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Passage to Vietnam : Part 4 - The Language

I once went for a course in conversational Chinese. For those of you who do not know, every character in Chinese has 4 tones, none which my Indian tongue managed to master even after finishing the Intermediate Level.

As such, the day I found out that Vietnamese has 6 tones, I realised that trying to learn it was a lost cause.

Let me get this straight. Speaking Vietnamese is tough, as in REALLY VERY TOUGH. I can remember the day I met some of my Vietnamese friends, I could not catch their names during the introduction that I had to go back home and check out their facebook before I had some idea of what the name somewhat sounded like. Though do not get me wrong. There is nothing really uncomfortable about listening to it. It is simply very hard to catch and even more hard to say, with the right tone.

Though if you are travelling to Vietnam, do not let that daunt you. Over my years spent travelling, I have learnt that while people might not always really understand what you say, they have a better chance of understanding what you do. The day my friend puked in the hotel room in Vietnam, I went down to get some toilet paper from the hotel receptionist to cover it up. Despite my best efforts, the poor fellow could not understand what 'paper' or what 'toiler paper' meant.

So I bent down, put my left hand on my ass and rubbed it.

Then, he handed me a fresh new roll of toilet paper.

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