Coffee and Condoms

I am learning Vietnamese. Toi dang hoc tieng Viet. (That's with a carat over the first o, a dash through the d, a dot under the second o, a carat and a dash over the first e, and a carat over the second e.) Now that is an overly optimistic assessment. I am not learning a thing. I am not learning Vietnamese. Khong toi dang hoc tieng Viet.

Everyone complains about the tones but I am not even that far along. I cannot produce the most basic noises of the Vietnamese language. Vowels or consonants, I haven't mastered either. For instance, the differences between ng and nh. Both lead with a standard n sound, but the first has just a touch of "ing" to follow. Not how we do it in English with the back of the tongue, but from the bottom of the throat about where our adam's apple is. I am not accustomed to making that noise. I also have trouble with t-s. There is the dry unaspirated "t" which is somehow made without exhaling any breath, versus the aspirated "th" as in torment. Good old fricatives like "g" are fine and transliterate perfectly except for when you want to say "what" -- "gi" -- which is of course pronounced "zee".

Did I mention the vowels? An o with a curlicue is pronounced "ugh" as when you get elbowed in the gut. A u with a curlicue is a sound we don't make in English, except perhaps when we groan in our sleep -- "oogh." These can be coupled together as in "muoi" (mugh-oogh-eee) or ten. It kind of sounds like Spanish’s "muy" but not very.

There are a few words we know well: sinh doi -- twins; tam thang -- eight months; and hai con trai -- two boys. But we must be careful how we use them. We can spill them out, one after the other, to the people who stop us in the street, then having shot our wad, stand and stare for the next five minutes waiting for the on-lookers to get bored and wander off. Or we can horde them like family heirlooms and sell them off one at a time as we guess at the questions being asked. Most often the order is "Twins?" "Boys or girls?" and "How old?" If we get it right the inquisitors now believe we speak fluent Vietnamese and shoot a string of questions at us to which our only response is to smile, shrug our shoulders and apologize for leading them on.

Our tutor, Thuy (that's with a question mark accent and is, of course, pronounced "Twee") is a very nice woman who tortures us mercilessly. She likes to sing-song a sentence or two and then sit back and smile as I respond with an uncomprehending stare. After a pause just long enough to be painful, she repeats herself -- no slower this time -- and smiles again. Failing to mine a familiar word from the tangle of tones, I give in with a "What?" and she tells me that she just asked "What did we learn last time?" or "Where were you last week?". The fact that she has not yet taught us either of these phrases does not deter her. With a demure disdain she corrects me as I try to repeat , or worse still, write down, what she has said. Painfully, I attempt to construct an answer from the dozen or so words I think I know. Then she rattles off the appropriate response to her question, and once again I find myself slack-jawed and staring.

Khang and Binh are almost as sadistic in their efforts to educate. They also chatter phrases at me, but follow them with the English translation; this invariably leaves me wondering which words were in Vietnamese and which were in English. At least they laugh out loud at my incompetence.

The waiters and waitresses at the restaurants I frequent have been my best source of instruction. They are fluent in traveler's English, expect nothing from me, seem pleased that I mangle their language, and happily give me a word or two a day -- ice, newspaper, see you tomorrow -- which I dutifully write down in my notebook, practice in my head and promptly mispronounce the next chance I get.

As proof that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, I offer this: Determined to ask politely for my coffee and newspaper I practiced over and over biking to the cafe, talking to myself as I navigated the traffic. "Lam on, mang cho toi ca phe sua da con to bao. Lam on, mang cho toi ca phe sua da con to bao. Lom on, mang cho...." I must have said it twenty times out loud and three times that in my head. But pronouncing the last word flat instead of high and rising, this morning I looked the waitress in the eye and confidently said: "Please bring me coffee and a condom.".

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