Nose flattened against the language barrier

Rather than close down on the weekend, Language Link ramps up—Saturday and Sunday are the two busiest days of a seven day school week. Right now, though, the school is closed for a three day holiday and most of the staff are gone away on buses to Quang Ninh, Vietnam's northeasternmost province. The neighborhood seems deserted now, except for me and the two Gordons…and a couple hundred thousand Vietnamese neighbors.

So I was delighted that Thanh showed up this morning for another friendly status check. He always comes by too early in the day for me to take him out to lunch, but we always have a good conversation and he's patient in his responses to my exasperated questions about Vietnamese pronunciation. Here's the kind of thing I find so exasperating:

The Vietnamese word for 'no' or 'not' is 'khong'. The 'kh' is pronounced sort of breathy like a French 'r' or German 'ch', but that's not the problem. There's an accent mark over the 'o', which is pronounced like the 'o' in 'from', but that's not the problem, either. The problem is the 'ng' at the end. I've heard this word pronounced on a Pimsleur CD and it sounded like 'come'. Several phrasebooks and dictionaries I've consulted render it phonetically as 'kawm'. When Thanh says it, it sounds to me like the English word 'come'—or maybe 'kawm'. The point is: it ends with an 'm' sound.

But when I repeat the word, Thanh shakes his head no.

"The 'ng' has an 'm' sound," I say.

"No," says Thanh, "It doesn't."

"Say it again," I tell him, and he says quite clearly: "Come". I can see his lips close the way lips do when you make an 'm' sound.

"Come," I say, and Thanh shakes his head no.

"Ng…ng," he demonstrates with his lips apart.

"Cung," I say.

"Yes, that's it!" he says delightedly. "Come."

"You're not saying 'cung', Thanh, you're saying 'come'. I can see your lips close at the end of the word."

"Come," he repeats.

"Come," I say. He shakes his head no, endlessly patient but not wanting me to fall into bad speech habits…like him.

I have this kind of laughable communication difficulty every day with hotel and restaurant staff. When a young boy name Thu came to pick up my laundry I tried to make him understand that I didn't want to pay the extra charge to have my pants and shirts ironed. Pantomime seemed to confuse Thu even more than English, so I led him to the telephone and indicated that he should call Hung, who mans the front desk and understands a little English. Thu made the call but instead of passing the phone to me, he summoned Hung up to my 4th floor room and then hung up the phone!

When I ordered a beer today, the waitress asked me if I wanted a bottle of beer. Assuming the alternative would be a glass of draft beer, or conceivably a can of beer, I told her no, no bottle. She was dumbfounded. She asked me to confirm that I wanted beer.

"Yes," I said. "One beer."

"In a bottle?" she asked.

"No," I said. "No bottle."

She couldn't believe it. "You want beer?" she asked again.

"Vung," I said. "Yes."

"Bottle?"

"Khong," I insisted. Or maybe what I said was "Come."

She called over the headwaiter who continued with me in the same vein for several minutes before I came to my senses and agreed to have beer in a bottle. It all ended well with smiles and good cheer all around.

It's supposed to be cooler this week, but don't ask for corroboration from me. I still can't walk from my hotel to a café two blocks away without arriving in a serious sweat. While I eat my com heo xao dua (stir fry pork and pineapple with rice), I can feel sweat rivulets trickling down my sides and I lean away from my plate to keep my wet sleeves from dripping on the table. Later, when my shirt has dried over the back of my desk chair, salt deposits will cause it to look as if a tailor has marked it up with chalk for alterations.