Vietnamese pronouns Puns

Hi everyone, I just want to share my experience watching TV and media as a bilingual person. I am Vietnamese, fluent in English.

Specifically, the ending to an episode of a Netflix series (which I won't name here due to spoilers). The scene goes like this

[Protagonist is standing by herself in the lab. Another woman, identity previously unknown, walks in]

Older woman: "[Protagonist's name]"

Protagonisr: "I don't understand."

Older woman: "It's me."

[The older woman takes off her wig, revealing familiar scars. This is followed by a dramatic pause of ~12 seconds, as protagonist slowly realizes who she is]

Protagonist: "Mom?"

[end scene]

The point here being, the protagonist doesn't connect the dots until the very last line where she utters "Mom?".

If you turn on Vietnamese subtitles (only available in Netflix Vietnam), the scene reads like this:

Older woman: "[Protagonist's name]"

Protagonist: "Tôi không hiểu." [I don't understand, stranger]

Older woman: "Mẹ đây." [I am your mother]

[long pause follows]

Protagonist: "Mẹ?" [Are you really my mother?]

Crash course on Vietnamese pronouns: we have many different sets of words that mean "you" and "I", to use depending on social status, who you are speaking to and your relationship with that person. The pronouns used between strangers are "bạn" (you), and "tôi" (I/me), respectively. A mother speaking to her child would refer to herself as "mẹ" (Vietnamese word for "mother"), and the child as "con" (Vietnamese word for "child").

The translator of this episode chose to use the "mother" pronoun, instead of the "stranger" pronoun. In context, this means the protagonist's mother revealed her identity to her, instead of letting her figure it out for herself. This makes the pause extraneous, and the dramatic reveal much less effective.

Although this is a minor thing, the translated dialogue completely changes the scene:

English: Pause, then reveal.

Vietnamese: Reveal, then pause.

TL;DR Reveal happens 12 seconds earlier if you're watching in Vietnamese, ruined by pronouns.

I'm currently enrolled in my second Vietnamese class at my college and we learn very formal Vietnamese. We use "bạn" but I've been told that it is extremely formal. And some people say to use "may" but my girlfriend says its extremely rude to say.

1. You can just use names instead of I/you/he/she/etc. when speaking amongst peers. For example, literally: John: What is Mary doing? Mary: Mary is calling Joe. Does John know where Joe is? John: No, John doesn't know where Joe is.

2. Usually, you use family terms instead of pronouns when speaking with anyone, including strangers, and this is relative depending on the speaker and listener's relative ages and mutual relationship: (Me to a man about 20-30 years older): Hello uncle (literally father's younger brother). How is uncle doing? Man: Uncle is doing well. How is nephew doing? Me: Nephew (me) is good.

Or more bizarrely: (Man to woman in a romantic relationship): Big brother loves little sibling. (Instead of "I love you")

Random note: my favorite term is "thím," which means one's father's younger brother's wife. I've only heard this used for a stranger once, and that was in a dubbed Korean movie, go figure..

Note: The words for "I" and "you" do exist, but often take on a tone of either close intimacy among equals or condescension.

More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_pronouns

Hello friends,

I posted this on /r/vietnamese but it appears to be dead. I am copy and pasting here.

Background: My father is Vietnamese but I have never spoken much to my Vietnamese family. I live in Canada with my father and his brother, but I have have ~12 aunts/uncles in Australia and ~12 cousins. Yesterday they added me to a group chat that the whole family uses.

They use a lot of Vietnamese pronouns/honorifics (Em, Cong, Chu, etc.) I find it confusing that they call me Cong. I looked on the internet and it appears to be what my grandmother should be calling me, not my uncles?

Could someone help me by telling me what I should call my uncles/aunts/grand mother/cousins (male)/cousins (female) and what they should call me?

All I know so far is my uncles should be addressed as Chu. E.g.: Chu Vinh, Chu Binh, Chu Nhut.

Any help would be appreciated.

Edit: Context: My family is from Saigon.

For some context, I am in a political science class and we're studying Liberalism and going over books like A People's History of the United States and Lies My Teacher Told Me. My professor mentioned that before invasions by Chinese, European, and American powers, the Vietnamese never used an "I" pronoun. It was usually a "we" or "us". Is this true for all or some Vietnamese? My professor was using this as an example that humans are not inherently selfish and competitive, is he full of crap about this?

Hi guys,

I just landed a job interview with someone in Hanoi. I'm a native speaker of the South dialect (fluent and all), but it was 100% self-taught. As such, I'm not sure how to speak politely (I have trouble remembering to precede every sentence with dạ, for example), but more importantly, I have no idea how to address the person!

They are from Hanoi, and they are female (potential employer) who seems to be a few years older than me. I am 21 and she should be in her mid-20s. Would I call her Chị or Cô?

Any other pointers would be greatly appreciated, thanks very much!

^(and a wintry 'hello' from Canada to wherever you all may be!)

It's quite complicated, even though I'm Vietnamese, I find them very annoying. Just like English, just 'i' and you' is enough. Furthermore, sometimes I have to call someone younger than me 'elder brother', which is absurd. I guess a lot of people here also feel confused when they don't know how to address their relatives.

Saw a post about how English might develop on the moon, so I decided to futurize Appalachian English, the dialect of which I grew up with. I think it's neat, likely needs some work, but this is a neat draft I reckon.

→ (2030) Appalachian Language Society created, with intent to provide resources for Appalachian Languages (Appalachian English, Cherokee, Shawnee, etc.) Focuses on preserving more extreme varieties of Appalachian English.

→ (2035) Appalachian Language Act passed, throughout Appalachia Appalachian English is used as the medium of education, with use of indigenous languages in indigenous communities. This program is met with approval from several people, and literacy rates increase throughout Appalachia.

→ (2045) In order to create more awareness for indigenous tongues, dictionairies of several languages are introduced throughout Appalachia. Some people find these words to be charming and unique in their own respect, and employ them in speech. Notably:

thippy = river, creek <Shawnee thepi

tammy = corn <Shawnee tamie

tutu = frog <Shawnee tutu

awhee = deer <Cherokee ahwi

utzee = mother, aunt <Cherokee utsi

tecka = friend <Tutelo texā

→ (2050) Due to the merging of /ɪ~ɛ/ into /ɪ/ before /n/ and /m/, /a:/ raises to /æ:/ and /æ/ raises to /ɛ/ all before /n/ and /m/. This sound change is later generalized to occur everywhere. /a:/ is parallel to /aɪ/ in Standard English in 2021.

→ (2075) “ain’t you?” interpreted as yes/no question marker ‘aincha?’

aincha you seen ‘im tutus?

Did you see those frogs?

→ (2090) Accusative Endings created, -im added onto masculine nouns, -er onto feminine ones, -it onto neuter nouns. ‘Im’ becomes adopted as common-gender pronoun, ‘it/hit’ as neuter.

→ (2120) Clusters simplify, nkt, mpt > nt; ŋgd mbd > nd

→ (2125) Verb may be placed initially, creating a VSO optional word order. This arrived out of analogy with ‘it/hit’ being dropped occasionally, as in “Seems to me that the man ain’t got much.” Some words reinterpretted through this:

to seem > to think

to please > to like

→ Example sentences at this point:

plees æ them teckimas of yourn

“I like those friends of yours.”

drunt æ som wordrit

“I drank some water.”

→ In 2145, there were increasing numbers of fascist groups in America that believed the “American” culture was the best one, that is, the mainstream middle class culture shown often on tv. This resulted in the prosecution of several cultural groups, include Afric

Do your worst!

For context I'm a Refuse Driver (Garbage man) & today I was on food waste. After I'd tipped I was checking the wagon for any defects when I spotted a lone pea balanced on the lifts.

I said "hey look, an escaPEA"

No one near me but it didn't half make me laugh for a good hour or so!

Edit: I can't believe how much this has blown up. Thank you everyone I've had a blast reading through the replies 😂

It really does, I swear!

They’re on standbi

Pilot on me!!

Dad jokes are supposed to be jokes you can tell a kid and they will understand it and find it funny.

This sub is mostly just NSFW puns now.

If it needs a NSFW tag it's not a dad joke. There should just be a NSFW puns subreddit for that.

Edit* I'm not replying any longer and turning off notifications but to all those that say "no one cares", there sure are a lot of you arguing about it. Maybe I'm wrong but you people don't need to be rude about it. If you really don't care, don't comment.

What did 0 say to 8 ?

" Nice Belt "

So What did 3 say to 8 ?

" Hey, you two stop making out "

When I got home, they were still there.

I won't be doing that today!

You take away their little brooms

This morning, my 4 year old daughter.

Daughter: I'm hungry

Me: nerves building, smile widening

Me: Hi hungry, I'm dad.

She had no idea what was going on but I finally did it.

Thank you all for listening.

There hasn't been a post all year!

I ask this because I'm writing a story about the Mongol empire for lit class and Dutch people are heavily involved so I want to get the rules of Dutch correct.

In the story I am involving what is called Mangudai-who are suicide soldiers of the Mongol Army who were the first to be sent to assault the enemy in a battle with intent of doing stuff like causing panicking, luring pursuing enemies in a rout, scaring enemies to stay defensive, slowly tying down units and causing gradual casualties, and a bunch of other stuff. Sorta like Medieval Special Forces and Covert Ops unit.

From what I learned Mongol is pretty genderless and does not use masculine and feminine classifications. The language is said to be overall neutral in ts use of nouns and articles along with pronouns.

So how would foreign words from neutral languages work in Dutch? old there still be a masculine and feminine classification despite Mongol not having them? How do we interpret it? Since Mangudai are soldiers would Dutch classify them as masculine thus using the de ord? Or would Het be more appropriate?

In addition to Mongol, how do stuff like in other gender neutral languages like the Vietnamese language and Turkish exclusive nouns, etc work in Dutch?

In particular what would they use The Mangudai for in Dutch? Het Mangudai under the assumption of the genderless nature of Mongolian?

It’s pronounced “Noel.”

After all his first name is No-vac

What, then, is Chinese rap?

Edit:

Notable mentions from the comments:

• Spanish/Swedish/Swiss/Serbian hits

• French/Finnish art

• Country/Canadian rap

• Chinese/Country/Canadian rock

• Turkish/Tunisian/Taiwanese rap

There hasn't been a single post this year!

(Happy 2022 from New Zealand)

Bob

Nothing, it just waved

So that I could frequently say, "I am going to walk 5 miles now."

Edit: My most popular post on Reddit! 😀 Thank you for the awards.

Just to clarify, 12345678

Just want to share a quirky thing with you guys, per my experience as a bilingual person. I am Vietnamese, but am fluent in English. I'm currently watching the show in Netflix Vietnam.

As you know, the ending of episode 6 goes like this:

[Jessica is standing by herself in the lab. The other superpowered woman walks in]

Older woman: "Jessica."

Jessica: "I don't understand."

Older woman: "It's me."

[The older woman takes off her wig, revealing burn scars. This is followed by a dramatic pause of ~12 seconds, as Jessica slowly realizes who she is]

Jessica: "Mom?" (As in, holy shit, you are my mother!)

[end scene]

The point here being, Jessica doesn't connect the dots until the very last line .

If you turn on Vietnamese subtitles (only available in Netflix Vietnam), the scene goes like this:

Older woman: "Jessica."

Jessica: "Tôi không hiểu." (I don't understand, stranger)

Older woman: "Mẹ đây." (I am your mother)

[long pause follows]

Jessica: "Mẹ?" (Are you really my mother?)

Crash course on Vietnamese pronouns: we have many different sets of words that mean "you" and "I", to use depending on social status, who you are speaking to and your relationship with that person. The pronouns used between strangers are "bạn" (you), and "tôi" (I/me), respectively. A mother speaking to her child would refer to herself as "mẹ" (Vietnamese word for "mother"), and the child as "con" (Vietnamese word for "child").

The translator for this episode chose to use the "mother" pronoun, instead of the "stranger" pronoun. In context, this means Jessica's mother revealed her identity to Jessica, instead of letting Jessica figure it out for herself. This makes the pause extraneous, and the dramatic reveal much less effective.

Although this is a minor thing, the translated dialogue completely changes the scene:

English: Pause, then reveal.

Vietnamese: Reveal, then pause.

TL;DR Reveal happens 12 seconds earlier if you're watching in Vietnamese, ruined by pronouns.

Hello friends,

Background: My father is Vietnamese but I have never spoken much to my Vietnamese family. I live in Canada with my father and his brother, but I have have ~12 aunts/uncles in Australia and ~12 cousins. Yesterday they added me to a group chat that the whole family uses.

They use a lot of Vietnamese pronouns/honorifics (Em, Cong, Chu, etc.) I find it confusing that they call me Cong. I looked on the internet and it appears to be what my grandmother should be calling me, not my uncles?

Could someone help me by telling me what I should call my uncles/aunts/grand mother/cousins (male)/cousins (female) and what they should call me?

All I know so far is my uncles should be addressed as Chu. E.g.: Chu Vinh, Chu Binh, Chu Nhut.

Any help would be appreciated.

Edit: Context: My family is from Saigon.