This was not the end of his travails. The next story Noy undertook to study was called “The Bunden of Sa-tick”; or, more formally, “The Bundle of Sticks”. In this engaging little parable, an old man teaches his sons to stop quarreling among themselves by demonstrating how it is impossible to break a whole bunch of sticks tied together, but easy to break them separately once they are untied.

Noy was doing fine till she got to a sentence which she read as: “The old man always had to stop his sons from the korl.”

Fardley looked up from his computer. “Say what?”

“Korl. Korr?”

Fardley checked the spelling. “Quar-rels.”

“Ka-war-rerr,” Noy repeated.

“Not ka-war-rerr, quar-rellls,” Fardley corrected her. “Say quar-rellls, Noy.”

“Quar-rellllll-zu.”

“Good,” Fardley said.

Noy looked pensive. “What mean?”

“Quarrels are fights. Like boxing.”

“If mean boxing, why no say boxing?” Noy asked. “Why say ka-war-relll-zu?”

Fardley shrugged. “It’s just a different way of saying it.”

Noy snorted. “Paaasaa angrit yaak maak-maak jang loey. (English is really difficult.) Mean boxing, say ka-war-rerr-zu, give Thai people big headache.”

“Well, quarreling is like arguing, Noy.”

“What mean argue?” Noy inquired.

Fardley got out his English-Thai dictionary, looked up “argue,” and handed the dictionary to Noy.

A look of enlightenment crossed her face. “Ah,” she breathed. “Arg-oo. Oh! I like dis word.”

“It’s pronounced ‘ar-gyoo,’” Fardley corrected her.

“Ar-gyoo,” Noy repeated. “Don’t argue to me.”

“Don’t argue with me, Noy.”

Noy practiced her new sentence. “Don’t argue with me. Don’t argue with me. I like dis senten’.”

She continued reading, and was doing fine till she got to the sentence, “The old man untied the bundle of sticks.” She asked, “What mean untied?”

Fardley scratched his head. “Well, okay, to understand untied, you have to understand tied. When you tie something up, you put a string or rope around it and, er, tie it up.”

Noy looked pensive. “Tie same-same try?” she ventured.

Fardley looked trapped. “No. No. Try is an entirely different word,” he said.

“Same-same tired?”

“No. No, that’s another word.”

“Why Engrish have ten mirrion word all sound same?” Noy asked in exasperation. “Have number eight, kin aahaan also ate. Mai chai mean no, khit also mean know. All sound same, mean no same, sa-pell no same. Farang want to kiww Thai people, drive us crazy with crazy language,” she declared.

“Well, keep reading, Noy,” Fardley urged her.

“No!” Noy exclaimed. She hurled the book to the floor. “Sa-tupid sa-tory, sa-tupid book, crazy language, crazy farang.”

“Come on, Noy, don’t give up now,” Fardley begged. Things were getting so serious he was almost tempted to shut down his computer, the better to focus on the crisis at hand.

“Don’t argue to me! Don’t argue to me!” Noy shouted. And with that she swept up her handbag and stormed out the door, never to return.

A saddened Fardley had to admit later that teaching English wasn’t as easy as he had thought. And he hadn’t even gotten around to having Noy teach him Thai.