Mot Hai Ba Bon

Yes, as you can guess, we are back to the basics in language study. It has been decades since I last learned to count in another language. The interesting thing about Vietnamese is that the above words don't tell you all you need to know in counting from one to four. You need to know that when written (or typed on a Vietnamese typewriter) there is a dot below the "o" in "Mot", which means your voice needs to drop. And over the "o" in "Bon" there is an accent angling upward that indicates your voice tone needs to go up. When you come to "seven" which is simply "Bay", you need to notice the squiggly over top of the "a" which indicates your voice needs to kind of go up and down.
Two hours a week, three times a week we are finally semi-immersed in language study. Fortunately we have a fine young tutor who is willing to teach us what we need to know to function rather than be fluent. (One good friend, here for ten years, working almost exclusively with Vietnamese, tells us he understands about 70% of what is communicated. After ten years!)

So today we learned numbers that are very important here: "thousand" (you remember that 20,000 dong equals one dollar, right?) and "million"(one million dong equals only $50). We learned how to ask how much does it cost, and what is the total amount. Now we need to remember the words, remember the pronunciation, remember the tones and remember how they go together in a sentence. Not a problem - if you have a great memory.
For those of us with a mediocre, aged memory - well we will give you a progress report in a while.