Evolution of Language (Learning)

When I first came to Hue, I came with a peculiar Vietnamese language background:

• Growing up, I only knew the appropriate words to address adults upon first meeting them and bidding them farewell.
• I attended Vietnamese Saturday school so I could play Playstation with my Vietnamese-American friend after class. I did learn that there are multiple forms of Vietnamese vowels, and I mastered lip-syncing "Que Huong" for a concert the whole school had to perform in.
• I took a Vietnamese class in Berkeley before I left for Singapore, knowing that during my time abroad, I would visit my relatives when I got the chance to. Thay Bac, our professor and awesome uncle figure, made that daily one-hour class the highlight of my day, as I sat in the floor of the crowded class and fearlessly read letters and words incorrectly, waiting for Thay Bac to smile at our foolishness and correct us with care.
• In Hanoi, we had a two-week crash course in Vietnamese. Since Quan, Trevor, and I already had a decent background in the language, we spent most of our time studying outside the main class. We used our various strengths to reading, writing and speaking to understand the lesson, and compared and contrasted it with what we understood of the Southern dialect. However, most of the words we learned were from the Northern region. 

Yet, by the time I came to Hue, all that background knowledge went out the window. "What language are you speaking?" I would sometimes hear from street vendors and jokingly from new friends. My excitement of utilizing prior knowledge eventually died out, and I became more intent on listening and reading rather than producing. In turn, people would mistake my listening and desire to absorb conversations as my inability to speak Vietnamese. 

I was warned by multiple folks in the North that I would not be able to understand the Hue accent... And they were right. The Hue accent reflects the old Imperial kingdom that consisted of songwriters and poets. (Hue was the capital of Vietnam before the French took over.) At one point in time, it was the language of royalty and artists. Now, to outsiders, it's the least comprehensible dialect of all famous cities in Vietnam.

However, I noticed a change after my last visit to Hanoi in February. The dialect I once found comfortable became too rough and quickly spoken. I was constantly asked to repeat my words, and I often struggled to change my accent right away. The city I had once loved and enjoyed with my Fulbright friends had become foreign to me, and once I came back to Hue, I felt at home again. The voices of local restaurant employees and banh bao bikes sang to me in crescendos and decrescendos, sharps and flats. When the language speaking went beyond my comprehension, at least a smile would be returned to show that it was all alright, "khong sao." The relief in returning to Hue made me realize that Hue had evolved into my home.

Nowadays, I've been pushing my language learning because I realized that learning about a culture also involves studying the language. I want to better understand people, and understanding the way they use (or don't use) the language increases that understanding, and I'm doing so by speaking Vietnamese consistently when hanging out with students, Hue friends (i.e. Thao (not my sister)), and my relatives (mostly Khoai). By continually asking questions instead of making broad assumptions, by repeating new Vietnamese vocabulary and using them in examples, by asking for correct English translations, I have become a teacher-student/student-teacher. I am, in my own way, achieving a mini-model of Freire's concept of true education, making the learning experience meaningful because I am providing opportunities for my students to be my teacher, and for me to be the student.

I didn't realize this until I came home to Da Nang yesterday afternoon to check in on my family. Before coming back to the house, Khoai and I sat at a cafe and talked about future goals, problems, and solutions. It was a conversation that lacked the usual bursts of laughter that came from confusions of learning each other's primary language. It was a conversation focused on me understanding matters within my mom's side of the family, only for the sake of knowing and putting everything I knew into context of the bigger picture. Within a matter of months, I had matured from one who didn't have the language skills to communicate basic opinions, to one who can now do so, but has much room left to improve communicating critical thoughts.