That Popular Traditional German Name 🤔
Regular readers of this blog will know that I have lived in Thailand for the last twenty years. I consider myself a linguist, so it is shame to me that I haven’t mastered Thai yet, as I have seven other languages. Perhaps, I am allowed to point out though, that Thai, and probably all Asian languages, are very different from the European variety.
Having said all that I can usually make myself understood in Thai, and what really let’s me down is my accent and my use of ‘tones’ (you’ll have to look that one up, if you don’t know what they are).
Gregarious
One more thing before I get to the point of this article. Thais are very gregarious, but I am not. This has the effect that when a Thai friend of mine meets a European near our village, they assume that I will want to meet him too (solitary travellers from Europe are usually men, especially outside the big cities, where I live). Even my wife, whom I have been with my whole time in Thailand, has not been able to convince herself that I am happy as I am.
Anyway, over the last 20 years, I have been introduced to two Germans called Khan. I thought that it was unusual, but accepted it, even though I have lived and worked in Germany, and never met a German called Khan before.
Khan or What?
Today, my wife said that my friend Khan was in the village. Then the coin dropped.
My friend’s name is Karl, and Thais have a big problem pronouncing an ‘L’ at the end of a word.
They say FOOTBON.
So, those two Khans were probably Karls too.
So, why didn’t the Karls correct me?
Weird, eh?
I suppose that I should have thought more about it at the time, or questioned their names, but it just goes to show that I obviously didn’t care enough.
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