-^-for posterity-^-

vietnamese is a fascinating language. i know i’ve spoke of it in the past but i would like to give some general observations.

grammar is fairly rudimentary. you do not conjugate any words like we do in european languages (i go, i went in). if you say something like ‘i would like to go and eat’ you can simply say ‘i want go eat rice’ ((ignoring tones and vowel marks) toi muon di an com). to say something that occurred in the past or in the future, you simply add tag words like da, se, sap, moi, roi, chua. they all mean something slightly different. most of the time, if it’s established in a story that it happened in the past, you don’t have to use them.

while the grammar is incredibly simple, the tones, complicated vocabulary and the varied use of pronouns make it very difficult. there are six tones in vietnamese. one rises, one falls, one is a very low tone, one is a falling rising tone and one falls, breaks and rises sharply. each word has a different tone and the tones are indispensable. you will not be understood if your tones are not flawless. (it would be like someone saying IM-por-tant instead of im-POR-tant. it’s very hard to understand. sounds like impotent.) each word (as we define a word) is monosyllabic and has six different meanings. things get much more confusing when you beginning making compound words. for example, the word ‘ba’ can mean (knew some of these, had to look the rest up): three, old lady, poison, waste, at random or count. that’s ‘ba’ with the regular ‘a’. there are three kinds of ‘a’ and if you use all three combinations, ‘ba’ can mean 18 different things.

the use of pronouns is fascinating and it says a lot about vietnamese culture. i surely don’t know all the pronouns but i can give you a good listing of them. in every conversation you have to qualify the person you are speaking to into a category. if it’s someone you just met and they’re about your age or a bit older and male you refer to them as ‘anh’. if they are a bit older and female you call them ‘chi’. if they are very old and female, ‘ba’. if they are very old and male, ‘ong’. if they are younger than you but older than a small child, they are ‘em’. if they are a small child, they are ‘con’ or ‘chau’. if the person is your acquaintance, you can call them ‘ban’. you also have to refer to yourself in the third person. if someone calls you ‘em’ you have to start calling yourself ‘em’ when talking to that person and referring to yourself. different professions also have different pronouns. for example, male teachers are ‘thay’ and female teachers are ‘co’. also, if you have a closer relationship with someone you have to use different pronouns. if someone is older than you, male and you are very good friends, you can call them ‘dai ca’. you can also call people by aunt and uncle, or ‘chu’ and ‘di’. also, there are imports from china that are used. a master is ‘su phu’ and a apprentice is ‘de tu’. also, an older lady who is a good friend is ‘su ty’, a younger male is ‘su de’, a younger female is ‘su muoi’ (or su moi, don’t remember). this is just the tip of the iceberg.

everyone has to qualify themselves in conversation they are placed in society’s hierarchy. it feels strange to lower yourself and call yourself ‘em’ to someone. it feels strange to call someone else ‘em’. it feels strange when someone calls me ‘ong thay’, a very respectful form of calling someone a teacher. i don’t deserve it. i also don’t want to lower someone else. here, as i see it, people don’t see it as lowering someone or raising someone else. it’s all simple a matter of tradition and culture. no one feels bad when they are called ‘em’ and no one gets a big head when they’re called ‘ong thay’. what a wild, wild world we live in. there’s so much for us to do. there’s so much for us to learn and who really takes advantage of it all.