co nasty oi!

this is ha anh. i can't really understand a word she says, but when she sings 'doe a deer,' it makes my heart leap!

i had lunch at ha and hien's house this afternoon (9:30 a.m. start time!) with ha's mother and father, some of their friends, and some old colleagues from apollo. ha put on a serious spread - some of the most delicious sour tomato soup i've ever eaten - and i did my best to keep up with the conversation. eventually though, i got the dreaded lecture on polite forms of address: ha's father explained to me (very patiently, i must admit) that if i fancied myself a connoisseur of things vina, then i certainly must cease to make the mistake of calling myself em, or "little sister" to someone i greet as chu, or "uncle, younger than my father." i must refer to myself instead as chao, which as far as i can tell, translates to "youngster." "da vang a," i replied, trying to make up for my breach in personal pronoun politesse and cursing myself for being so dense when it comes to this bloody language.

but what makes this so funny to me is that all afternoon long, ha anh (ha's little girl who mistakenly calls me co, "aunt, younger than my mother." i'm actually two years older than ha and should thus be referred to as bac, or "aunt, older than my mother," but what are you going to do? she's five. ps, do you see what i mean now?? this sh*t is way complicated!)... ok, so all day ha anh keeps trying to get my attention by yelling out "co NASTY oi!" Ls and Ns are super slippery for the vietnamese, and i believe she was actually calling me "nasny" in an attempt to pronounce my name. but all i could hear - as i listened dutifully to the rules of the vietnamese pronoun game - was, "hey! aunt nasty!"