Dzongkha (Zong-KA), the national language of Bhutan, is one of the most obscure, difficult, and useless languages in the world, from the standpoint of the number of people who actually speak it, which is about 100,000 to 150,000. Most of them also speak English, Nepali, and a smattering of other languages such as Hindi, not to mention about 200 dialects. No one outside of Bhutan speaks Dzongkha. So, of course, when I moved to Bhutan, I was desperate to learn it.
I had a little book in which I wrote words and their meanings. I could say hello, good-bye, thank you, bite me, screw you, up yours, hot monkey love, and all the other essential phrases and idiomatic expressions that enrich our lives.
I asked Palden, one of the teachers in the school where I taught, if he’d help me learn, and he agreed.
Bhutanese learn differently than Westerners. This is useful information, although I didn’t find it out until well into the second year of my teaching career. That should give you some idea of the caliber of teacher I was. In fact, Bhutanese learn in the exact opposite way. The first thing they do is memorize whatever they are given.
They may not understand it at all, but they commit it to memory. As a result, Bhutanese are very good at remembering things. It wasn’t uncommon to walk down the hall of the school and hear two or three different classrooms of students chanting passages from textbooks at the top of their lungs.
After memorizing, they are tested, basically being asked to repeat what they memorized. The tests come from India and are standardized. Students regurgitate the information in the test and are ranked according to how accurately they respond to the questions. Only later do they “learn”—that is, absorb what they’ve memorized and add it to their cache of knowledge, make associations and assumptions, apply what they know, reason about it, and build on it.
In the U.S., we use the Socratic method. Teachers lecture. We ask questions. Teachers ask questions. We answer. We do this back and forth, formally and informally. That’s our learning process. Things get drilled into us, but we don’t necessarily memorize. Our brain doesn’t really function that way; it needs lots of explanation. Then we review the material, study it, and take a test. If luck is with us, we’ve absorbed some information we can apply, extrapolate, and reason from; and then we do well (or not) on the test, and we can be considered to have learned (or not) something.
Learning is rather messy, whatever method you employ.
Lopen Palden (lopen is an honorific meaning “teacher” in Dzongkha) told me I must learn to read and write Dzongkha, then I could learn to speak it. He recited the Bhutanese alphabet and told me to memorize it. The Bhutanese borrow Chöke, the ancient Tibetan alphabet used by the clergy, because Dzongkha doesn’t have a written form of its own. Selj’e Sumcu, the Bhutanese name for this alphabet, means “30 characters”: ka, kha, ga, nga, ca, cha, ja, na, ta, tha, da, na, pa, pha, ba, ma, tsa, tsha, dza, wa, zsa, za, a, ya, ra, la, sha, sa, ha, ah. That “ah” at the end, the last letter, sounds so pleasing.
Easy enough. I can probably polish off 30 letters in a couple of days, I thought. I taped Lopen saying the alphabet with my handheld tape recorder. In a very short time, I’d mastered it. Fantastic. I’m doing this so fast. I must have natural aptitude with languages.
Then Lopen gave me some really bad news. He told me I had to learn over 100 different attachments that go on the letters of the alphabet to change their sound. He called them consonants. This may not sound like a lot, but consider the possible permutations of 100 little attachments on 30 letters. I’m not now nor was I then a mathematician; but I knew I was headed down not only a difficult, bumpy road, but also a very long one. This would be taxing. This would be painful. Do I really want to learn Dzongkha? What the heck, I had a lot of time on my hands. I still sort of wanted to speak Dzongkha. So I pressed on, determined not to give up so easily.
Lopen Palden said he would teach me a trick to learn the first set of consonants, which are key, coo, kay, and ko; and each could be attached to one of the 30 members of the alphabet to create a new, unique sound. They could also be combined with other consonants to make even more sounds. You see the problem immediately. Not only are there possible combinations of alphabet and consonants ad infinitum, but the sounds are barely distinguishable for someone unaccustomed to hearing them. After only a few hours of trying to commit them to memory, I felt like my brain would explode like a bottle of soda that had been shaken hard. As quid pro quo, I made Lopen learn to say “Rubber baby buggy bumpers” and “Seventy-six slimy snakes slid slowly southward.”
I began to think that English was a better language. Why wasn’t Dzongkha sensible, like English, a language that had the wisdom to borrow heavily from other languages, that didn’t exist without lifting from other languages, thereby making distinct sounds that were wildly different from one another?
Also, English wisely lacks pesky aspirations. Aspirations, for the uninitiated, are perverse features of elocution in some languages whereby a word or syllable sounds different and has different meanings depending on the place from which you utter it. I don’t mean in the shower or in the car, I mean a place in your body like your diaphragm, or the back of your throat, or your nose, or the tip of your tongue, and so on. Not to put too fine a point on it, in Dzongkha, the very unassuming la can mean “mountain,” “work,” “yes,” or a term of respect, depending on which organ or muscle in your body it originates from. Uttering a word from the wrong place could give the entirely wrong impression. For example, you could take a conversation about work up the side of a mountain, if you aren’t careful. I think you see a little of what I was up against.
So Lopen Palden had me memorize a little ditty to help me remember the first set of four consonants. Phew!
I thought. Now only 96 more consonants to learn. What’s 96 times 30? Anybody?
This was the little verse he had me memorize:
Ka-gee-goo-key
Ka-shab-jew-koo
Ka-dim-bow-kay
Ka-narrow-ko
I’m sure it means something in Dzongkha the way “Ring Around the Rosie” is really a little song about the plague. But I wasn’t supposed to ask what it meant. I was just supposed to memorize it. Meaning would come later. Much later.
The first syllable is the actual alphabet letter, and the ending syllable is what it becomes when you attach one of four consonants. “Key” is a little hook that goes on top of the letter. “Koo” is a hook attached to the bottom right. “Kay” is a kite tail that hangs in the air; “ko” is a little bird that sits on top of the letter.
When Bhutanese children are taught this first set of consonants, they learn a pantomime dance to remember it. Think of “I’m a Little Teapot,” or “Itsy-Bitsy Spider,” and the accompanying gestures that are charming when little kids do them.
Now think of a much older American woman doing a children’s pantomime for large groups of normally polite Asian people, known and unknown to her, who are doubled over with laughter—at parties, in offices, in shops—and you will get an idea of how I amused throngs of Bhutanese in my desperate ploy for attention. Loneliness makes people do strange things.
But slowly I began to learn.
Repeatedly during our lessons, I asked Lopen if he would teach me a phrase or two that I could say to the shopkeepers or at the weekend market, just a little something, the tiniest phrase that would help me communicate. Many people from the villages hadn’t gone to school, so they didn’t speak English. He refused. That wasn’t the way it was done. He was adamant that I should first learn to read and write Dzongkha.
I wanted to learn Dzongkha the right way, truly; but I was desperate to communicate, so I started to go behind Lopen’s back to learn little phrases here and there. I felt like a criminal. I covertly asked my friends and co-workers. I eavesdropped on conversations in restaurants. I appropriated snippets of conversation. I was a word pickpocket, clandestinely writing things down phonetically in my notebook.
I learned how to say, “How much is this?” which is very useful when shopping. The problem was, people answered me in Dzongkha; and I didn’t know the numbers yet, so I’d just nod pleasantly and move on.
Another teacher, a lovely young Bhutanese woman who taught English at the school, befriended me. She taught me idiomatic phrases like “Are you here?” “That’s just perfect,” and “See how I manage?” I tried to work them into conversations. When someone gave me a serving of rice, I’d say, “That’s just perfect!” even if it wasn’t. When I called someone on the phone, I’d say, “Are you here?” Occasions for saying, “See how I manage?” eluded me. I so wanted to say it.
I taught her to say “Awesome,” “I’ll get back to you,” and “Bootylicious!”
My struggle to learn the language was exacerbated because the Bhutanese are culturally and religiously programmed not to talk much. The Buddha taught his students to speak only if they had something to say. Idle chatter, the American pastime, is anti-dharma, ego-driven, and thus to be avoided. In other words, you don’t toot your own horn in Bhutan.
When I first came to Bhutan, I had no car, so I got a lot of rides from strangers. Hitchhiking is common here; and if you’re walking on the road, someone will always take pity on you and stop. If not, you can get a group taxi. Walking to and from school and doing my weekly shopping in the market, I was often thrown together in a car with strangers, albeit kind ones. No sooner had my butt hit the seat than I started talking—about my emotional state (I’m so excited … I’m so psyched … I’m so bummed), about the weather (It’s too cold today! You think this rain will ever stop?), about my gratitude (Thanks for the lift. This is a very nice car), or to get sympathy (My left shoe is pinching my big toe. I’ve got a bad cut on it. Don’t you hate having a cut on your foot?). In the U.S., when I took a breath, the person I was talking to would take my rhetorical question as a cue to launch into his or her own injured-foot story.
In Bhutan, if I had paid attention and actually looked at the drivers, I’d have seen them wincing under my steady monologue.
I’m Southern and sort of polite and was taught not to have lulls in the conversation because they make people uncomfortable. Where I come from, it’s good manners to talk. Talk, and plenty of it, is the way to go. Talk when you have something to say, but don’t limit yourself. Talk, also, when you have nothing to say. We in the U.S. chat people up, vent, rant, exhort, pontificate, lecture, tweet, fill the ether with noise, and generally yak it up, nonstop, usually about ourselves.
They don’t do any of this in Bhutan.
In Bhutan, saying very little is the epitome of good manners. Narcissism is not a national trait. Whole families get together for celebrations, meals, births, deaths, and parties, and there are huge gaps in the conversations. In fact, there’s more not talking than talking. People sit, eat, drink, and even schmooze nonverbally. They have a self-containment that we don’t have in the West. It’s more than okay not to talk. People are comfortable with silence.
I believe my Bhutanese friends and family are talking without talking. They are using the gaps in the conversation to convey solitude, contentment, contemplation, happiness, or sadness. The listener is attuned to what the talker is sending out, even if the talker isn’t speaking. It’s conveying meaning with body language—which is something that’s used a great deal in Bhutan. Once you get used to the silence, it’s nice, like two amoebas in a drop of water, interacting but not talking.
Of course, there are a few things that are important to say: “Your hair is on fire.” “I just saw a cobra crawl in your sleeping bag.” “No, thank you, I’m horribly allergic to shellfish.” And there are always exceptions to the rules. One exception to Bhutanese reticence to being drunk. Drunken Bhutanese will talk until your ears fall off bleeding.
After a time, I learned to accept a ride into town, get in the car, greet the driver and any others who might be in the vehicle with a polite nod … and then shut up. It made people a lot happier.
When I was learning the language, there was a Dzongkha-English phrase book that many of the shops sold. It was a small paperback, and it came in different pastel colors: pink, green, yellow, or blue. It had very useful sections on phrases in the home, at work, at school, in a government office, in the market, and at the hospital.
I read it constantly, practiced the phrases, and memorized and used many of them. But it’s a universal truth of learning a language that you can memorize ten phrases from a phrase book and then just casually look at another phrase, a phrase you don’t need, don’t want, and would never use, and that’s the one phrase that will stick with you until you die.
The section on going to the hospital had many useful things in it. One could describe in detail whatever hurt. One could ask for medicine; find out when the doctor would be back; and describe a pain as sharp, dull, burning, or throbbing. One could also learn to say, “Go la phu bey ma nyay”—and that was the one that stuck in my head. It was what the doctor said before examining you: “Please take off your clothes and lie down.”
For obvious reasons, it isn’t a phrase one would use every day, or every night, for that matter. But it was like a song that I couldn’t get out of my head.
One afternoon I was in a fabric shop in Thimphu trying to buy a kata, a white silk ceremonial scarf given to say good luck or congratulations in the Himalayas. It’s the Buddhist equivalent of a Hallmark card; and I was buying one to present at a celebration for a minister, or lyonpo, who had recently been promoted. As the shopkeeper was wrapping my purchase, I turned and saw a man who worked in the Royal Civil Service, a midlevel bureaucrat, respectable and proper. He knew me because, as a foreigner living in Bhutan, I had to go to his office every time I wanted to leave Thimphu. He had to sign a piece of paper that said I could travel around the hinterlands—an annoying bit of bureaucracy for Bhutanese and foreigners alike. He was one of those people I always felt nervous and awkward around. He brought out my inner doofus.
So I was desperate to show off my new semi-command of the Bhutanese language; and I turned to look at him in order to say, “I believe you are going to the reception for Lyonpo?”
Instead, I smiled pleasantly and said, “Please take off your clothes and lie down.”
I didn’t realize my mistake until I saw the shocked look on his face. His eyebrow arched its disapproval; and he backed away from me and out of the shop, presumably to buy his kata elsewhere, somewhere that didn’t have repulsive Americans spewing vile come-ons.
I stood there, frozen. The phrase that dared not speak its name had been unleashed. I looked at the shopkeeper on the other side of the counter. She was frozen, too, my parcel in her extended hand. Our eyes met.
“Ya la MA!” I said, this time appropriate to the situation: Oh, my GOD!
“Embey!” she said. You got that right! She started giggling. Then I laughed, too. We both laughed for what seemed like a long time.
I struggled with the language for several years, creating my own brand of pidgin Dzongkha. When Namgay and I married, it improved a little. The Bhutanese have a saying: two heads, one pillow, is the optimal way to learn a language.
One thing that works both for and against me is my fearlessness. I don’t hesitate to speak if I don’t know a word; I just use one that’s close or that sounds like the word I want.
Once I was sitting at Namgay’s sister’s house during a family puja. His mother and I were on a bed, chatting and drinking tea. Of course, she doesn’t know any English, so we spoke in Dzongkha. We were well into a conversation when Namgay’s eight-year-old nephew, Tashi, came into the room. After a few minutes he doubled over with laughter. I asked him what was so funny. He’d been taught to be respectful, so he wouldn’t tell me.
I called to Namgay and asked him why Tashi was amused. He asked Tashi; and the boy spoke rapidly between giggles, telling Namgay that he was laughing at our conversation; and then he related it to Namgay, who also started chuckling. Apparently, I had said something like, “The weather is very cold”; and my mother-in-law had said, “Yes, Paro is a beautiful valley”; and then I said, “You know, Paro is a beautiful valley”; and she said, “Yes, I will go and collect mushrooms tomorrow.” We were talking over each other’s heads, misinterpreting, but carrying on what we thought to be a nice conversation, neither of us the wiser. On some level I think it still qualifies as communicating.
When I go outside of Thimphu I love to talk with people in the villages. They are incredibly funny and are usually surprised to meet a foreigner who butchers their language so brazenly.
People I meet on mule trails going from one village to another are often of a certain age, 50 or older, and so have never had any formal education. The secular school system only started in the early 1960s, and many children in remote areas were needed to work on the farms. Since there weren’t many schools, the children would have to leave their parents and go to boarding school. This was especially hard for girls, which is why so many grandmothers in Bhutan don’t speak English.
Once on a trail going from Gangtey to Wangdue, a friend and I caught up to an old woman who was walking behind a strapping young man. The two of them were obviously together. She carried a small cloth bundle that didn’t look very heavy, but he had a large burlap sack of rice on his back. It was a 50-kilogram bag, which meant he was carrying a little over 100 pounds.
I struck up a conversation with the woman, asking her what everybody in Bhutan asks when you meet on a road or forest path: “Ca le om?” “Where are you coming from?”
She’d been to Wangdue for shopping and now was headed home to her farm. She gestured up and to the left with her head: it was another few hours’ walk, she said. Our conversation flowed because she spoke slowly; and as long as a conversation didn’t veer too far away from food, body parts, and household things, I could follow along. Also, I think she might have been a little drunk, making her talk more slowly. The old woman was entertaining. She was a woman of property; she had a little patch of land. She was also a cowherd, looking after the cows of a rich man. This gave her some status in her village, I was sure. Her kira was hand-woven, but worn; and instead of a wanju, she wore a flannel shirt underneath, maybe borrowed from the young man. The ladies of a certain age in Bhutan wear six- to eight-inch-wide woven belts slung low on their hips instead of cinching them at the waist like younger women, and they carry all manner of things in a fold in their kiras above the belt. Sometimes they have so much stuff it looks like they have giant beer bellies. My new acquaintance was no exception. She wore gold and turquoise earrings; and a dzi, or Tibetan bead, a highly prized and valuable cylindrical agate with a brown-and-cream geometric pattern for which the ancient formula is lost, was tied on a string around her neck. That meant she was not poor by village standards. Her hair was cut short and jet black, but many of the older people dye their hair with cheap Chinese dye that you can get all over Bhutan. And even from a distance her clothes gave off a smell of wood smoke. That is perhaps the most evocative smell of Bhutan. In the villages in winter, the smell means warmth, food, and survival.
It’s my favorite smell.
I gestured toward the young man. He looked like he might be her grandson, but ladies from the village, who have spent their whole lives outside in the sun without moisturizer, generally aren’t as old as they look. Even accounting for sun damage, when I did some quick math in my head, there seemed to be at least a 30-year age difference between the two of them. I decided to err on the side of caution.
“Is that your son?” I asked her.
“Oh, no,” she laughed. “He’s my husband!”
“Really?” I tried to keep my jaw from hitting the ground.
Sure,” she said. Then she leaned her head in close to mine and whispered the phrase I’d learned from my colleague at the school, the idiom I’d never been able to use: “See how I manage?”
I’m sure I looked confused. Did I hear her right?
“You heard right,” she said to me in Dzongkha, as if reading my thoughts.
She wagged her head. Her merry eyes danced, and then she let out a big laugh.