Wednesday 20 September 2017

Learning the language

It's not easy to learn Vietnamese.  You have to have a good ear.
I decided I would try to learn a new word every day.
Well that's gone by the wayside.
I still have a very small vocabulary of about four words:

Hello
Thank-you
Delicious
Goodbye

Brad is a few words ahead of me and maybe less worried about making mistakes. He laughed at himself the other day when he realized he'd said "Hello, delicious." Words he was practising at the time. Anyway, the friendly people here seem to appreciate our efforts to learn a little of their language.

But I know more about clinking beer glasses and saying CHEERS!  The proper way is this: hold up your glass, chant ONE  -  TWO  -  THREE - CHEERS!  in Vietnamese.  Also, to be respectful you need to have your glass lower than the glass of an older person.

So it goes like this (spelled phonetically)

MO HI BA YO!

I'm often busy either trying to remember the words, or watching to make sure my glass is higher.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is great to see the elders getting some respect! 😉

Linda McNeill said...

After a few beers no more worry about how high the glasses go perhaps? :0)