How Do You Say That? It’s Relative

They’ve held me captive for so long, the nuances of my native tongue. It’s a puzzle. I can speak Vietnamese fluently with my parents and adult relatives, but stick me in a room with one stranger, and you’ll hear nary a peep from me. What you do get is excessive nodding and the word da every two seconds.

Da means a respectful “yes”; it’s a term you use with those older than you. It’s a word I use indiscriminately when I can’t think of how to respond.

My problem is that I can never get past the introductions: Hi-How-are-you?-Nice-to-meet-you. Easy in English, but in Vietnamese, there’s a relationship factor to consider. You’ve got to size up the person, envisioning the role you’ll take with them.

If I meet a girl about my age, I politely would call her chi, which means “older sister,” but is used also for female cousins, friends, the cashier at your local grocery store. That automatically makes me the younger party. In my perfect world, I would use chi to say “you,” I would call myself em to say “I” or “me.” And she would call me em and herself chi.

To return the courtesy, though, the girl would establish a relationship different from the one I’ve conjured; she would likely call me chi. Or she may opt for co, a term for “maiden” that is applied to strangers. Within the family, it’s what I would call my father’s younger sister or what the children of my mother’s brother would call my mother and her sisters, regardless of their ages. Confused yet?

Referring to myself with others is just as tricky. According to my Dad, I can say em when speaking to female strangers of my generation, but not male strangers. I would use con the same way with adult relatives or family friends, but otherwise, it’s chau to older strangers. Both are nouns for child or pronouns that can mean I, me or you. Then there’s the slang toi or the formal tui, generic for I or me. Still with me?

Because most of my Vietnamese speech involves relatives, I use con 99% of the time correctly. I naturally developed a tendency to use it with strangers as well--incorrectly. For this I’ve been endlessly admonished, and subconsciously--I don’t know when--I stopped using pronouns to refer to myself. Me ordering lunch: Please let have a sandwich.

I can hardly greet the sandwich maker, because that would require establishing those dreaded association parameters. It starts with the term you choose for hello--chao or thua. Do you want to say “Hello person-equal-to-me” or “Hi person-superior-to-me?”

For most of my school life, I tried my best to steer clear of learning Vietnamese. I came to this country when I was an infant, and didn’t get an American name until I was six. That was one year too late.

In kindergarten, my teacher did her best to pronounce my Vietnamese name, Ngoc. She called me “‘Nap.” It was a mutilated pronunciation, and my classmates took it a step further with “Nappy.”

I was traumatized.

Back then, I hated Vietnamese for being so difficult for Americans to pronounce, and I hated how most everyone reversed the “u” and the “o” in the spelling of my last name. For its simplicity and commonness, I relished my new name, Mary.

As a student journalist in college, I started talking to strangers more. I offered my name as “Vong like song,” which invited the obvious misspelling.

Then last summer, I accompanied my cousin, his fiancee and their families to sign documents in preparation for their wedding ceremony. We were seated at a long rectangular table, making small talk in Vietnamese when I was asked what career I was pursuing.

I didn’t know the word for journalist. “Write,” I finally whispered.

Luckily, my cousin’s fiancee saved me, explaining that I wanted to go into bao om, or journalism.

Something in that incident spurred me to want to strengthen my speaking abilities, perhaps even learn how to read Vietnamese. It’s not too late.