The Vernon Journal

After learning Lessons 1 and 2, you are now able to politely greet, ask about general well-being, say where you are from and give your name in Akha. Now, with a few more phrases we will share how to ask about family and to say goodbye. Learning Akha : How many children do you have? [...]

In our last Akha language lesson we shared three simple greetings in Akha, with the third greeting being “How are you doing?” or “How’s life?“. This is a very polite question, and a great segway into further conversation. Learning Akha : How are you? All cultures have small talk, be it about the weather, family, [...]

In Northern Thailand there are three appropriate greetings (salutations) you may use when greeting the Akha. All are thought to have been influenced by other cultures, but the Akha, especially in Thailand, will understand and appreciate them all as gestures of goodwill. Most of all, they will appreciate it if you greet them in Akha [...]

I’m always whining about how difficult it is to learn a tonal language, especially a tribal one without classes, books or cds. (See, don’t you feel sorry for me?!) Tonal languages are notoriously difficult to learn for ….well, anyone who’s native language is not tonal. Anyway, my last post reminded me about another funny language [...]

In my recent desperation to overcome a serious case of writer’s block, I did a google search on “tips for writing”. Somewhere amidst the flurry of clicks, I ran across this silly page about How to Write Good. While it didn’t automatically cure my writer’s block, it did give me a needed break from the [...]