Another Vietnamese Language Interview!

I have been really blown away by how many Vietnamese-Australians have contacted me praising Destination Saigon. It is unexpected and humbling.
Even more humbling are the interviews I have conducted in Vietnamese!
The debonair Quang Luu interviewed me for Voice of America's Vietnamese language program, but he was kind and did most of it in English, with me showing off occasionally in Viet. More gruelling was the long interview I did with SBS Radio's Vietnamese-language show. Fortunately it was pre-recorded, and the talented broadcaster edited it in such a way that I sounded fluent and clever. I am neither.
Just last week I did an interview in Cabramatta with the handsome and charming Martin Le for 2GLF's Vietnamese language show. Martin was a little more brutal (and he speaks REALLY quickly), so I fear that I might come across as less-than articulate in the interview. In the end I fell on my sword and begged to answer the final questions in English - which he gallantly allowed me to do.

The Vietnamese Language

I am in love with the Vietnamese language, fascinated by the twists and turns of it, a sing-song, yet oddly sticky language that can leave you frequently in sticky situations.

Indeed, in an early draft of the book I expounded at length on the differences of the regional dialects of Vietnam. I daresay it was quite wise of my publisher to have cut it out.
I once worked with a woman more familiar with the more adamant tones of Cantonese, and whenever she heard me speaking Vietnamese she would remark on its beauty. "It's so gluggy," she would say. "It seems to stick in your mouth."

Of course, I happened to fall in love someone who spoke Vietnamese, and in the early days of our courtship I would swoon when he spoke with his elderly neighbour whenever she brought us food, or to his sister on the telephone. I loved its sweet softness, its sing-song affirmations and sliding denials.
It is a reasonably easy language to learn to read and write, but devilishly difficult to speak and comprehend. The differences in sounds are so subtle, so refined, that even after 11 years of trying I still make stupid, obvious mistakes. In Vietnamese I am a dunce, a childish, smiling giant who knows to say "yes" whenever anything is not clear.
I often wonder about Alexander de Rhodes, the Jesuit priest who transliterated spoken Vietnamese into a romanised writing system in the seventeenth century, inventing its abundant diacritical marks and tone guides. How many years did he wait and listen to this language he thought resembled "the singing of birds," making sketches of sounds and approximating ways of capturing those crazy noises? And who taught him, I wonder?

Theravadin Monk, Dong Nai

This pic dates back to 1999, when I was in Vietnam studying the Vietnamese language at the Ho Chi Minh Social Sciences University in Saigon. Back then I was really involved with the Vietnamese Theravadin community, which is reasonably small. In fact, I had taken refuge with one of Vietnam's leading Theravadin masters, and this young monk was one of his charges.
We became great friends, and used to spend a lot of time together. He was always slightly naughty, so it was no surprise when I returned to Vietnam a couple of years later to hear that he had left the monkhood in order to get married.
This photo was taken during the Kathina celebration at a forest monastery in Dong Nai, just outside of Ho Chi Minh City.