Languages

     A couple days ago, my Spanish teacher mentioned something interesting to me. He said that English is really interesting because it can be really broken but still be understood. Coming from my teacher who speaks Spanish. French, and English fluently, I'm sure he had knowledge of this, but I also realized the same thing. If you make even little mistakes in other languages, it totally destroys what you're trying to say.
     A couple minutes ago, my mom nagged at me that I made such a mess of my bed. I misheard the key word in Vietnamese, "bày" as "bay" and it drastically changed it, for a comedic effect in this case. Instead of saying, "What are you doing, making such a mess?" I thought my mom had said, "What are you doing, flying?"
     Even though I knew I just misheard it, it was still pretty funny to me :D.
     The whole scene also reminds me of how tricky some Southeast Asian languages are. Despite English being incredibly hard to master at times because of the various nuances you have to contend with, Asian languages are hard to merely speak. There are 6 diacritics, or tone markings, in Vietnamese that change your inflection and create totally different words. It's amusing to me sometimes. I've always had a fun time teaching Vietnamese words to foreign tongues and it's interesting how you really have to have the "tongue" for it.
     I wonder if a native English speaker would have a harder time learning Vietnamese than a native Vietnamese speaker learning English? Hmm...

Vietnamese Tones