language gaffes, part deux

this gaffe has nothing to do with me, though now that it's been brought to my attention, i'm sure it's only a matter of time...

let me back up a bit... today co hanh was in no mood to teach, which was just fine as far as we were concerned. i think we're all currently experiencing serious burn-out. so after a half-hearted vocab session on painting and theater in viet nam, we started chatting about sex. i don't know how we got there, but no one dared stop co hanh once she got going.

first she went on about the one-month, post-delivery recuperation period, which was fascinating. and bizarre. in viet nam, new mothers are likened to snakes who have just shed their skin. they are weak and fragile and must rest for one full month. sounds great, right? maybe, except that during this rest period, they are to be inside and covered head to toe at all times (summer or not). they have a fixed menu of about three dishes (i didn't get all the details but co hanh said all she was given was dry, tasteless pork, minus the fat). they are to avoid fans, AC, TV, reading, talking, showering... she said she showered after three days, and the whole neighborhood shook their fingers at her. and she managed to get some TV in, but only by agreeing to wear dark sunglasses!

then she went on to tell us that there is still no sex education in the vietnamese school system (she remembers one lesson in junior high science that the teacher refused to cover in class and instead assigned as "personal research"), and included some very disturbing statistics (and somewhat personal examples) about gender, superstition, and abortion that i will spare you.

toward the end of class, we students realized we were still missing some key vocabulary. as co hanh had been very forthcoming all morning, we decided to ask: "xin co hanh, tell us. how do you say in vietnamese... must do what before get pregnant?" (that is more or less what i sounded like. yes, i was the brave one to ask). though there is apparently no shortage of different ways to say it in vietnamese, she taught us the very innocuous A quan he voi B or "A is having sex/has sex with B." quan he is also the general term for relation or relationship, a word used in many different contexts, personal and professional. but there is a key distinction between the two usages, and it comes down to two little letters: c - o. if you say A co quan he voi B then you are simply talking about the relationship between A and B (gender relations or the diplomatic relationship between the US and VN, for example). BUT, if you miss that little word co... as co hanh was explaining the difference, oliver (remember, the chinese spy from PA i mentioned a few days ago!?) gasped. he realized that for his final interview project he had been running around town asking people if they thought china and viet nam were currently having good sex.

imagine their bewilderment: "not only is this kid a spy, but he's also kind of a perv!"