Do you get angry at others? Everybody does. What will you call your worst enemy, then? One guess is you can call him a “dog” or an “ass” or perhaps a “pig”. In Australia anyone who blindly follows the crowd is a “sheep”. And if you’re stupid you’re a “galah”, named after a parrot whose behavior is bizarre and idiotic. Imagine a drunken stranger at Nana Entertainment Plaza bumping into you then calling you an “animal”, or a “dirty dog”, or an “ass” or a “monitor lizard”.
Did the last one raise your eyebrows? For 62 million people, being called a “monitor lizard” is enough to have them reaching for their hidden pistol shoved indiscreetly down their underwear. If you have abuse anyone there is nothing that would enflame them more than calling them a “monitor lizard”.
How fascinating is that? I can see that a monitor lizard isn’t the most attractive animal on the planet, but there are far uglier animals; spiders and scorpions. Thais have plucked one animal from lizard genus and have hated it with a vengeance. How interesting it is to learn that calling a Thai a “monitor lizard” can result in serious injury.
The Thai word for “monitor lizard” curiously sounds exactly the same as “here” in English, with a spoken tone as if you are stressing the word. This explains why a Thai student of English will giggle if you say “You are here.” Want to make a Thai kid smile? Teach him that the correct answer to “Where are you?” is “I am here.” Get it? “I am a monitor lizard.” Hilarious.
In fact, the Thais have invented a new name for the animal so as to avoid using the H-word. The name is “tua ngern tua tong”, translated as a “silver thing, gold thing” thus taking all the fun out of hurling insults.
This hatred for the humble monitor lizard probably explains the zeal of Lumpini Park staff last week when they suddenly rounded up 50 of the lizards in sacks and allegedly took them off to “another habitat”. As was well-documented last week, the monitor lizard clean-up occurred as a result of one of them falling out of a tree, striking a woman on her face and causing her to have stitches. Is that all it takes for Thais to eradicate a species?
Don’t be fooled. The officials didn’t give a damn about the park visitor who was curiously looking up to the trees as the lizard came crashing down upon her visage. They just wanted to get rid of the monitor lizards because they hate them.
So, please don’t go using this newfound Thai vocabulary on anybody who angers you. It is truly dangerous to call any Thai a monitor lizard.
