Antonio is an applied linguist, and martial arts and adventure author living in Asia (check out our interview with him here). His books, including ”The Monk from Brooklyn”, are available at Amazon.com.

When I started my Vietnamese intensive course, a lot of non-linguistists I talked to said that the Chinese students would have an advantage because they already speak a tonal language.

It is true that some Westerners could be completely stumped by tones, and just not get the language at all. But, a person who already speaks a tonal language does not have an advantage over a Westerner or a Korean or Japanese who is intelligent, motivated and who is trying to learn tones. Remember that a Cantonese or Mandarin speaker has mastered the tones of his or herlanguage, not the tones of Vietnamese. Saying that someone from a tonal language would have an advantage is like saying people from languages with words, or sounds, or verbs or adjectives would have an advantage.

Mastery of a particular language is based EXCLUSIVELY on your mastery of THAT language, not other languages. If you know tones in one language, you still need to learn the specific tones for the new language you are studying.

Next, people who were more language-savvy suggested that both the Chinese and  Korean students would have a huge advantage because of all of the Chinese cognates between Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese. But in my class, I have noticed the Chinese and Koreans don’t even hear or notice the cognates. I help Schwe Son translate his homework every single day and he never sees the cognates. The Koreans are the same.

In addition to not having a particular advantage, our Chinese classmate, Schwe Son (not his real name) seems to have a number of special problems because of his Chinese mother tongue. For example, we learned the words for “half a million.” But in Chinese, there is no word for a million. They count by ten-thousands. So, a million is 100-ten-thousands. Schwe Son pointed at the Vietnamese words for half a million, nửa triệu, and asked me to translate. I translated it into Chinese, literally, “Half of 100-ten-thousands.” The look on Schwe Son’s face was as if he had just seen me defecate in a frying pan. “Why don’t they just say 50-ten-thousands?” He asked. He had a point.

The old Vietnamese word for Burma is ‘Miến Điện’ the same as in Chinese. But now the Vietnamese have created a Vietnamese spelling for the countries new name of Myanmar. Most languages and most countries move toward not changing country or city names, but just spelling them in their own language. This is why Beijing is now Beijing in English, instead of Peking. But Chinese cannot move in that direction, as it is impossible to spell foreign words with Chinese characters. As a result, many Chinese place names are outdated. Or, they have to create a totally new word, which may or may not be recognizable as the place it relates to.

So, in class, when we encounter country names that are instantly recognizable for Western or Korean students, but for which Schwe Son needs a translation. Afterwards, the translation has no real meaning for him. He just has to memorize it, although it doesn’t relate to anything.

We have only had eight days of class so far, but have already encountered a lot of Chinese cognates. The word for ‘a shop’ which I learned in Hanoi was ‘cửa hàng’. But here in Saigon they say ‘tiệm.’ this is a cognate from the Chinese, ‘Diàn’.  And yet, when we came to this word, Schwe Son asked me to translate. I said, in Chinese, “tiệm means Diàn.” Schwe Son simply said, “OK.” And immediately wrote the Chinese character in his notebook. There was not even a flicker of recognition.

Here is a list of Chinese cognates from the first eight days of class (I have only listed modern Mandarim cognates. If I were to list ancient Chinese cognates (similar to Korean and Cantonese cognates) the list would be much, much longer.)

Vietnamese is a Mon-Khmer language, in spite of having so many Chinese cognates. Chinese is a single syllable language, with a lot of compound words. But Mon Khmer languages have multi-sylabic words. The Chinese student is having a lot of difficulty with the pronunciation of multi-sylabic words.

Possession in Khmer, Vietnamese, and English can me made, using the verb, “to belong to”, as in, ‘the book belongs to me.’ But most languages don’t have that construction. Neither Korean nor Chinese has it. (It exists in Korean, but no one uses it). So, they were all having a hard time understanding the concept of, “book belongs to me”, “sách của tôi”. The Chinese student kept pushing me for word-for-word translations. But obviously, there was no way to translate this word-for-word. I could only translate the meaning. In Chinese, “This is my book.” But then he would flip the book to the previous day’s lesson. “I thought this phrase meant ‘this book is mine’.” He said. “Yes,” I said. “The meaning is the same, but the wording is different.” “OK, so what is it in Chinese?” he asked again.

Schwe Son realizes he needs to improve his English in order to get through his study of Vietnamese language. So, every day, in addition to translating his homework into Chinese, he asks me to translate it into English for him. And this creates a whole other set of problems.

In Vietnamese there is a word for the noun, “a question” (câu hỏi), and the verb “to ask” (hỏi) is a related word. The noun, “answer” (câu trả lời) is also related to the verb “to answer” (trả lời). But in English, obviously, the verb “to ask” is unrelated to the noun “a question.”

“Open and close your book” in Vietnamese is exactly as it is in English. Meaning the same words “open and close” could be used for the door or a drawer or a crematorium. But in Chinese, the words for “open and close your book” are unrelated to “open and close the door.” I translated for him, and he understood what the phrase ‘open your book meant’ in Chinese, but it was a completely unrelated phrase, that had no meaning and no connection to anything else for him. For the rest of the classmates, once they learned ‘open and close’ they could apply it to anything. But for Schwe Son it was one isolated piece of linguistic noise.

There are so many aspects to learning a language: vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, usage, and many more. Though an argument could be made that a student with a given native tongue may have an advantage in one area, he or she may have other areas with particular difficulties.

Antonio Graceffo is a martial arts and adventure author living in Asia (check out our interview with him here).

His books, including “The Monk from Brooklyn“, are available at Amazon.com

Meeting a new Thai person I simply said “Sawadis krap.” Without a second’s hesitation, he said, in English “You Speak Thai very well.” Was I supposed to feel encouraged? Should my head have swollen to monumental proportions because of this meaningful recognition of my linguistic prowess?

I simply answered with a question. “How would you know?”

In Taiwan, I walked into the staff room of my new job and said to a Chinese teacher, in Chinese, “I am teaching level Seven-A tonight. Where would I find the resources and course outline?”

She answered, in English, “Wow! Cool, you speak Chinese.” And then she walked away, without answering my question.

So much of learning a language is actually about learning the culture. In Asia, people seem to enjoy bestowing, and I assume, receiving completely empty compliments. I was actually told in a school in Korea that I should make it a point to tell my female students that they were very beautiful and their English was good. It sort of made me feel ooky because I don’t think it is appropriate for a teacher to tell a student that they are beautiful or handsome or sexy or cute. There are people who have said things like that to students in America, and now Megan’s Law prohibits them from coming within 1,000 feet of a school. Also, I would hate to have to wear one of those ankle bracelets that alerts the police every time I leave the house.

On my list of pet-peeves, a list so large that it can be seen from space, is foreigners who buy into these compliments when they are learning an Asian language.

A friend of mine in Vietnam is really doing everything right, as far as learning Vietnamese. So, I want to be supportive and encourage him. He has learned more in seven months than most people will learn in countless years, simply because he is attending classes and doing self-study. But, even this friend, call him C3-PO, bought into the false compliment game. C3-PO told me, “My pronunciation is nearly perfect.”
“How do you know?” I asked, as it takes more than 1,000 hours of listening to achieve perfect pronunciation in Vietnamese. “Because everywhere I go and speak Vietnamese, people compliment me.” C3-PO answered.

And so I asked C3-PO, “Have you ever heard a non-native speaker, speaking English?”
“Of course I have. I am an English teacher. I have heard thousands of them.” He answered. “My parents aren’t even native speakers.”

“Do you feel qualified to evaluate if someone speaks English well or not?”

“Yes, of course, I am a placement tester at my school?” answered C3-PO.

“Do you think the Vietnamese people who complimented your Vietnamese pronunciation were placement testers at schools?”

As native speakers of English we have grown up listening to foreign accents. In my case, it is extreme because I come from New York City where nearly 100% of my classmates were first or second generation immigrants whose grandparents, and often their parents were not native speakers. But even if you are from a homogenous American neighborhood in Ohio, you grew up watching American movies and TV shows which took place in foreign countries or had foreign characters speaking English.

I learned to do the Italian and Spanish accents at home, but I learned the German accent from watching “Hogan’s Heroes,” Japanese from “McHales Navy”, Swedish from “The Muppets”, and most of the others from Bugs Bunny.

Asians generally haven’t had this experience. Nowadays, they get American movies in English with subtitles or dubbed into their native language, but they almost never have foreign characters in their movies speaking their language. Think of movies like “The Last Emperor” a movie about the history of China made by an American company for an American audience. Asian countries don’t make historical epics about famous western people.

Take “Shogun”, an American movie set in feudal Japan about a European sailor. There is no analogous movie in Asia.

Americans, particularly those who have traveled or are more global, would recognize from someone’s accent if they are French or Japanese. Most Asians haven’t heard enough foreigners speaking their language to be able to differentiate.

Probably, in fairness, I would say the average American couldn’t tell from accent or appearance which Asian country someone came from. BUT we would be qualified to evaluate if their English was good or not. And most likely if we didn’t understand them at all, we wouldn’t think they spoke very well.

I went on to ask C3-PO, how many non-native speakers of Vietnamese had the average Vietnamese person ever heard speaking Vietnamese? The answer is that we are still at a point that many Vietnamese have never had any significant contact with a foreigner of any kind. And the number of foreigners who speak Vietnamese is so small, relative to the number of foreigners who live in the country, the average person has no idea at all how to evaluate you. They are just so happy that you have made the attempt that they compliment you, EVEN IF they don’t understand a word that you say.

And, this is where I get angry at my people and why I want to get in a boxing ring with 78% of foreigners learning Asian languages in Asia. I have witnessed, with my own eyes, literally hundreds of times that a foreigner wanted to show off how good his Thai, Khmer, Chinese, or Vietnamese was, so he spoke at length to a local. I saw the local’s face go from a fake smile, to worry, then fear, then back to worry, and finally a fake smile again. The local then said, cheerfully, “You speak so well.” And there was zero indication that they understood the foreigner at all. Often the foreigner was asking directions or some question which required an answer, or he was trying to buy something and the communication stalled the transaction. He didn’t get his answer, but he was so pleased with the complement that he happily went on his way without his insulin or whatever it was he had been trying to buy.

“Wow! I must be great at this language. Everyone compliments me.”

Another instance in Vietnam was a female co-worker who said, “I am gifted with languages.”

This seems to be a really common belief. I receive emails and Facebook messages daily from people who believe themselves to be gifted language learners. The number of people who told me that they are gifted with languages is off the charts. And honestly, not one of these people spoke more than one foreign language well and many of them spoke zero foreign languages well. This particular girl, let’s call her Leia, went on to say, “I have been told that I have perfect pronunciation in Vietnamese.”

Sadly, Leia was telling this to Vietnamese staff member, in English. And the Vietnamese staff member looked confused and surprised.

Leia had only been in the country a few weeks, wasn’t attending classes, and didn’t actually speak Vietnamese at all.

To me, this seems delusional. I don’t understand why these people aren’t locked up somewhere.

Leia then proceeded to read the ingredients on the ketchup bottle, in Vietnamese, very badly, translating each word, wrong.

Most people in Asia are very polite. Nearly all Asian cultures are confrontation avoiders and face is a huge issue. I have seen people go to ridiculous lengths of forcing themselves to see the Emperor’s New Clothes, rather than to admit that someone had made a mistake and thus cause that person to lose face. Most Asian people aren’t going to tell you to your face that your language skills suck. They won’t even admit that they don’t understand you.

If you are living in Asia: Definitely study the language. Definitely make an effort to talk to people, to communicate with them. People do appreciate when you speak their language. However, only speak their language if it will facilitate communication. If the person you are talking to has excellent English, why torture them with your faulty foreign language?

Less than one percent of people are gifted language learners. So, most likely, you are not one. Your native tongue doesn’t count. If you are born with five native tongues you still don’t know if you are a gifted learner or not until you actually try and learn a foreign language. If you actually speak more than three or four learned languages well, it is possible that you are gifted, but even that proves nothing. You may just be a gifted communicator.

That’s what I am, a gifted communicator. I am gifted at using the small amount of language I have to communicate at a higher level. In a very fair evaluation of my Chinese, which is my best Asian language, I was told that I was lower intermediate in vocabulary, reading, writing, and grammar, but advanced in communication ability.

Don’t be confused between good at communication and good at language. Many learners, when they reach a point that they can use their local language to function, they stop studying and learning. My old German professor used to call this syndrome “Me want cookie.” Everyone knows what you are saying, but you talk like a four year old.

If you have a local girlfriend, boyfriend, spouse, lesbian-life-partner, or friends, it still takes over 1,000 hours of listening to learn the language. But you may reach your 1,000 hours in six months instead of years.

It takes extensive listening to learn pronunciation. Asian people will compliment your speaking, no matter what you say or whether they understand you or not. If you want to evaluate your Asian language skills, go to the nearest language school and take a free placement exam. They will tell you straight away what your actual academic level of fluency is.

Most of your friends or people you meet on the street won’t evaluate your listening, but that is the key to the language. Your real level is the level at which you can understand, not talk. Can you sit in a café and pick up the thread of the conversation of two native speakers sitting at the next table. Can you actually, HONESTLY, participate in conversations with groups of native speakers?

For example, your Chinese friends are debating the merits of pegging their currency to the dollar. In the middle of this heated debate, one of them turns to you and says in baby Chinese, “Where do you come from?”

I got news for you, you are not participating in a conversation. A conversation is happening between native speakers, but they thought you looked board so they shot you a life line. Usually, you will answer and they will either return immediately to their previous conversation, or they may ask you two more banal questions, like “how old are you” and “do you have brothers and sisters?” No matter what you answer, they will simply return to their conversation. Either way, don’t kid yourself into believing you can hold your own in a conversation with native speakers.

And of course, the final point, also the primary point, the compliment:

“You speak Thai so well.” It means nothing, nothing at all. Just say “thank you” and keep studying.

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Like Antonio’s writing?

Check out some of his fantastic books on travel, martial arts, language learning and endangered cultures.

Antonio Graceffo is a martial arts and adventure author living in Asia (check out our interview with him here).

His books, including The Monk from Brooklyn, are available at Amazon.com

Vietnamese is one of only two major Mon-Khmer languages, the other being Khmer, the national language of Cambodia. Like Cambodia, Vietnam is a former French colony. And so, the Vietnamese language has acquired some loan words from French. I am not yet an expert on the Vietnamese language, but so far it appears that the bulk of the loan words are for concepts which the French introduced to Vietnam, such as: Nô-en (Noel), phó mát (cheese), and ca vát (neck tie).

Because of Vietnam’s close proximity to China, and a long and turbulent shared history, there is a significant Chinese influence on the Vietnamese language. Sixty percent or more of the vocabulary is Chinese. Chinese words are often easy to spot because they are one syllable words. Khmer words are normally multi-syllabic. Some Chinese words will consist of more than one Chinese character, put together, but these are compound words, and even in Vietnamese, these words would normally be written as two one-syllable words, with space between them.

Even the country name for Viet Nam is taken from Chinese, with Nam, Vietnamese for south, coming from the Chinese word for south, 南 (nán).

It is very telling to see which words in Vietnamese were borrowed from Chinese. For example, words related to education and school subjects are Chinese. History – lịch sử in Vietnamese, 歷史 (lì shǐ) in Chinese. So, the word for history is clearly a loan word, from Chinese, and the pronunciation is fairly similar. Intelligent, thông minh in Vietnamese, 聰明 (cōng míng) in Chinese. Again, it is nearly the same.

Some compound words and loan words are extremely interesting, because they combine Khmer and Chinese or Khmer and French. For example, the Vietnamese word for glove can be bao tay or găng tay. The word “tay” is the Khmer word for hand. In the first example, bao is the Chinese word for wrap, package, or cover. So, the literal meaning is a covering for your hand. In the second example, “tay” is still hand but găng is most likely the Vietnamese pronunciation for the French word for glove (gant).

Dictionary in Vietnamese is từ điển, in Chinese it is 詞典 (cí diǎn). The second syllable of both of these words is nearly identical. The first syllable is pronounced differently, but clearly comes from the same Chinese root.

Study in Vietnamese is học, and university is đại học. If the Vietnamese use Chinese characters to write the title of a university they use the same traditional characters as Taiwan or Hong Kong. Study would be written 學 And university would be written 大 學. But the interesting thing is the pronunciation. In Chinese, study is pronounced xué and university is dà xué (literally meaning “big study”). But the Vietnamese đại học, although using the same Chinese characters, would have a pronunciation much closer to Korean (대학 dae hak) than to modern Mandarin. This is most likely because the loan words in Vietnamese and Korean came centuries past, before the Mandarin dialect became standard Chinese. Another similar example is “dormitory”: ky tuc xa in Vietnamese, and 기숙사 (gi suk sa) in Korean. The Korean and Vietnamese pronunciations are quite similar. They would both use the same set of three Chinese characters, but the pronunciation would be completely different from modern spoken Mandarin, 宿舍 (sù shè).

Another example of a connection between Korean (or older Chinese) with Vietnamese would be the word for happy, hạnh phúc, as in, “I’ll be happy if someone gives me a crossbow.” The modern Chinese word for “happy” is 高興 (gāo xìng). So, it isn’t even close, but the modern Korean word 행 복 (hang bok), is almost the same.

Sometimes all three languages align. The Vietnamese word for “romantic” (lãng mạng) is almost identical to both the Chinese 浪漫 (làng màn) and the Korean 낭 만 (lang man).

Telephone, điện thoại in Vietnamese, is 電話 (diàn huà) in Chinese. In both languages the word điện means electricity. So, this character 電 (điện) appears in nearly all appliance names, in both languages. The Vietnamese word for machine is máy móc and everything from an airplane, máy bay, to a motorcycle, xe máy, includes this machine word. In Chinese, however a computer is seen as an electric appliance, 電腦 (diàn nǎo, literally “electric brain”) whereas in Vietnamese, the computer is a machine, máy tính.

While the word for motorcycle and airplane use the Vietnamese word for machine, the word for car is clearly a loan word from French, ô tô.

The Chinese word for machine is 機器 (jī qì). So, it is not similar in pronunciation to the Vietnamese word, máy. But the function is the same. Airplane, máy bay in Vietnamese is 飛機 (fēi jī) in Chinese. Both Chinese and Vietnamese create the word airplane as a compound word, composed of two syllables, written separately, one of which means “machine”. Camera is máy ảnh in Vietnamese, 照相機 (zhào xiàng jī) in Chinese. Again, the overall word for camera is different, but both Vietnamese and Chinese have created a compound word for camera which contains the respective word for machine plus the respective word for picture or photo.

Many language learners put great emphasis on words. They want to learn vocabulary, thinking that learning a language and memorizing lists of definitions is somehow the same thing. Obviously, they are nearly completely separate from each other. If you were a native speaker of French, Chinese, and Khmer learning Vietnamese, you would still need to acquire, grammar, usage, and pronunciation, as well as cultural-linguistic elements, such as forms of address and appropriateness of speech. So, even a triple native speaker would be a long way off.

Studying the mechanical parts, the elements, the words of a language is, however, an interesting academic pursuit. In the case of the Vietnamese language, it is fascinating to see how so many components of the language can be traced to some other language, and yet Vietnamese is completely unique.

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Like Antonio’s writing?

Check out some of his fantastic books on travel, martial arts, language learning and endangered cultures.