My Vietnamese language shame
15 years and, at best, I can eat in Vietnamese.
I arrived in Vietnam in 2004. There were four of us in my volunteer program. Three language teachers and me.
For the first two weeks we had Vietnamese lessons every day. They knew what demonstrative pronouns were. I struggled with my own language before I ever struggled with Vietnamese.
Before we go on, it’s important we stop and underline the fact, that my language excuses are just that, they’re excuses. Nothing more. They’re not viable reasons. I am not that self-unaware. These are the excuses I have made to myself. I couldn’t, for example, get away with using them in an interview.
The reality is — this is not good.
Anyway. The volunteers that arrived with me, embraced it. I hid. After lessons, they once suggested that we had a picnic where we only spoke Vietnamese. I made an excuse and went for bia hoi.
I was living in Vietnam now. I didn’t need all that pronouns stuff. I’d soak it up. I’d live the life. I’d be fluent on my own terms.
I lived the life.
Didn’t soak it up.
We’re now getting to the most shameful part. When my Vietnamese father-in-law agreed that I could marry his daughter, learning the language was part of the deal. That was a decade back.
I’ve joked since that he didn’t give a deadline. But it’s a bad, disrespectful joke and it’s on me.
My first stint in Vietnam was a seven-day a week job that exhausted me. I lived it but only soaked up the basics of language.
Now in my second spell, the last eight years I’ve worked remotely.
The only Vietnamese I’ve added is from market shopping and eating out.
As with language, as with life. Time flies. Not knowing Vietnamese after a year was fine. Three years. Seven years at a stretch. And then I blinked and it was 15 and oh this is so shameful.
If I interviewed myself for a job, I’d see it as a huge red flag.
It looks like just what it is. It’s lazy.
In the meantime, my Vietnamese daughter speaks two languages fluently at six. I’m the immigrant whose child has to talk to shopkeepers for him.
That ability at that age, makes me angry about the way languages were taught at my school. I spent more time in French lessons drawing pictures to go with words than I did learning. I don’t recall conversation in years of classes.
Once in Nicaragua, my tutor told me there was a free session that evening. Still in school mode, I asked if I had to go. I never quite grasped that I was learning this for me.
And here we are… 2020. The shame got too much. I enrolled in Vietnamese classes. The first 10 were painful. They still are but occasionally I get a rush when I manage a whole sentence or can translate what’s on the blackboard.
There’s an app we use. On a good day, I can run through it like I’m shooting space invaders. Know it, know it, know it.
I’m still the worst in the class.
Worst but there’s a bug that’s growing. I can feel it. Unraveling that UK school attitude to languages. Unraveling the idea that I can soak this up without effort.
I’m learning it for me now. Because I’m here for life. And frankly, I don’t want to be having conversations with expats about the traffic and air when I’m 70. It’s going to get lonely otherwise.
And those jobs that foreigners used to do — are rightly going to Vietnamese now. There’s going to come a time when I’ll need to be part of the domestic workforce.
Honestly, there’s still no deadline. Just continuous improvement.
My 18 pre-paid lessons will run out soon.
I’ll be paying for more.
