hien in the toyota van. ha says she still prefers the motorbike.
this, i have little doubt, will be the first of many entries about the joys of learning vietnamese... let it be known that i make mistakes all the time: "let's meet so i can exercise my vietnamese," for example, or "i am believing for my sunglasses." vocab mistakes abound, but so do tonal screw ups, the most most delicate of which often involve sex or body parts. i've already mentioned the "penis juice" incident. and i have a colleague who addressed an audience of vietnamese at the hanoi opera house, which she called the "big singing vulva" meaning the "big singing house." ah yes, everybody's got a story.
a few nights ago i had dinner with my friend ha and her husband hien. i'd worked with both of them at apollo back in the day, and i was thrilled to hang out with them again, to meet their little girl, linger over a hot pot chock full of shrimp, tofu, spinach, squid, two kinds of mushrooms... we were on the roof of another friend's place, overlooking west lake, and because it was dusty, hien decided to take off his socks (why he is wearing socks in june, i do not know). anyway, most of our conversation that night was in english and merely peppered with a bit of vietnamese, but thinking i should practice my clothing vocab, i told hien, "yeah, go ahead, take off your socks!" to which he responded, "haa??!" this struck me as an unusual response to such a simple command, so i looked to ha, who kindly informed me that yes, "tat" does mean "sock" in vietnamese, but it also means "all."
and the she added, "so actually, older sister, you've just told my husband to take off all his clothes."
awesome.
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