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January 26, 2006 Happy Chinese New Year That is to say, "Kung hey fat choi." I memorized that so I can say it to my boyfriend's parents as I hand them a bag of oranges or tangerines this weekend. Rest assured that I will forget it when the time comes. I'm getting to where I can understand lots of little words and sentences in their language. But I can't ever pronounce them with the right tone. So I thought I would learn Vietnamese, instead. His parents speak about 37 languages, English and Spanish being the ones in which they're least fluent. Vietnamese is the Asian language I'm exposed to most, being that I have a medical condition that causes me to frequently crave Vietnamese food. So I'm learning the words. Com means rice. Pho is the beef soup. Bun is the vermicelli noodles. Except picture all those words with little punctuation marks all over them. Thit nuong is the most important phrase in the Vietnamese language. It means beautful, lean, vinegar-y sweet barbecued pork. Gah-(oi) (don't know the spelling) means my favorite vinegar-y salad. Meh-(ee) means Latino. So... I can't pronounce any of those right, either. So many long dipthongs and tripthongs. But the waitresses are willing to understand me when I try. "Pho! Tai! Lung!" I gulp at them like a tertiary character in a bad Kung Fu movie. They smile and write down the real words that mean "beef soup, large." Not even my boyfriend pronounces it all correctly. But they don't smile when he gets it wrong. "Sell-out," they think, mistaking him for Vietnamese, instead of the one-of-a-myriad-million-types-of-Chinese that he is. "That's good," Hoa tells me. She's one our Vietnamese friends. "You almost know how to say it. I can't get this idiot to remember anything," she adds, lightly punching her boyfriend Rick. He's Salvadoran. I smile sympathetically. Rick says he's looking into language courses at a local community center. He and I may not ever speak Vietnamese for shit but, as Latinos, we share the innate desire to show respect for the parents of our significant others. I found a "Learn to speak Vietnamese" CD-Rom, but I haven't had time to get into it yet. It promises to have me speaking the language within a week. That'll be nice. It'll be a relief to be able to say "Hello, how are you" to my boyfriend's parents, without them turning to him and saying, "What did your girlfriend just call us?" Also, I'll be able to order all the barbecued pork I want, however far I roam. Also, I'll be able to get even more gossip from the women at my pedicure place. I'll let y'all know how it goes. I'll make a graphic that indicates our progress. Rick's avatar will be a tortoise, and mine will be a hare. Just kidding, Rick. Kung hey fat choi, y'all. Happy Tet. Prospero ano nuevo, tambien. |