OK, I know very little Vietnamese, even after a few hours with Rosetta Stone lessons and two months in the country. But surely my pronunciation is not too bad - is it?
How many ways can you say "Victory Hotel, Nam Ky Khoi and Vo Van Tan St."? Actually given tones and accents, enough ways that I had to direct the taxi driver most of the way with words for left, right and straight. Then when within two blocks, the driver clearly said "Vo Van Tan and Victory Hotel." My words exactly!
Is Vietnamese a difficult language? Not the most difficult in the world, but yes it is. Last week Jan had lunch with a woman who has been in country for a decade and seems to have very good language facility. (Good enough to correct documents that are translated badly.) In the restaurant she asked for salt and the server looked blankly at her. She tried again, and again. Finally she realized, (the server still did not), that her tone was not quite right and so she had been saying "mosquito", not "salt". Hmmm, you would have thought the context of a restaurant would have helped - but not so.
Jan and I will begin working with a language tutor next week. Our goal is to simply learn "survival Vietnamese". At our age, with our linguistic skills, that is the best we can hope for. I don't care if I never learn how to ask for salt - or for mosquitos.
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