Somebody thinks we're beautiful.

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.

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.

Slacker

Yes, Dear Reader, I have been somewhat sedentary at the computer for the last several weeks. I was busy shaping U.S. foreign policy.

Not really.

Actually, the truth is that I was temporarily assigned over to the Bureau of Arms Control and International Security, otherwise known as "T". I was a temporary staff assistant during what was a very interesting time in that bureau. I got to experience a Senate confirmation from the bureaucratic sidelines, as well as the transition to the State Department of a new Under Secretary and her staff. It was quite the experience for an entry level officer. After five weeks there, I feel like I learned just enough about the Harry S. Truman building to be dangerous. I'll bet that no other entry level officer with just five months in knows the process for obtaining a parking pass for a reserved spot underneath the building. I'll also wager that no entry level officer knows the process by which artwork can be obtained for a front office! Better yet, I know precisely who to contact if you happen to work on the seventh floor and need to get new carpet installed, have a phone line set up, get a classified email account, who can answer a question about just about any portion of the START treaty, and the shortest route from the number 2 corridor 7th floor to the jogger's entrance. If I am still around 20 years from now I'll be sure to put those little skills to good use, my friends. Or not... To be honest, I cannot see how FSOs do not bite, scratch and claw their way to foreign assignments. To each his own, I guess. I can see how someone could thrive on the atmosphere of the 7th floor, and my time there was certainly enjoyable and valuable, but I am pretty certain that places like Ho Chi Minh City will always be the favored option for me.

Some tidbits-

Questions for the Record for Senate confirmations can make you stay at work very late.

The Foggy Bottom Metro station is not a good place to catch an orange line train at 1700 hours.

After five weeks the selection in the HST cafeteria gets a little, well, yuck.

The occasional goofy question or comment from the floor adds spice to Secretary Clinton's Town Hall meetings. So do the raucous outbursts over Mozilla Firefox. That being said, the Secretary genuinely seems to be having fun. That's good for everyone, I think.

There needs to be a decent bar near the Foggy Bottom Metro station.

Leather soles wear out fast on concrete sidewalks.

Classified web browsing.

Hot dog vendors.

The collective expertise of the arms control advisors in T is mind-staggering.

Free newspapers.

Sifting through cable traffic is tedious.

State generates LOTS of cables.

Subway musicians.

Person at HST you don't want to piss off: the disintegrator guy. Do not mix plastic CDs with paper in burn bags. Put them in separate bags, or Mr. Disintegrator Room Guy will git on you.

Meeting a VIP at the C Street entrance is easier if you know what he looks like. Holding a sign with his name makes you look like a dork.

Five different safe combinations and three different alpha numeric computer passwords can be successfully memorized in short order.

A good sweat will mess up a good suit. Walking around the Rayburn building several times at noon in the summer will produce a good sweat.

Seersucker on Friday!

Friday was my last day at Main State. Like Icarus I fell back to earth on Monday and began what will be 31 weeks of Vietnamese classes. I was a little intimidated at the prospect at first; only speaking English and Vietnamese being a super hard language, but after just three days I have all five tones in my head and can pick them out when I hear them. I think this is the first time since college that I have enjoyed being in a classroom. Besides, how cool is it to get paid to learn an exotic language? Sometime around week 25 check back with me and see if I am still all peace-love-puppy dogs about it. For now I'll enjoy.

Charleston.

"Though I will always be a visitor to Charleston, I will always remain one with a passionate belief that it is the most beautiful city in America and to walk the old section of the city at night is to step into the bloodstream of a history extravagantly lived by a people born to a fierce and unshakable advocacy of their past. To walk in the spire-proud shade of Church Street is to experience the chronicle of a mythology that is particular to this city and this city alone, a trinitarian mythology with equal parts of the sublime, the mysterious, and the grotesque." 

-Pat Conroy, "The Lords of Discipline"

Though I will always be a son of the Old North State, I sometimes remind myself that I spent all of my adult life thus far in Charleston. I spent eighteen years growing up on a farm in Tobacco Road, and I spent twenty-two years in Charleston, if you don't count the year in Baghdad. Like Pat Conroy I will always be a visitor there, I never really became a Charlestonian in over two decades of living and working as an employee of the city. I was in good company though, I am not sure that I ever met more than fifty "true" Charlestonians while I was living in the city. I received my introduction to Charleston the same way Conroy did- with a screaming First Sergeant and a shaved head. I had never really experienced the steam of a Lowcountry August before those first weeks, and barracks at The Citadel were not air conditioned. It was not pleasant, even at night. How ironic it is that the dank smells of Charleston during a summer night with the tree frogs singing their million songs would bring me back to those days, without the fear and the homesickness, but with fondness and not a small desire for younger, simpler days. Maybe time has a way of smoothing out the rough edges of old memories, but time also gave me a chance to learn the Lowcountry. If you learn Charleston, you love it.

Just about every important life landmark that occurs to every young man happened to me in Charleston. My whole adult experience is there. The full spectrum of my memory, from the joy of birth and love, to the sadness and tragedy of violence and death are rooted there. When I think of happy times they are draped in Spanish moss. When I recall sadness there are live oaks and sweetgrass in the background. 

Shortly after I knew that I would be leaving Charleston, my wife took Tater out to Folly Beach with a photographer to get some pictures of her before we moved. We got the pictures back a few days ago. As I looked at the pictures, one in particular stuck out. Tater was standing on the beach with the horizon broken only by the Morris Island light. That was when the gravity of the move hit me. That one picture signified a coda for the passage that began in 1986. It occurred to me that to her, Charleston will just be where she was born. I'll take her back there surely, but she'll be a visitor. 

Like her Dad.

Jury duty.

It only took me two months of being an ex-cop before they found me. "They" being the City of Charleston Municipal Court. Some people go almost their entire lives without ever being called. I essentially got the call after being in the pool for two months. In a way, it sort of makes me wonder if someone down at 180 Lockwood Boulevard didn't make sure my name wound up at the top of the stack. As much as I would love a week down in Charleston with nothing to do but catch up on my reading, it would throw a major monkey wrench into my training schedule here in DC.

Oh, and by the way, catching up on my reading is about all I would be able to do on jury duty, since I would NEVER actually be seated on a jury in ten million years. Even if every lawyer died suddenly, leaving behind only idiots and poltroons to be lawyers, I would NEVER be seated on a jury. (I know the inherent joke in the last sentence, I figured I'd just leave it out there....)

The U.S. State Department does not ask that its employees be excused from what is their solemn duty as citizens. (No, not taxes....) Therefore, all I could do was send a letter to the court asking a little leniency and explaining the hardship that would befall me should I miss a week of consular training. My CDO (Career Development Officer- a real stand up guy) enclosed a little letter explaning the impact my absence would have on my scheduled deployment to Vietnam. So, the fingers are crossed, awaiting the verdict.

In the meantime, I am trying to think of how I could answer questions about my fitness to be a juror, if my humble plea goes unheard.

"I'd make a great juror, Your Honor, I can spot a guilty bastard a mile away!"

Newly minted diplomats.

The ceremonial swearing-in ceremony for my A-100 class happened last Friday. Quite frankly, the last two weeks have been a blur and I have finally depressurized to the point that I feel like writing anything. At the ceremony, our keynote speaker was Under Secretary Burns (U/S for Political Affairs). I got to speak to him briefly a couple weeks ago when he gave a presentation to our class over at the Truman Building. I mentioned to him that my old band director from The Citadel tried to encourage me to go into the Navy or Marine Corps as a musician, but since I ultimately wound up in the Foreign Service, I could be considered one less military musician at DoD and one additional diplomat at DoS. (There is an old joke about the comparative sizes of the Departments of Defense and State. It is said that DoD has more musicians than DoS has employees.)

The big treat at our ceremony was the appearance of Ambassador Lawrence Eagleburger. Ambassador Eagleburger is the only FSO to serve as Secretary of State (under George H.W. Bush). I am a relative newcomer to State, and was not all that familiar with him prior to the announcement that he would be swearing us in, but he is quite the rock star amongst the more senior crowd at State. All the ambassadors and Under Secretary Burns seemed thrilled to see him. He was quite the character, too. As it turns out, we have an Eagleburger in our A-100 class who wrote him a letter a few weeks prior to the ceremony, mentioning that she had just learned about him and was intrigued at their shared surname. Apparently Ambassador Eagleburger was intrigued too, because he decided to come swear us in.

Now here I am almost a week later, studying to become a Consular Officer. It seems like a month ago that I was in the sheltering nest of A-100 even though it was just a few days. So many of us have gone our separate ways. Some will be leaving for post this June. Some of us will wait as long as April and May 2010 to depart after language training and other courses. I'll be heading out in February 2010. There are happy hours and outings planned in the near future, but I think it is safe to say that swearing in was the last time we would all be together in one place.

And the winner is....

We got our high bid. Ho Chi Minh City, here we come!

(After learning to speak Vietnamese first, of course.)