You taught me language; and my profit on't is, I know how to buy Oreos from across the street"

During my junior year of high school, each day, I was able to attend a freeing forty-minute fast from the mundane matters cluttering the life of your token 16 year old.

What will Carson Daly ever do after TRL? Doesn’t matter.

What’s the Morgan-Freeman-like (and thus wiser) choice, truth or dare? Doesn’t matter.

Would “Battlefield Earth” be a good theme for prom? Absolutely, but still, for the time being, it doesn’t matter.

This adolescent oasis, amidst a just-post-pubescent desert, was Spanish class.

Upon my maiden voyage into this port of strange new words, I was allowed to choose a new name, and with it came a new identity. I was, for that short daily docking, Julio, and, as such, all those cares bound with that old vessel were scraped off like barnacles. In this harbor, I became the perfect mix of Enrique Iglesias and Optimus Prime.

Almost immediately this portable persona was privy to a vast vocabulary of fairly foreign terms. That is when I realized the greatest tool of Spanish lexical liberation: the suffix “o”. Suddenly, car became carro. August became agosto. I felt like Snoop Dogg or Ned Flanders, with my very own “izzle” and “ino”. It was if Julio had uncovered the Rosetta Stone deep within the dunes of dandruff and bleach that capped the landscape of my gel encrusted cranium.

However, here in Asia, as I struggle to grasp Vietnamese, these Miracle Worker type moments are solely a thing of the past. I have since forfeited the know-how of that seductive Hispanic Autobot, and, in its stead, have taken on the role of an American Caliban. Every Tuesday and Thursday, I hobble out of my dark dormitory dwelling and learn at the feet of my own personal, and very patient, Prospero, who asks only the penance of a small cup of tea which has been gathered from my fourth floor island. That is to say that one of my students from the institute has been kind of enough to tutor me twice weekly in this new tongue.

Not surprisingly, Vietnamese is pretty far removed from English. If you charted them on one of those family pedigrees they would have roughly the same relation as Ted and Tina Turner. As such, the acquisition of this language is quite the complicated process and its sounds and structures must sometimes sit for a while, neatly stacked on some mental shelf, before they ferment into expressible fluid phrases. However, when they do, and the person across from you, receiving a spurt of decreasingly awkward auditory input, understands the sentiment of your statement, it’s a great feeling. It might not be Helen Keller at the water pump, but it’s close.

Perhaps, from a native English speaking perspective, the most difficult source of dissonance encountered when deciphering Vietnamese, is the set of tones that distinguish each and every word. The language is comprised of short words, all measuring about one syllable in length, but each of these is assigned one of six tonal identities: a level pitch, a rising pitch, a lowering pitch, a lowering pitch followed by a rising pitch, a quick breathless stop, and one that seems to stretch the word into two broken syllables over a down and up pitch procession. For example, if you say “cho” with a level pitch, it’s an infinitive/verb meaning “to give.” However, if your voice rises, it becomes “dog”. When observing communication, this choral characteristic is a wonderful thing, as each exchange sounds rather songish. It almost makes you anticipate snapping and knife fights around each corner. On the other hand, when you’re given the mic, it’s easy to feel like Bob Dylan preparing to perform “Chorus of the Bells.”

Still, the country of Vietnam has to be the best classroom for Vietnamese. That is unless Muzzy decides to start distributing language learning laser discs of this nation’s mother tongue. Until then though, this is the place to be. But, believe it or not, when you’re an English teacher living a few mere meters from the university grounds, most of your conversational companions tend to push for exchanges that will provide them with English experience. However, whenever I’m craving an unhealthy and prefabricated American commodity, I can always wade through the steady current of motorbike traffic to the open air vendor across the street from the guesthouse, and there, I have the privilege of practicing 15 different ways to ask for a Coca-Cola.