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.