Viet Glish
Queenie Huynh
ENGL 1100.46

"Bo!," was the first word that came out of my mouth. It meant "daddy" in Vietnamese. Growing up, I learned how to speak English and Vietnamese. My grandparents basically raised my sister and me, the reason being that my parents were always at work. All day, my grandparents would watch old Vietnamese soap operas or old American game shows. I never really thought that I was different from the other children. I thought everyone knew Vietnamese and English like me, and I thought everyone could speak and understand it like me.

As I got older, I came to realize that I was different. I guess one could say I had a special talent: I could read and write in two different languages. I always thought everyone knew it, but no one would speak it at school, because we only spoke English. As school continued, I stopped speaking Vietnamese as much, but I still tried. Even though I was losing it, I wanted my parents and grandparents to teach me more. I always loved going to the oriental market with my mom, just so I could hear and see all the different Vietnamese words. Around the house, I would have to speak Vietnamese to my parents and my grandparents because my grandparents didn't really speak English, and my dad's English isn't that strong. I would get frustrated because I didn't know how to express myself in Vietnamese, so I would try English, but they wouldn't understand. So, dealing with that constantly made me speak English to my mom as she translated to the rest of my family. Now, I mix both languages and call my new found language "Viet Glish."

The summer after eighth grade, I went to Vietnam for the first time. The trip itself was dreadful: 18 hours of horrible airplane food, then switching airlines and spending horrible hours on other planes. All I heard on the trip was Vietnamese, all three dialects: North, South, and Mid. Everyone besides my sister and me spoke broken English. Even the flight attendants spoke broken English. The last stop we had to get off at was Thailand, and from there, we flew straight into Saigon. On that flight, I sat next to an older American male, and in my head I was shouting for joy, "Yes! Finally someone who spoke unbroken English besides my sister and me." The first thing he said to me was, "May em cau be yeu veh Vietnam chu?" I was struck with awe. He had asked my sister and me if we had ever been to Vietnam before.

Obviously, I was not expecting him to say that at all. I remember me sitting there with my mouth on the dirty carpeted floor (figuratively, of course). It took me awhile to answer him, but eventually I answered him in Vietnamese and then we just started talking. He was telling me that he owned a little shop and he would constantly fly back and forth from America to his home. I was so surprised hearing an American speak it and carry a conversation with me. I have never experienced anything like that in my life. Getting off the plane, all I heard was Vietnamese. There was no English anywhere to be heard. All the eye could see was Vietnamese writings, which are letters with different accents over the letters or below them.

Vietnam was a hard reality that hit me like a bag of bricks. Hardly anyone spoke English, only the rich families who could pay for the English classes, and even then, they still spoke broken English. I had two teenagers my age come to me and try to brag about how they knew English. They asked me to speak to them. I asked them how old they were, and they answered it correctly. They knew all the little sayings like: How are you? Where are you from? What is your name? But when my sister and I had a conversation, they listened in and tried to translate it to their parents. They couldn't. "So much for that English class," I thought. Going back was hard for me. I was so used to speaking English and my dad understanding it, but this was different. My dad's family didn't know any English at all! They had troubles understanding me and my Vietnamese because I would stick English words in my sentences by accident, and not even realize it. It was very difficult for my sister. She hardly spoke a lick of Vietnamese the whole time we were there. She would get one of us to translate for her.

That wasn't the only reason why going to Vietnam was hard. Looking at me, people thought, "Oh, an American girl. She doesn't understand Vietnamese..." So, people would talk trash about me, thinking I would not understand. Obviously, being who I am, of course I said something back, and of course, it wasn't nice. Coming back from Vietnam, I definitely learned more words, and I started speaking it more when I got home. I saw my sister having to ask for my mother or me for help each time she wanted something. I didn't want that to happen to me. I wanted to be able to speak it on my own and read it and understand it. I spoke it more and more, and I started writing it some more. My mom and I would write little notes to each other in Vietnamese on our dry erase board. My parents would get Vietnamese newspapers, and I started reading the titles. I'm still learning now. I'm still trying.

As I grew and learned and moved on to different stages in my life, high school was also an eye opener for me. At my high school, Millbrook, we had a good number of Asians. These were the kids who spoke Vietnamese during school. I wasn't friends with them because all they did was talk trash about teachers and other students. I wasn't into that. I didn't use my talent to talk trash. I didn't want to. The Asian kids started to spread rumors about me when I didn't talk to them in Vietnamese. It got so far that they actually went to my parents about me, saying how stuck up I was, or how "white" I was. Just because I refused to speak my ancestral language to talk ugly about other people! Seeing this made me stop speaking Vietnamese. I didn't want people to know that I did understand it.

I was sick of being that Asian girl who was "too white" for the other Asian kids…until I went back to Vietnam again the summer before my senior year. That's when I realized that it didn't matter what people thought. It didn't matter that I chose to speak Vietnamese at home and not at school, as long as I did speak it, as long as I did know it. Going back the second time, I just ignored all the rude comments. I ignored the rocks, the spit, and everything in between. At this point, I didn't know what to do. Was I suppose to just quit speaking Vietnamese and only speak English? No, I continued reading and writing both. I just don't care what people think anymore. I still do both.

When I go to family gatherings, I still have to speak Vietnamese to my aunts and uncles, but when I speak to my little cousins, they don't understand anything but English. Now, I mix my languages. With whomever I speak, I mix them. Earlier I mentioned my "made up" language – Viet Glish. To me, being able to speak two languages is awesome. I absolutely love it, and being able to read two languages is even better. I honestly have tried reading children's Vietnamese books, and it's pretty easy. Once, I tried reading one of my mom’s love novels, but it didn't work out to well. I would read out loud and have my mom correct me, and she corrected me a lot. So, I just stopped reading and concentrated more on getting my dialect correct.

There are three dialects: North, South, and Mid. My family is from the South, so I was raised speaking South words. Up north, a fork was called "nei," and down South, it was called "sim." There are many words like this, and I definitely got confused going to the market because I new one way of saying a certain word, but I would learn new ways of saying other words. It's pretty cool knowing the different dialects and the different words. I don't know all, but I'm still learning. My mom has friends who speak the North Vietnamese dilect, and it also has more of an accent. When she would speak to me, I really had to concentrate and listen and try to figure out what words meant what in the South. Even if one doesn't know Vietnamese, if one were listen to the three dialects and accents, they could tell the difference.

When I went to Indiana to visit my cousin at Notre Dame, I would say some words in Vietnamese, and her friends told me that I had a country accent with my Vietnamese. I didn't think that was possible. I don't even have an accent speaking English, so how can I have one speaking Vietnamese? After hearing that, I started being more aware of it. I do have a little "country" in it, and I also have an American accent, I was told. I don't really speak like the Northerners, the Southerners, or the Mids. Someone once told me that I spoke like an American being forced to speak Vietnamese. Hearing that really shocked me. I always thought I spoke like my mom, but I guess not.

Today, I am fluent in Vietnamese and English. I can speak, read, and write in both languages. Of course, reading and writing in English is easier because of my schooling. One of my life goals is to be able to read Vietnamese without someone correcting me, and to teach my children what I know, and more. Even if I marry a Caucasian male, I want my children to be able to speak to their grandparents in Vietnamese, not only just to understand them. I want them to be able to speak a little back. I want my children to know their root language. I want them to experience what I have experienced, to know two languages, to speak both. I want them to grow up like me: speaking, reading, and writing Vietnamese and English. Maybe their first words will be English words. Maybe they'll be Vietnamese words. Only time will tell. All I hope is that they can speak both.