Befuddled and Bemused. June 5, 2008.

Befuddled and Bemused. June 5, 2008.

I have now had six of my scheduled twenty eight Vietnamese language lessons. If exercise for the brain is good for staving of dementia I should be protected for quite some time to come. I can positively feel new neural pathways struggling to connect. The first week of classes are focused on learning pronunciation. This involves learning not only how to pronounce vowels, single consonants and consonant clusters but also combining these with six different tones. The same word can mean six different things depending on the tone applied.

The language now uses a Romanized alphabet system but this has added symbols to denote the variations in the vowels of which there are twelve and other symbols to identify the six different tones. I am grateful to whoever it was who decided to replace the ancient Chinese based script with the more familiar Roman letters but it is a complete mystery to me why they chose for some of the sounds to use letters that in no way resemble the intended sound. Some of the letter clusters resemble Te Reo Maori but the sounds are very different. My face becomes twisted and my tongue rubbery as I struggle to produce noises that bear no resemblance to English. For example, the instructions for one sound, is to push out your chin, stretch your lips into a smile then make a “u’ sound that is generated from your lower throat not your mouth. After about 100 attempts I achieved something that was roughly correct then I was expected to combine it with other letters and to remember to use the designated tone!

My confusion is compounded by elements that are not what they seem. For example there are two “d” letters, one written in the normal way and one that has a horizontal line through it. The normal “d” is pronounced as a “y”. Why this was not just written as a “y” is a complete mystery for me but when I am thinking about it I can remember. Unfortunately, when I am concentrating on the other elements of the word, this bit of information evaporates from my mind and I repeatedly slip back into making a “d” sound. I am not sure who gets more frustrated – me or my instructor!

I have two instructors, each for an hour-and-a-half, one-to-one lesson. In the morning I have a man who is pedantic and exacting. Other volunteers who have studied with him talk of their strong desire to strangle him after a few days. He jumps on every error as it leaves your lips leaving absolutely no time for self correction. If you hesitate for a moment before tackling one of the convoluted sounds on the charts he jumps in and tells you what to say. Yesterday he was most disturbed when, irritated by his approach and incredibly frustrated by my own lack of skill in hearing and reproducing the required sounds, I was reduced to tears. Sternly he told me to calm myself but for a period I was completely unable to shape my trembling chin to achieve anything like to required sounds and tones. On other occasions I get the giggles which do not help at all as I try to stretch my mouth into the required vertical oval with my cheeks sucked in or to place the tip of my tongue between my teeth to achieve a silent “t”. The Vietnamese do not pronounce the ending consonants on words but the shape of your mouth is critical for achieving the correct finish.

My complete lack of musical ability is a real disadvantage when trying to remember and replicate the various tones. I seem to have no aural memory and again and again have to go back to the beginning to try to instill the correct pitch and development of each tone. I am sure that I sound like an ailing sheep as I repeatedly say “ma” in each of the different tones.

But despite my difficulties with Mr. Tuyet I do feel that I learn during his lessons. The teacher in the afternoon is much more relaxed. Whether it is from a lack of interest or a deliberate strategy I am not sure but she happily ignores most of my mistakes and tells me I am doing well no matter how appallingly I mangle her language. It is much less stressful but I suspect that I am learning much less during her sessions.

It is exhausting. By the end of each lesson I am glancing furtively at my watch between resting my head on the desk in front of me as I desperately hope for the one and a half hours to be up. I then stumble out into the street with my head spinning. We have been given a CD which I have loaded on to the IPOD that Tim and Laree kindly gave to me so now on the 40 minute walk to and from class I make a wonderful impression of a madwoman as I walk along repeating three types of “a” etc.

Apparently the one big advantage of Vietnamese is that, unlike English, the language is consistent. Once the pronunciation rules are mastered it is supposedly possible to read text reasonable accurately even if you can’t understand the content. The other volunteers assure me that they too felt like the stupidest person in the world during their first week and say that it gets better in the second. We will see!