So What's it Like to Travel? Language

When my sister Nina was staying in Greece, she learned to say good morning in Greek, and proudly marched around her village, waving and nodding, and hailing everyone with the same greeting. At some point, however, she learned that she was not in fact, saying good morning, she was greeting each of the village folk by saying "Squid!" This image still cracks me up.

It is not only a nice gesture to learn some of the language of the country you are visiting, it's sometimes a necessity. But frequently, you aren't saying what you think you're saying. For example, I recently learned from a fellow traveler that in Brazilian it is very easy to mix up the words for "good morning!" and "you have a nice little bottom!" However, this does not concern me that much because, personally, I can imagine that there might be an occasion when I want to say, "Good morning! You have a nice little bottom!"

In each of the Asian countries I have visited, I have made every effort to learn some of the language. And fortunately for me, I have facility with languages. The first thing I learn to say is the greeting, followed by "thank you." These two phrases alone create a world of goodwill with the local people. If I'm having trouble remembering the words, I try to create an English rendition to help me remember. Thus in Cambodia, I worked the greeting out to be Sousa Day and that's how I remembered it, marching around thinking of John Philip Sousa.

Ordinarily, I'd want to learn to say "please," but in the Asian languages I've attempted I haven't always been able to determine what those words are because it doesn't seem to be part of the regular conversation. On the other hand, lest you think them a rude bunch, in most Southeast Asian languages, to say excuse me, you essentially say "I'm sorry." Even if you're saying, "I'm sorry, where is the toilet?"

I've also taught myself to say rudimentary things while I hold a picture of my family. I can identify each member by their specific title. Invariably this pleases people and they compliment me on my mastery of their language. It also means that I randomly assault people on buses and in restaurants insisting they look at the picture of my family and postcards of DC.

I can now ask "how much?" in six different languages. This has far better bargaining effect if you also know your numbers. I know for a fact that there were two times that I got a lower price than they intended to give me because I suggested a counter price in the native language. But I've had to be careful about the numbers because the words that sound like "sow" means six in Vietnamese, but twenty in Lao.

Likewise, I once mixed up two important words in Thai and Vietnamese. In Thailand when I want chicken, I order "gai." However, in Vietnam, you order "ga." When I first arrived, I forgot this and at a restaurant pointed to a cooked dish and essentially asked the vendor if that was her daughter!

Numbers are also important because in Southeast Asia, everyone wants to know how old you are and this isn't considered a rude question. In some countries, they ask to establish whether or not you are older or younger so they know how to address you properly. I always learn how to say my age in the local language and this tickles everybody -- that is when they get done being astounded that I'm "so old!" An international incident was narrowly avoided in Hue, Vietnam when I finally understood that a man was trying to tell me how young I looked compared to my stated age and chose not to be offended when he said in halting English, "I think you are too old."

Sometimes my learning has not gone far enough. In Laos, I learned how to say "what is that?" a very important phrase in the food marketplace when you want to identify the contents of a dish (so as not to eat something you'd prefer to pet or avoid). But since I was only there a week, I hadn't yet learned the words of food and thus would be given answers I couldn't understand!

Pantomine is a trusty universal language and a lot can be conveyed in this way when words fail. On a Vietnam beach I had a lovely "conversation" that consisted of a lot of pointing and saying family words, such as "your children?" That's also how I learned some family words by listening as I watched the pointing. And a combination of pantomine and singular words characterized my conversation last night with a Thai woman when we "discussed" our bad husbands. The sign for drank too much seems to be universal.

Tonal languages are very difficult for western ears to hear and replicate. For example, in Vietnamese, with the simple word "ma" you can be referring to either your mother or a rice seedling, or any of four other meanings depending if you put a high, mid, low, stopped, rising falling, or high broken tone to it. One day I caught myself holding my head lower, with my chin on my chest, trying to adopt a low tone. It didn't work.

In Vietnam, I learned a vitally important phrase -- "I don't want to buy." However, because of the variations of a tonal language, if I said the last word wrong, I would instead be saying, "I can't dance." I mentioned this to a fellow American traveler and he suggested that maybe I had coined a new slang phrase for when you don't like something or want something, "I can't dance with that, man."

Oftentimes, I would repeat the word I was being taught in what I thought was an exact replication, and it would be followed by laughter. To mispronounce can sometimes be dangerous. In Thai, you're either saying that something is beautiful or you're wishing somebody bad luck. In Cambodia, there are a couple of little girls who are still giggling over my attempt to say the word they were teaching me for "excuse me." Apparently, I was saying "die!" Can you imagine me moving through a crowded marketplace, saying very kindly to people in my way, "Die!" "Die!"

Sounds are not what you think either. You may recall how I said that the "wh" sound in New Zealand is pronounced "f." In Vietnamese, the "f" sound is represented by "ph." However, the "ph" in Thai is pronounced "p." (Remember my unfortunate ordering of Phuket Chicken?) The Vietnamese do not distinguish between the "tr" sound and the "ch" sound; they are interchangeable. One evening when I was meeting with some Vietnamese students, we had a lot fo fun at one poor man's expense as I tried to teach him to say "cheat" and not "treat." Of course, the tables were turned when they tried to teach me the nearly impossible sound of "ng" that begins so many Vietnamese words.

And to make matters worse in Vietnam, the Southerners say things differently than the Northerners. For example, the "d" -- if it does not have a cross through the top of the letter -- is said as a "y" sound in the South and as a "zh" sound in the North. But as a visitor, you don't know where South ends and North begins.

In Thailand, they regularly interchange the "r" and the "l." When I was buying my ticket to Siem Reap, Cambodia, I was momentarily confused by the travel agent's sending me to Siem Leap. The other day a Thai woman speaking English was trying to explain something to me and kept referring to a "frag," "like an Army frag," she said exasperated. Finally, I figured out she was saying "flag."

Sometimes English has messed me up, too. In Australia, I was trying to figure out the bus routes in Canberra. I noticed numbers on each bus stop sign and made note that several buses certainly had a lengthy and circuitous route. Then I finally realized that those weren't route numbers -- they were the bus authority's phone number!

I've had to summon up my high school French on some occasions. Once in Vietnam, I came to the aid of a French woman who didn't speak much English and the Vietnamese tour agent who didn't speak French. As it turns out, I'm pretty sure I mixed in some Spanish, but was able to help them communicate nonetheless. My French synapses also fired one night on a boat when I was extracting "how did you meet?" stories from my fellow travellers. It was the turn of a French couple and they were resisting telling. Finally, the woman turns to her husband and says to him in French, "Shall I tell the truth?" Before he could answer and to their surprise, I said firmly in English, "Yes!" Everyone laughed and then the couple had to spill their story.

A common form of greeting friends and acquaintances in Southeast Asia is "Where are you going?" Apparently, this is not a real question and it's not expected that you answer precisely. But I didn't know this for the longest time and had to quell the urge to answer as any proper American would, "None of your business." And it was especially threatening when men would ask me this. I would mutter something curt like, "I know where I'm going. Finally, I learned that an answer such as "Walking!" is completely acceptable. Imagine the confusion that our "What's up?" or "What's happening?" might bring on for a foreigner.

I tried to explain to a man in Laos how some questions that are commonly asked in Asia are considered rude in Western countries. He found it all very curious. Another time, when I was being pressed by the hotel in which I was staying to tell them why I booked a tour with someone else and how much I paid, my demuring did not get them to cease with what I perceived to be pestering questions. Finally, I told them, "What you are asking is considered rude in my country." Only then did they back off, but it was just momentarily -- this was in aggressive Vietnam. (I'll explain more about this in another story.)

I have good intuition about language as well. In a mountain village cafe in Vietnam, I greeted a new arrival with the appropriate greeting and must have said something else in Vietnamese. He turns to me and asks in Vietnamese, "Do you speak Vietnamese?" I didn't really understand him, but I seemed to get the gist of what he was asking and responded -- in Vietnamese -- "No!" This got a good chuckle out of all.

Luckily for me, if I can't say what I want to in the local language, English is the lingua franca of travel. People working in the travel industry and vendors learn some English. All other travelers learn and use English and thus you hear it being spoken with a large variety of accents. I have been in the role of teacher in several scenarios, teaching Vietnamese college students useful pick up words and phrases, or teaching Lao monks the pronounciation and meaning of words such as virtue and justice. Outside a temple in Thailand, I taught the coconut vendor how to say "delicious" and a few other words useful to selling and in turn she taught me to say a few words of Thai. It has been a joy to do such in all occasions and I am including thoughts of becoming an English as a Second Language teacher among my what-will-I-do-next fantasies.

It has been gratifying both to rediscover how much I enjoy learning languages and to remember that I can learn them with relative ease. It also has been a comfort to know that my Southeast Asian Phrasebook has, for each language, the phrase, "I didn't know I was doing anything wrong."