Getting to know ya

Lesson 3:

Xin lỗi ông. Ông tên gì?
Tôi tên là Hải. Còn ông, ông tên gì?
Tôi tên là John Smith.

Ông là người Anh, phải không?
Không phải. Tôi là người Mỹ.

Ông dến Việt-Nam hồi nào?
Tôi mới dến hôm qua.

Ông nói tiếng Việt giỏi lắm. Ông học ở đău vặy?
Dạ tôi học ở Mỹ.

Literally:

Sorry you. You named what?
I named Hai. And you, you named what?
I named John Smith.

You person English, true not?
Not true. I person American. (Not sure of the literal meaning of là yet).

You come Vietnam when?
I just come yesterday.

You speak language Vietnam good very. You study where then?
(Answer word) I study in United States.

Transliterally:

Excuse me, what's your name?
I'm Hai. And you, what's your name?
I'm John Smith.

You're English right?
No, I'm American.

When did you arrive in Vietnam?
I just came yesterday.

You speak Vietnamese well. Where did you study?
I studied in the United States.

This literal translation is pretty easy to decipher in normal spoken English.

My favourite sentence by far is "Dạ tôi học ở Mỹ" - "I studied in the United States" - because when you hear it in Vietnamese spoken at a normal speed it's just so much quicker than saying it in English. This is probably because the Vietnamese have ingeniously shortened 'the United States' down to a fantastical 'Mỹ'. But their language also just seems so much more, I guess, 'efficient' than English.

Another point here is that you always put người in front of the place you're from to indicate your nationality, and tiếng to indicate language. E.g. người Việt, tiếng Việt = Vietnam, Vietnamese

The other place names and nationalities the Foreign Services Institute course provides are as follows:

Pháp - France
Tàu - China
Bắc - North Vietnam
Trung - Central Vietnam
Nam - South Vietnam
Hoa-Thịnh-Đốn - Washington
Nữu-Ước - New York
Cựu-Kim-Sơn - San Francisco

I must admit the last one is a bit of a mystery.

Of course being a New Zealander I had to find out what the Vietnamese call us. But guess what? I can't seem to find the translation anywhere, so I'll keep looking.

Does this mean no one from Vietnam has ever had to say the name of this small south Pacific country before? I can see why it probably wouldn't crop up in conversation much in the streets of Vietnamese towns and cities such as Hà-Nội, Sài-Gòn, Huế, Đà-Nẵng, Đà-Lạt, Nha Trang or Biên-Hòa ̣(see what I did there?)

I've been bad

I've encountered one of the most common hurdles in language learning - lack of discipline. Slack bastard. A week and a half off and why?
(Edit: just had a look - more like 2 weeks. Crap.)

Actually I've got a fairly good reason. I was trying to do my Vietnamese at night after work, after dinner, after chores and after the kid had gone to bed. I work long days so by the time I actually got to sit down the melatonin had kicked in big time and I would really struggle with the super-intensive Foreign Services Institute course.

I'd just end up getting grumpy and it would become a chore. 

It wasn't sustainable. It has got to be enjoyable!

So this morning I've switched the whole thing around. I'm getting up at 6am and the benefits for language learning are immediately apparent. Cup of tea and my mind is running at full speed. Now it all counts on me getting up at 6am.

Last time I was struggling with Lesson 2, which deals with directions mainly. Well, the drills are numbered A, B, C and so on - in this lesson, the drills go up to S. 

I was struggling with mặt v trái, right v left - that's because in Vietnamese, when you say something is on the right of something, you say it's on the left instead. Confused?

So my inspired trick to deal with this is just to pretend that mặt is actually left and trái is right. I know, it's pretty ridiculous, but it has surprisingly helped a lot.

Once you've mastered that you've just got to get your head around ở dằng sau and ơ trứơc mặt which mean 'behind' and 'in front of' as well as 'facing'. No left/right tricks here - these words are, for some reason, like their English equivalents.

So: 

Nhà ga ở dằng sau nhà băng. - The station's behind the bank.

Nhà băng ở trứơc mặt nhà ga. - The bank's in front of/faces the station.

A few other cool little adjectives which seem easy to remember. We've already had xa ̣- far - and gần - near. Well try these out for size:

mắc - expensive

rẻ - cheap

mới - new

cũ - old

lớn - big

nhỏ - small

One point I forgot to mention so far is that in Vietnamese, when replying with an adjective, locals seem to like to use the word lắm at the end which actually means 'very'. But in context it's actually just a way of answering a question. So if you were to translate Vietnamese dialogue everything would be 'very' this and 'very' that - on the surface, it would seem like Vietnamese people are just grossly exaggerating everything. But it's just a figure of speech.

Khạch-sán có lớn không? Dạ không, nhỏ lắm.

Is the hotel big? No, it's small.

Piece o' piss mate.