Reading Vietnamese aloud (ii)

From teacher To-Lan Vu and linguist William P. Hyde at Dunwoody Press

One of the voices in my head has taken up the study of Vietnamese language. He has got me on the deck out back at the end of the work day, shouting.

See, if you shout you have to know exactly what tone you are using. You can't just mumble and rely on context to carry your point like you are from Hue.

So he has got me memorizing dialogues as well, as Jews do with scripture and commentary. So you always know.

This is also good for grammar. Vietnamese speech does have a grammar.

All speech has grammar. If you like to read linguistics as I do that language's grammar is fascinating.

But it got no paradigms. And so it is fluid, from place to place and time to time.

When two speakers get together you can watch them calibrate to each other. I can, anyways.

Me, they will just look at me like damn if it didn't sound like he was speaking Vietnamese. Hilariously, this happens more as you get better.

Anyways. Big fun. So there I am each afternoon shouting from my complete course for signals intelligence written by a National Security Agency cryptographer for I think the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

All the voices in my head are finding new jobs lately. I think the linguist was the screaming Marine lieutenant in my life, from Signals come to think of it.

Lieutenants scream because they carry out orders in chaos. What they know how to do is scream.

Beyond that, lieutenants don't know much. It is like having a bachelor's degree from an elite school.

Elite meaning you don't have to know what you are doing. Elite meaning you will do it, as you will jump out an airplane.

My guy has been busted, thank heavens. He has become a gunnery sergeant.

When gunnies scream they are just playing themselves on tv. What they really do is make damn sure you know exactly what you are doing.

Calm. Happy.

Viet Nam letters has previously addressed the work of teacher To-Lan Vu and linguist William P. Hyde on October 10, 2022.