A little while ago, I had an interesting conversation with a relative of mine. I really can't recall how it began, but it led into deeper waters than I'd waded into for a long time. It's a shame to admit this, but after our talk, I felt drained. It had been so long since I'd had that kind of conversation.
Part of our discussion involved, among other things, semantics and rhetoric. In speaking about a cell phone, I referred to them as "dien thoai di dong" (mobile phone), something I'd picked up when I was in Vietnam. DTDD is something that everyone I knew in Vietnam used; it's all over the billboards and t.v. commercials. It's in magazines, and in journals and of course, the world wide web. In text messaging, it's referred to as DTDD. It literally means "phone mobile", something that I thought all Vietnamese speakers used. Well, I was wrong. Apparently, in the Vietnamese diasporic communities, or at least the ones here in the U.S., the cell phone is preferably referenced as "dien thoai cam tay" (i.e. "cell phone hand-held").
"Di dong" means "mobile" whereas "cam tay" means "hand-held." For this particular relative of mine, the words "di dong" triggered certain very strong reactions. Those two words symbolized/signified so much more than just the denotative meaning of being mobile in a technologically advanced world.
The words represented an entire culture, a whole nation of people living with standards utterly incomprehensible to this person. The words signified a whole society tainted by Socialism and Communism, with idealogies, philosophies, and policies completely different from the familiar. Vietnamese spoken by Viet Americans is heavily laden with the nostalgia for the Old World, the world that they were forced by unforeseen circumstances to escape. They had to abandon not just the geography, but also the literature, culture, and language of a different time and a different Land. The diasporic vocabulary is a reminder of what was forsaken, of what was taken.
When I used those two words "di dong", I triggered certain memories that were unpleasant, and those memories in turn conjured up other memories and observations that are tinged with a critical sense of nostalgia. I was saddened to hear during the course of our conversation such vehement sentiments against the usage of not only those people's vocabulary but also the fear, the anxiety, the anger at the "infiltration" of certain ideologies along with the imports from Vietnam. It seemed to me that the suggestion of boycotting all things from the new Vietnam originated from a deeper sense of injustice. I did not realize that anyone I knew carried such deeply entrenched feelings about (the new and the old, the transformed and abandoned) Vietnam or about the new changes.
At first, I thought it was difficult to relearn Vietnamese. But in fact, after living 10 months over there, it was not that difficult to pick up the pieces where I left them 20 years ago when we left VN, but picking up the pieces is easy. Putting them together and comprehending them in part and whole is not so.
The truth of the matter is, there are friends, family, and acquaintances that I know who live in Vietnam. They are not all members of the Party, and they are not all people of my particular faith. Yet, they are all good people. I cannot begin to articulate the differences between us. But then again, I can't even begin to name the differences between me and this particular blood relative. It's not so easy to dismiss "those" folks who have been living under a certain regime and political party which we oppose or with which we disagree.
It will be a little different now when I use the words "di dong" or "cam tay"... not just semantics, see?
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