Caleb’s Language Learning Update

How’s Caleb doing in Vietnamese so far? I am happy to report that I have heard three Vietnamese words coming from his mouth! Very impressive! And let me add that he has not had any formal training at all.

We heard his first Vietnamese word from a ‘joke’ he came up with. And this happened on the plane to Thailand. The joke goes something like this:

“There’s a Vietnamese man talking with an American man. The American said to the Vietnamese, “Would you like me to comb your hair?” To which the Vietnamese man said, “Không, không!” So the American went ahead and started combing the Vietnamese man’s hair.”

(for non-Vietnamese readers: không means ‘no’. It doesn’t really sound like ‘comb’ in proper Vietnamese, but it does when Caleb says it with his American accent).

The second word we heard from him also came with another one of his ‘jokes,’ with the same opening:

“There’s a Vietnamese man talking with an American man. The American asked the Vietnamese, “Would you like to drink some soy?” and the Vietnamese corrected him saying, “You don’t DRINK xôi, you EAT xôi.”

(for non-Vietnamese readers: xôi is a Vietnamese food made of glutinous rice and sounds like ‘soy’)

Yes, Caleb has been into jokes these days, including the knock-knock jokes. He thinks about jokes all day long, right up till he falls asleep. And he tries to work Vietnamese into his jokes too. One night, we heard him laugh in the middle his sleep. Two weeks ago, our country director in Hanoi had some knock-knock jokes, and so Caleb called him up and the two of them exchanged jokes over the phone.

The third word we heard was “rau muống.” We had it for dinner the other day and he liked it so he asked, “Can I please have some more rau muống?” It’s a green vegetable, very common here, and there’s not a good English translation for it, so he must have picked it up when we said it many times in the past. (‘ung-choy’ in Chinese, and ‘water spinach’ is one translation I heard, and 'water morning glory' is another).

Caleb doesn’t really like to learn Vietnamese, and we don’t force it on him either. We’ll just let him pick up whatever he can. It would be hard for me to teach him because of the difference between the northern and southern accents. I think he may know a few more words, but he has not used them yet.