Vietnam Festival

Vietnam Festival was held at Yoyogi Park for 3 days: 19-21 Sep. I was concerned about the typhoon but luckily it didn't arrive Tokyo.

I was planning to go on the last day when Lam Truong was supposed to be singing on stage. However suddenly I was offered a job for an ad of Int'l SMS service.

Unlike my thought, all the Vietnamese people I approached asked so many questions in a mixed language of Vietnamese & Japanese. Of course some of them spoke Japanese fluently but not all. I had to try really hard to remember all the Vietnamese words I learned a long ago, in order to catch their attention to the brochure. That was the reason I was tired after this whole day, not that I was standing all afternoon handing out the papers.

Several hours had passed when I realized myself laughing among a group of Vietnamse people saying Vietnamese jokes to each other. It was a very nice moment to remember the satisfied feeling of understanding each other by using a common language; even though, of course, language is not the only way to understand each other; but it helped to build a trust and a feeling of security or reassurance which then helped to develop a conversation after having givin each other's first impression in your mind.

Pity I missed Lam Truong but I earned something much deeper instead.

French Radio

I was recruited by a company however under condition of being French media translator. A way to my goal as an English translator was easily neglected because of the saturation of English translators. I have to admit that my ears have stopped their function against French for nearly 10 years. With no choice I decided to download at last an internet radio player (actually you don't need to download; all you do is to click this link; the player will appear in a small window).

What I do is to turn on 'France Inter' everyday as a BGM rather than to 'listen' to it.

Better than nothing, let's start from what I can do.

A Small Confidence becomes Motivation

I must admit that I was losing confidence with my language skills till I had a chat with my professor who also works as interpretor-translator.

I was ashamed to ask for his advise of keeping up with my skill or even to develop, as I knew too well that it was my lasiness that kept me away from learning.

Another friend posed him the question instead then he said:

'How can you improve your language skill when you just see a script in Arabic? or in the language you've never seen? Never.'

Then I realized there should be some way to go up and explore the hill of a language if you recognize a part of it.

He told us it took 10 years since he started studying language, till he got a work of using it. As many other language professionals say, the more you spend time studing, the more you earn.

It is never too late to start little by little. But never to hurry!

Hop Tac Xa ～ Vietnamese Slang

Railway Story is one of my favourite TV shows. The series last week was about Vietnam Railway; reportage throughout 40h trip from Sai Gon to Ha Noi.

Not to mention that the content was satisfying but I was rather paying attention to the staff members' list shown at the ending of the programme.

My eyes spotted at 'Hop Tac Xa ... Vietnam' which seemed a familiar name to me.

Hop Tac Xa = 合作社　(Hop=合 Tac=作 Xa=社)

The real meaning of the term is 'Corporative' where everything is shared and split evenly.

Then after a while I realized it was a slang in Vietnamese which means:

'to split the bill'.

If you stay in Vietnam for a certain time, you might realize at restaurants, that the bill is almost never shared among friends. It is usually payed by the most rich in the group or by someone who just had an income.

It is actually rude to share the bill, which can mean you won't accept the friendship in that group. So, you never 'Hop Tac Xa' with friends in Vietnam.

However if you are not comfortable with letting someone pay the bill, you　can just say:

'Hop Tac Xa di!'

A very casual and frank way to suggest, and would surprise your Vietnamese friends of using this term as an etranger!

Input and Output

To keep up and develop your language skill,
you might think (or at least i used to think just simply) the best way is to speak in that language when communicating with others.
but you start forgetting that language because you don't live in that country anymore and lost opportunity to speak and listen so that your hearing skill would be maintained naturally.
well, that was MY own excuse of being too lazy to stick with language learning for the past 3 years till now when Mr.N gave me some training advise:
it is certainly important to speak in that language (output) but there is always a limit of vocabs and phrases if the communicators are not native speakers.
so this is where 'input' plays its role.
just read, read, read, read, read... whatever you're interested in to start with (input) in order to enrich your vocabs and expressions you might need for communicating.
then write, write, write, write, write... (output) so that you can easily find the missing expression you might want to use and forced to go and get the missing word you're looking for (in a dictionary etc).

so here is the 4 basic ways that everyone knows already...
(but is annoyed to continue because you can't see the result).
#1 speak with friends/family with that language > output
#2 listen, listen, listen > input
#3 read, read, read > input
#4 write, write, write > output

here is what i do ...
#1 speak > try to find and speak with native friends (once a month)
#2 listen > films, news (3times a week)
#3 read > TIME magazines, novels (everyday)
#4 write > mails (everyday), BLOG!!

Quitters never win, winners never quit.