in future.
The islands’ manufactures are limited to processed food, beverages, clothes, and footwear. Mindêlo is an important port for ships, and transatlantic flights are serviced at an airport on Sal.
The islands carry on a small foreign trade primarily with Portugal and other European Union countries, however the annual cost of imports is usually much higher than export earnings. The main imports are petroleum, foodstuffs, consumer goods, and machinery; the leading exports are fish, bananas, hides, and salt.
Cape Verde has a multiparty democracy governed under an elected president, a prime minister, and a 72 member national assembly and is divided into 14 administrative districts.
The islands were discovered in 1456 by Luigi da Cadamosto, a navigator in the service of Portugal and four years later Diogo Gomes, a Portuguese explorer visited the uninhabited islands. Thereafter colonists from Portugal began to settle there from 1462 with slaves being brought in from W Africa, this developed into the islands becoming a shipping centre for the slave trade (slavery was abolished on the islands in 1876). Later a Portuguese penal colony was established, and some of the convicts remained after completing their terms.
Portuguese Guinea (now Guinea-Bissau) was administered as part of the Cape Verde Islands until 1879. In 1951 the status of the islands was changed from colony to overseas province.
After the fall (1974) of the Caetano regime in Portugal, independence came for Cape Verde in July 1975.
The nation has been plagued with a prolonged drought that has caused staggering economic problems and large-scale emigration, as well as the need to import most of its food. In an effort to take advantage of its proximity to cross Atlantic sea and air lanes, the government has embarked on a major expansion of its port and airport capacities. It is also modernising its fish processing industry. These projects are being partly paid for by the EU and the World Bank, making Cape Verde one of the largest per-capita aid recipients in the world.
For those wishing to visit the Cape Verde islands, the best time to visit is from August to October, when the weather is warm, but winds can be quite strong all year round. The rest of the year is much cooler.
The average day time high temperature ranges from 20°C to around 29°C in the months of August to October, when there can also be rainstorms.
At last count (2003) there were 71,700 telephones in use so you will not be cut off from the outside world. There is also radio, TV and internet connections.
There is a total of 1,350 km of roads throughout the islands both paved and un-paved. There are ports and harbours on Mindelo, Praia and Tarrafal. In total there are seven airports of various sizes, however some of the smaller ones may not be operating if you wish to fly between islands.
It is best to check for accommodation prices on the internet as costs depend on what time of year you plan to go but as a sample the Pestana Tropico Hotel gave rates of the following:
Regular Daily Rate Sea View Room/ 2 Twin Beds: $128.84. Special Rate 1 Bedroom Suite / 2 Twin Beds: $212.14. Regular Daily Rate 1 Bedroom Suite / 2 Twin Beds: $235.56
Despite the obvious problems on the Cape Verde islands they are one of the new emerging markets, if you are thinking of investing in property. To encourage investment (and tourism) in the country the Cape Verdean government has made many changes to its systems.
Cape Verdean law is based mainly on the Portuguese judicial and legal system, so the advantage of purchasing a property in Cape Verde is that the process will be similar to purchasing a house in Portugal or Spain.
Usually a small deposit, normally between 1,000 and 3,000 Euros is required to reserve a property you are interested in. If for some reason, you change your mind and do not want to proceed with the purchase, it will largely depend on the developer and the reason why you do not want to go ahead, as to whether you get a refund of the deposit or not. At the moment, almost 90% of the property you can find on sale in the islands are new constructions. A typical apartment of 1/2 bedrooms located about 200 metres from a beach would cost in the region of 87,000 Euros
All visitors to Cape Verde require a visa. Banks in the major towns can change money and travellers’ cheques. Travellers cheques are best taken in US Dollars but credit cards are only rarely accepted.
SUMMARY: Although not as empty and desolate as one might initially imagine the population would appear to be concentrated in the main towns. Almost 40% of the population lives in Praia and Mindelo.
If you plan to visit you might need to brush upon your Portuguese as the tourist industry is in its early days.
Cold ocean currents keep temperatures surprisingly mild therefore Cape Verde is pleasant all year-round. Even during the so-called rainy season from mid-August to mid-October (see graph above), weeks can go by without a downpour.
There is a Carnival season in February/March which many people travel for but if you visit in winter you may need a sweater (especially at higher altitudes) although average daily temperatures never fall far below 20°C. However it does get a little hotter in the southern islands (especially Fogo) during summer.
The islands boast great diversity of landscape, from barren flats to verdant, windward valleys. Its beaches are now starting to attract a package-tour crowd, but Cape Verde remains a destination for the connoisseur, the intrepid hiker, the die-hard windsurfer and the deep-sea angler.
Republic of Cape Verde
(República de Cabo Verde)
Total area:
1,556 sq mi (4,030 sq km)
Population (2006 est.):
420,979 (growth rate: 0.6%);
Capital & largest city (2003 est.):
Praia, 99,400
Other large city:
Mindelo, 66,100
Monetary unit:
Cape Verdean escudo
Languages:
Portuguese, Criuolo
Ethnicity/race:
Creole (mulatto) 71%, African 28%,
European 1%
Religion:
Roman Catholic (infused with indigenous beliefs), Protestant (mostly Church of the Nazarene)
Agriculture:
bananas, corn, beans, sweet potatoes,
sugarcane, coffee, peanuts & fish.
Industries:
food and beverages, fish processing, shoes and garments, salt mining & ship repair.
[ return to the top ]
