So, this is what illiteracy feels like

One question I’m often asked is how I’ve been getting along with the Vietnamese language. Considering I started taking lessons almost immediately after I arrived in Saigon, my Vietnamese is not as good as it should be. I can complete everyday tasks, like ordering food, bargaining for a xe om, shopping at the market, and texting my maid. I can engage in simple, polite conversations with strangers, but my limited vocabulary means I routinely - accidentally or deliberately - tell outright lies. On a good day, I can be the quasi-competent interpreter for my visiting Australian friends. On a bad day, the lady from the corner store hands me a kilo of watermelon seeds when I thought I had asked for tomatoes. 

Thanks to decades of national literacy campaigns since 1945, Viet Nam currently has a literacy rate of 93% - far higher than its developing neighbours, Laos and Cambodia. My work here often takes me to rural communities in the Mekong Delta and communities in poor urban districts of Saigon, and in my experience, even among the low-skilled and vulnerable you rarely encounter a Vietnamese person who cannot read or write. So, when I struggle to fill in a form, read a payment notice, or comprehend simple directions, it gives me a fleeting insight into what it must feel like to be part of that illiterate 7% of Viet Nam. Actually, worse than an illiterate. More like an illiterate deaf-mute. Bumbling through daily tasks. Dependent on my colleagues and friends for translations. Possessing the vocabulary of a small child. Deaf to the cacophony of conversations going on around me. Clueless as to why people are laughing or shouting at me. It’s a somewhat humbling feeling.

But, as with every challenge, you find ways to adapt. Here's how I've been surviving in Viet Nam as an illiterate:

Think Chinese

 

Caveat: Obviously, this only works  if you already speak Chinese and/or languages that have sino-roots.

Wikipedia tells me that Hán Việt, elements in the Vietnamese language derived from Chinese, account for about 60% of the Vietnamese vocabulary. Certainly, I find that a stroll down the streets of Saigon can sometimes be like a game of Sino-Viet Bingo. 

The Vietnamese word for ‘woman’: Nữ. 
The Chinese word for ‘woman’:女(nǚ)

The Vietnamese word for ‘passport’: hộ chiếu. 
The Chinese word for ‘passport’: 護照(Hù Zhào).
Trust me, they sound similar enough…

A Chinese-Australian friend recently described a conversation she had with her mother where she was struggling to explain the type of work she was doing in Vietnam. “I didn’t know the word for 'development' in Chinese…so I said it in Vietnamese, mangled the tones a little. And, mum understood!”

It is important to note, however, that most of these Hán Việt words are rarely found in conversational Vietnamese. Back in the day, literary Chinese was used in Vietnamese government administration, and thus sino-root words are mainly found in terms relating to science, politics, education, and philosophy. I find solace in this fact: this is clearly why my Vietnamese isn't better despite my sino-language advantage.

Google-Translate it

I wouldn't usually rely on google-translate under normal circumstances. I've no doubt that google-translate is to blame for most, if not all, of this. But, sometimes google-translate is all you've got. And frankly, if my housemates and I were able to negotiate our new tenants' agreement with our Vietnamese landlord, communicating only via google-translate, then google-translate can't be all bad.

Artist/designer, Candy Chang, puts it better than I ever could. Read her short post here. 

 

Mime and Gesticulations

No explanation needed here. Mime and gesticulation are universal whenever you travel to a place where you don’t speak the language. My favourites include miming for insect repellant (slapping and scratching your arms and legs whilst complementing your performance with mosquito sound effects) and miming for directions to the local swimming pool (doing breast-stroke, back-stroke and free-style whilst sitting on your motorbike).
 

Real-life Pictionary

The scenario: My housemates and I wanted to purchase a hammock for our rooftop terrace.

The problem: It is, in fact, very difficult to mime the word "hammock." You try it. Seriously. Go on. Turn to the person next to you and, without words, do your best impersonation of a hammock. Did they understand?  No?  Then I've made my point. [If they did understand your hammock mime, then you are both freaks (or liars), and now go outside and try miming that word "hammock" to a complete stranger.]

The solution:

A scrap piece of paper + my mad Pictionary skills + 10 minutes at our local market

Dreams do come true

When you don't speak the language, getting anything done in this country - no matter how minor - is a huge victory worthy of celebration.

Five signs you’ve been in Vietnam too long

#1.  Muscular atrophy is not something to be concerned about (aka: my fat-o-meter has shifted)  

The only fat people in Vietnam are the foreigners. Ok, that’s not entirely true...there’s a small yet noticeable chubby pumba cohort amongst the 5 -10 year old over here, but let’s just say that the obesity phenomenon which is taking the developed world by storm has not yet arrived in Vietnam. The general slenderness of the Vietnamese was particularly noticeable to me when I first arrived in Saigon directly from a country where over 75 percent of the population is overweight or obese.

Vietnamese women, in particularly, are uniformly waif-like. I’m always afraid that if I brush past them at the supermarket checkout their arms (which closely resemble toothpicks) will snap off, sending their shopping baskets of diet tea tumbling into the aisle. The other day, I was preparing to cross the road on Pham Ngoc Thach when a Vietnamese lady in front of me turned sideways and disappeared.

The average Vietnamese woman is so skinny, the average sized shorts here don't fit on average sized mannequins (Photo: stolen from somewhere on the web)

It was only during a recent trip to Kuala Lumpur, whilst chowing down on delicious, delicious laksa and roti canai surrounded by corpulent local diners that it dawned on me: I now consider unnaturally rake-thin, skeletal women as completely normal. Why else would I be distracted by a few overweight Malaysians? I come from Australia, dammit!! AUSTRALIA! Clearly, having been surrounded by a freakishly thin population for the past 6 months, the settings on my fat-o-meter have shifted.       

#2.  The act of walking is a thing of the past

All the locals I know in Saigon actively detest walking. And it’s easy to see why; the footpaths of Saigon are like an assault course for pedestrians. Street food vendors, uneven pavements, protruding tree-roots, massive pot holes, xe oms waiting for their next customer, people barbequing their meat over open flames, people riding their motorbikes up onto the footpath, and an assortment of abandoned furniture all serve to make the walking experience in Saigon less like a stroll along the Yarra and more like a game of Super Mario. And we've not even begun to discuss the agility and skill required when crossing the roads.    

 

As a consequence, after about a month or so living in Vietnam, you find yourself riding your motorbike everywhere. It makes no difference if the trip is supposed to take 30 minutes of 2 minutes. You'll always choose to go by bike. And, most importantly, you ride like a local. This means you ride up onto the footpath to escape gridlock, or simply because you can. You ride through knee-high flood waters with your feet raised towards the handlebars. You ride against oncoming traffic on a one-way street. You’ve ridden three to a bike.

You’ve also ridden side-saddle. You’ve ridden side-saddle, three to a bike, no helmet, through unsealed Mekong roads. You ride your motorbike through the front door of your house and into your living room. You would ride it to the bathroom if it weren’t for those 4 flights of stairs. The only way I could ride more like a local is if I rode while smoking a cigarette, eating a bánh mì while answering my mobile with an infant balanced precariously on my lap.

#3.  Soup and juice should be served in and consumed from a plastic bag.

Any other way is just weird.

Refreshing watermelon juice, straight from the plastic bag. This particular bag even has a handy string for holding.

#4.  Geckos are no longer cute

These little critters are everywhere in Saigon. A home is just not complete without at least two geckos hanging out by the florescent light blub in each room. They are cute at first, with their big bug-eyes, knowing smiles and funny toes, so you are more than happy to have them for company. Until you find out that one has pooped in your toaster.

  

#5.  You’ve acquired an unshakeable “don’t ask” attitude

Why was the wait-staff at KFC walking around in their socks and no shoes? Why is that man taking a dump on the side of a busy road? Where has the balcony of our hotel gone? 

(Photo courtesy of Chloe.)

Where has the neighbour’s fat pomeranian disappeared to? Where does the office rat (last seen scampering across the filing cabinet) usually live? Why is the black-bra-and-sheer-top look so popular around here? And, are those very tiny shorts, or is she just wearing underpants with a belt? Why can’t someone fill the massive pot-hole outside our house with asphalt, rather than just sticking a broken chair into it? And, why the hell did they stick this in the middle of the main thoroughfare near our house?!?!

This photo does not quite capture how infuriating this obstruction was. At one point there were TWO of these towers erected side-by-side in the middle of our road. The Tower of Sauron effectively doubled my commute time to work and trebled my daily inhalation of carbon monoxide as I sat waiting in traffic that would bottle-neck around the towers. We still don't know why the local authorities thought it was a good idea to do this.

These are all good questions. Unfortunately, these sorts of questions crop up all the time in Vietnam; so frequently, that if you were to follow all of them through to their logical conclusion you’d simply have no time to think of anything else or get anything done. Furthermore, none of the locals look twice or appear even the tiniest bit phased by any of these things. After six months living in Vietnam, you find that you have also adopted a strident 'don't ask' attitude. You don't ask questions anymore, even when you encounter something like this...

Scooby Doo giving you the finger atop Ham Rong mountain, Sapa. Don't ask.

(Photo courtesy of Matty)