Lingua frankly

Vietnamese is difficult. The tones, oh the tones, the sextet of tones, the consonant clusters, and the letters. The alphabet looks sort of Western European, unlike the Thai scribble (ท ทหาร), but it does have traps like ơ and ă. And that’s even before you get to how the Portuguese and French missionaries of centuries past elected to transcribe the language. Many words I still cannot pronounce due to my own bucco-lingual stubbornness. But for other words, learning of the pronunciation was impeded for about a year by the way they are written. Words like “học” and “độc”. You concentrate on the dot which is a tone directing you to snatch at the word, say it really quickly, possibly going down in intonation while not neglecting any letter. (Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) apparently described this tone as “chesty-heavy”. Nope, that doesn’t help, Alex). No teacher was ever very pleased with the way I said “học” (or indeed “độc”). But why not? One clue was that when they said hoc or doc they would puff their cheeks out. Try it. It is clumsy. Now I have worked out what the difficulty is. The mistake is thinking of the last sound as a “c”: It should be a “p”. Thanks for nothing, Franco-Iberian monks. Words ending in “-ong” present a similar case: It is obvious how they should be pronounced, right? Except that you would be wrong. The “ong” at the end of a word you should say like a snappy “om”, as would a fish shutting its mouth after its prey has wandered in (cheek-puffing preferred but optional). Words ending in “-ang” are another kettle of fish, whereas “Ng” at the start of a word is simply another sad chapter: It is certainly not pronounced “ng” or “m”. No, it is much more like the sound you make when scraping brown Norwegian goat’s cheese from the roof of your mouth while moaning quietly.

Still, I’ve acquired a few hundred words of Vietnamese and today a translation app understood me (eh, Gunnar?). So to end with, here are some abstract, universal laws of language:

1. A person who says that a particular language is simple invariably does not speak that language

Both in Vietnam and Norway one meets visitors claiming that the local language is simple. Really, well, if so, why can’t you speak it? It’s easy to see where this comes from. It does seem impoverished to an English speaker to find out that in Vietnamese there are no definite articles. Haha, sounds a bit basic. Yes, so if the grammar is “simple”, then all you have to master is the vernacular, the prosody, the terms of address and the count nouns and you’ll soon be successfully ordering chicken noodles all by yourself (as long as you are in a restaurant with nothing else on the menu).

2. Repeating something in a loud voice when not being understood the first time is not a habit exclusive to the English

It is certainly common amongst Vietnamese speakers. OK, I’m mainly thinking of those in bia hois, late at night.

3. After the third use of the word “like”, a sentence may safely be ignored.

4. Multilinguistic people surf in n dimensions while monoglots run in straight lines

That’s not to say that monoglots are lazy imperialists though.

 

The laws governing driving in Hanoi

What the lawbooks say about driving here I have no idea, but an analysis of the behaviour suggests the following psychological rules.

1. Drive exactly where you want, how you want and when you want to get where you’re going

2. Don’t crash into what is in front of you.

(NB. These are also known as Packard’s First and Second Laws)

These two coexist and indeed are the combatants in a fight played out 10 times a second in the minds of all of Hanoi drivers at all times. Sometimes Rule 1 wins as when lone motorbikes jump a red light to wander into a 10-deep perpendicular river of traffic. Here they rely heavily on Rule 2 operating in all other drivers. Similar acts include going the wrong way round a roundabout, driving up a dual carriageway the wrong way, driving on the pavement, and most strikingly of all, pulling out into the traffic without looking. That last one expresses some serious confidence in the constant application of Rule 2 by other drivers. Confidence that I have yet to develop, so I check behind me before I change lane even though no-one else does it, and I have also yet to develop the thick skin needed not to jump out of my own skin every time someone toots in my vicinity.

Rule 2 means that the traffic doesn’t go very fast. It is rare for a phalanx of traffic to be travelling at as much as 40 km/h, so braking distance is not too long and swerving not fatal. One adjusts one’s speed constantly as various obstacles present themselves: a bicycle laden with flowers is wheeled out on to the road, a missing manhole cover, a 4×4 flashing its lights, tooting and zooming at you on your side of the road. A remarkable thing is that there is not the anger one sees in Europe. Cut someone up in Marseille and see what happens to you. People here don’t rant and rave when someone performs some bizarre manoeuvre that gums up the traffic. I haven’t seen any subtle or unsubtle finger insults either. Perhaps everyone goes home and kicks the cat?

To the above laws I should add the Brennen corollary which is: Make no sudden movements. If you are going to go against the oncoming traffic, then drift gradually into it, so that everyone can adjust. First impressions were that it was an utter free-for-all out there, but this is not the case. These rules make the driving bearable, and even fun (in a plane-in-turbulence sort of way).