Mother or Ghost?

Last Tuesday was the official kick-off to our Vietnamese lessons. We found a great tutor that comes to our apt (!!) and attempts to teach us the Vietnamese language for an hour and ½. Then we both pop a couple of Advil. I don’t think it’s a good sign when the first page of the lesson book is an illustration of the anatomy of the face and throat… To give you a bit of background info on the language, Vietnamese has 6 different “tones”, although only 5 are used in the southern half of Vietnam and around HCMC. For comparison’s sake, I believe that Mandarin has only 4 tones.

Here they are:

1. (a) Mid-level/flat vocal range
2. (à) Low falling: begins low & falls lower
3. (ả) Low rising: begins low, dips noticeably & then rises to a higher pitch
4. (ã) High broken: begins above mid level, dips slightly and then rises slightly
5. (á) High Rising: Begins high & rises sharply
6. (ạ) Low broken: begins low, falls to a lower level then stops

I have not come close to mastering these yet, but somewhere in the tones you will also need to throw in some glottalized, nasal and alveolar sounds. Good luck.

And, yes, you can say the same word 6 different ways and it means 6 different things:

1. Ma = ghost
2. Mà = but
3. Mả = tomb
4. Mã = horse
5. Má = mother
6. Mạ = rice seedling

If you happen to walk into a haunted house and cry GHOST! Make you sure you have an even, flat tone or you will likely be saying MOTHER! Its also important to keep up a good attitude because even though you may have practiced the sounds 100 times and your teacher understands you, likely any of the people that you practice out on the street with will have NO idea what you are trying to say and giggle at you while you flounder around trying to remember if the last word was supposed to be low or high. Ah, serenity now.

This weekend we went “tourist” and drove out of town to the Củ Chi tunnels, which was the home & fighting ground of an estimated 18,000 peasant guerrillas. It consisted of 125 miles of hand-dug passageways & chambers. The tunnels were originally started in the late 1940’s during the French War and by 1967 there were a network of tunnels, aid stations, kitchens, theaters, dormitories, weapons caches, wells, printing shops & other chambers. Củ Chi was written as the “most bombed, shelled, gassed, defoliated, and generally devastated area in the history of warfare” during what they refer to as the “American War”. The tunnels were dug in 3 different levels below the surface, were ridden with booby traps, generally only big enough to fit a Vietnamese body through and full of zigs, zags and hatches designed to keep enemy intelligence from returning to camp. I can’t imagine the fear that these volunteer “tunnel rats” had to feel as they ventured into this underworld. We were given the option of crawling through a very small segment of the tunnels that made me nervous though the guide with a flashlight leading the way was RIGHT in front of me. Cramped, humid and dark does not even begin to describe them, and I was only on the “1^st floor”. Maybe I would not have been as anxious if we had not just seen examples of the various booby traps that were interspersed throughout the tunnels?! And I’m pretty sure the one we went through was widened because Clayton was able to crouch-walk through without hitting a knee to the ground…and we all know he is a tad bit taller than the average Asian. Although talk of war, fighting, killing and conquering are not amongst my favorite topics, it was an incredible place to see and even more incredible to imagine the construction and life in these tunnels.

After spending our morning around tourists, we happily accompanied our driver Tin to his brother-in-law’s home for a typical Vietnamese lunch! We were happy to see that they had 2 dogs as pets so likely the meal was not going to consist of any dog meat, ha ha. Lunch was delicious spring rolls that you make individually at the table out of rice paper dipped in water first to soften. Then quickly throwing in rice noodles, cucumber, lettuce, various fresh herbs and pork, etc. before the rice paper turns into a sticky mess resembling a crumple of saran wrap that is nearly impossible to pull apart and then proficiently form into a roll that you can eat without a fork. I found the task of making the rolls provided for a few seconds of slightly less awkward silence, which was nice. I was even told that my chopstick skills were “pretty good”. Did they mean “pretty good” for a foreigner or “pretty good” for a chopsticks user? It may take me another 10 or so years to learn the language well enough to carry on a semi-normal/slang/rambling conversation at the table with mouths full. Then maybe another 10 to figure out just what they are really saying about my faux pas and silly American ways of picking out bones and other delicacies prior to putting the meat into my mouth or my clumsy, fumbling formation of a simple rice paper roll. My incentives for learning Vietnamese increase on a daily basis…