Nation names in Vietnamese fall into two distinct groups:
1. Cognates
2. Names that actually mean something.
For instance, cognates are recognizable, like Thái Lan or Canada. Non-cognates have absolutely no rhyme or reason. Germany is nước Đức, Australia is nước Úc, and Belgium is nước Bỉ. (By the way, "nước" simply means "country.")
America is nước Mỹ. It never occurred to me to ask my instructor what that word actually means. During class, we translated "United States of America." It is Hợp chủng quốc Hoa Kỳ. The first three words literally mean "united states." The interesting part is the last two words. Hoa means "flower," and kỳ means "flag." In Vietnamese, our nation's name literally means "United States of the Floral Flag." Apparently the Vietnamese think we have a busy flag. I never thought of it that way, but as flags go, ours IS a little busy.
The word for America is nước Mỹ. It means "beautiful country." Americans are người Mỹ, or, "people of the beautiful country".
I'll take it.
20 August 2009
18 August 2009
Tôi nói tiếng Việt một ít.
It is hard to believe that I have been learning to speak Vietnamese for four weeks now. It is a strange feeling knowing that I know so little and can barely communicate in this new language, yet when I review the vocabulary that I currently have it comes out to about 200-300 words. The sheer amount of vocabulary that is required to speak a language at a highly fluent level is staggering when you think about it. I can thumb through a Vietnamese dictionary, wondering how I can ever stuff so much information in my head and retain it. Yet, I can thumb through an English dictionary and very rarely come across a word I am not familiar with.
Vietnamese is a tonal language. There are six tones if you include the non-inflected neutral tone (called thanh ngang). As tonal languages go, that’s a lot of tones. Fortunately, Vietnamese comes in two major dialects; Northern and Southern. The Southern variant is the one I am learning, and two of the tones are combined which means that I technically only have to master five. That’s plenty. The ironic thing here is that the tones don’t bother me. Getting my voice used to the up-down song of the language has taken a little time, but I can hear the tones easily. I suppose that my many years as a musician are paying off in a way that I did not foresee.
The Vietnamese language has a Romanized alphabet, which was given to the Vietnamese people by a French missionary some time in the 1500s, I believe. Sort of a Vietnamese St. Cyril. I initially thought that this would make things easier, but alas, I was wrong. In some ways it makes things worse because the Roman letters given to the language need to be heard through a French ear to make sense. It seems as if it would have almost been easier to try to learn to read this language in its original Asian script. At least then I would not continually forget to pronounce the letter “d” like an English speaker instead of the “y” sound that it actually represents. (By the way, the actual “d” sound in Vietnamese is denoted by the letter “đ”. To make things worse, there are something like 13 vowels in Vietnamese. In addition to our old friends a, e, i, o, u, and y, we also have ă, â, ê, ô, ư, and ơ. I won’t even get into how those bad boys are pronounced. Most of them involve accidental discharges of saliva.
When I began language training it occurred to me that I knew absolutely no Vietnamese words outside of the few slang terms I learned from reading James Webb’s “Fields of Fire.” I was literally at zero. It dawned on me that even knowing as little Spanish as I do, I know a LOT more Spanish than I do Vietnamese, even after a month of classes in the latter. It is daunting to jump into something like this without even knowing how to say “yes” or “no.” In fact, I still don’t really know exactly how to say “yes” or “no.” Since Vietnamese is a face-saving culture, there are words that don’t really mean yes or no, but some ambiguous middle ground that allows you to say yes or no without directly saying yes or no. Sort of a “not yes.” Wonderful.
There are very few Western cognates in Vietnamese. The few that I can detect are French, of course. However, the Vietnamese incorporated at least one English word from the period when U.S. forces were in their country. The Vietnamese word for “cafeteria” is “căng tin” (canteen).
Also I am not sure this is a cognate, but it sure as heck ought to be:
Vietnamese for “powerful” is....
“hùng mạnh.”
Indeed.
Vietnamese is a tonal language. There are six tones if you include the non-inflected neutral tone (called thanh ngang). As tonal languages go, that’s a lot of tones. Fortunately, Vietnamese comes in two major dialects; Northern and Southern. The Southern variant is the one I am learning, and two of the tones are combined which means that I technically only have to master five. That’s plenty. The ironic thing here is that the tones don’t bother me. Getting my voice used to the up-down song of the language has taken a little time, but I can hear the tones easily. I suppose that my many years as a musician are paying off in a way that I did not foresee.
The Vietnamese language has a Romanized alphabet, which was given to the Vietnamese people by a French missionary some time in the 1500s, I believe. Sort of a Vietnamese St. Cyril. I initially thought that this would make things easier, but alas, I was wrong. In some ways it makes things worse because the Roman letters given to the language need to be heard through a French ear to make sense. It seems as if it would have almost been easier to try to learn to read this language in its original Asian script. At least then I would not continually forget to pronounce the letter “d” like an English speaker instead of the “y” sound that it actually represents. (By the way, the actual “d” sound in Vietnamese is denoted by the letter “đ”. To make things worse, there are something like 13 vowels in Vietnamese. In addition to our old friends a, e, i, o, u, and y, we also have ă, â, ê, ô, ư, and ơ. I won’t even get into how those bad boys are pronounced. Most of them involve accidental discharges of saliva.
When I began language training it occurred to me that I knew absolutely no Vietnamese words outside of the few slang terms I learned from reading James Webb’s “Fields of Fire.” I was literally at zero. It dawned on me that even knowing as little Spanish as I do, I know a LOT more Spanish than I do Vietnamese, even after a month of classes in the latter. It is daunting to jump into something like this without even knowing how to say “yes” or “no.” In fact, I still don’t really know exactly how to say “yes” or “no.” Since Vietnamese is a face-saving culture, there are words that don’t really mean yes or no, but some ambiguous middle ground that allows you to say yes or no without directly saying yes or no. Sort of a “not yes.” Wonderful.
There are very few Western cognates in Vietnamese. The few that I can detect are French, of course. However, the Vietnamese incorporated at least one English word from the period when U.S. forces were in their country. The Vietnamese word for “cafeteria” is “căng tin” (canteen).
Also I am not sure this is a cognate, but it sure as heck ought to be:
Vietnamese for “powerful” is....
“hùng mạnh.”
Indeed.
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