Evidently I'm so keen on Hanoi that I couldn't drag myself away from my motorbike long enough to write a blog post. But now it's Friday night, I've got a mug of cider, no friends, and nothing better to do, so I will write.
I met an interesting man the other day. A friend of a friend of mine is blind, and although that is probably really shit in lots of ways, he has developed an awesome talent. He has the most spot-on British pronunciation of any Vietnamese person I've met. Living in Bac Ha, a small town a fair way outside of Hanoi, I'm pretty sure he doesn't hang out with loads of Westeners. He claims to listen to the BBC World Service and try to copy how they talk, but he doesn't even speak BBC pronunciation, he sounds EXACTLY like he comes from Chichester. I did a double take when I met him - a Vietnamese man gets off a motorbike, and says "Alright, how's it going?" sounding just like he could live down the road from me in England. His actual vocabulary/grammar was about as good as my other friends who speak really good English - about 80% there - but the pronunciation was mentally good.
My friend explained that because this guy Dat can't see how the words are written, he doesn't get distracted by trying to pronounce them as though they are Vietnamese words. He just hears sounds, and mimics them. I definitely do this when I'm learning Vietnamese - it's like I'm wired to produce a certain sound when I see the letter 'd' or 'u', which causes problems when I read a name like 'Duy'. If I'd only heard the pronunciation like 'Zwee', I wouldn't start trying to call my student 'Doy', and no one would laugh at me. Combining sight and sound can make things more difficult when they don't correlate like we expect them to.
I also think Dat (pronounced 'Dat') has an unfair advantage when it comes to pronunciation - pretty sure I've read that if you lose one sense, your other ones become stronger to compensate. So perhaps he can hear pronunciation more accurately than we can. Maybe he has really good tastebuds too.
Actually Dat turned out to not be a very nice man; he got drunk and started making lewd comments about me and my friend Tien. But he doesn't have to be a nice man to be a fascinating scientific experiment.
I met an interesting man the other day. A friend of a friend of mine is blind, and although that is probably really shit in lots of ways, he has developed an awesome talent. He has the most spot-on British pronunciation of any Vietnamese person I've met. Living in Bac Ha, a small town a fair way outside of Hanoi, I'm pretty sure he doesn't hang out with loads of Westeners. He claims to listen to the BBC World Service and try to copy how they talk, but he doesn't even speak BBC pronunciation, he sounds EXACTLY like he comes from Chichester. I did a double take when I met him - a Vietnamese man gets off a motorbike, and says "Alright, how's it going?" sounding just like he could live down the road from me in England. His actual vocabulary/grammar was about as good as my other friends who speak really good English - about 80% there - but the pronunciation was mentally good.
My friend explained that because this guy Dat can't see how the words are written, he doesn't get distracted by trying to pronounce them as though they are Vietnamese words. He just hears sounds, and mimics them. I definitely do this when I'm learning Vietnamese - it's like I'm wired to produce a certain sound when I see the letter 'd' or 'u', which causes problems when I read a name like 'Duy'. If I'd only heard the pronunciation like 'Zwee', I wouldn't start trying to call my student 'Doy', and no one would laugh at me. Combining sight and sound can make things more difficult when they don't correlate like we expect them to.
I also think Dat (pronounced 'Dat') has an unfair advantage when it comes to pronunciation - pretty sure I've read that if you lose one sense, your other ones become stronger to compensate. So perhaps he can hear pronunciation more accurately than we can. Maybe he has really good tastebuds too.
Actually Dat turned out to not be a very nice man; he got drunk and started making lewd comments about me and my friend Tien. But he doesn't have to be a nice man to be a fascinating scientific experiment.
Chichester: Dat is not from hereBecause thus far this feels insufficient to make up for such neglectful and erratic posting, I will update anyone who cares on my life plans. I'm going to quit my job in May, or sooner if I can bear to drag myself away from my fat paycheck. Children are very nice but too noisy, and actually some of them aren't very nice at all. Then I will travel from Hanoi to Bangkok overland, via Laos. I plan to do this trip slowly, because whenever I travel I'm rushing and missing stuff. Then I will go on aeroplane for a long time, and end up in London. Then I will go somewhere else. Then I will go to Glastonbury, and dance like a mentalist to all the music they've never heard of in Hanoi. Then I will go to Brighton or London and work in a summer school. Then I will go to Sonisphere with my brother. Hopefully there will be more festivals and more pub gardens in the interim. Now we are at the beginning of August, what will I do then, I don't know. In fact none of this is confirmed yet, but it'd be pretty sweet if it happened, and I love that I'm in a position right now where these things are options. The only obstacle is my boyfriend, his attractiveness, awesomeness and lure to make me stay in Hanoi longer than I would otherwise. Always better off single.
here is a photo of me finishing a 10k last weekend: chosen because it is the only photo I've ever seen of me running in which I look like I'm actually moving
