Parlez vous Vietnamese?

A few days ago, I tried to write in Vietnamese about the situation in Myanmar, and I couldn't do it. The words "political unrest" completely stumped me. I read, write, and speak Vietnamese, but as I age, my ignorance of advanced Vietnamese confounds me. I have no vocabulary to write about important things, things of substance, things that matter in the world, that matter to me. I cannot find the terminology to talk about politics, economics, sociology, psychology, literature. Ah, literature. Poetry, novels, essays -- I have no words to say what I mean. I talk like a middle school student in Vietnamese. In this second language, my words don't nuance, they don't arch, and they don't taste, feel, or sound like what I want them to taste, feel, and sound. I want to rant and rave against the frustrating experiences in Myanmar, and what I end up saying are trivial, meaningless words equivalent to nothing but feelings.

I saw in an episode of House, or some other medical t.v. show, a story about a young musician who loses the ability to speak. Whenever she wants to say something, another word comes out. To say "yes," she says something completely different, such as "applesauce", because her brain isn't able to make the connections.

In some ways, I feel the same. I can read and understand the newspapers in Vietnamese. I love the poetry and the novels. I love the idioms, the proverbs, the slang. But I only know, understand, and appreciate them when I see them written/produced by someone else. But, when asked to translate, or even to think of those on my own, I am at a loss. French is much the same way. I can understand Les Miserables. But for me to construct those magnificent sentences on my own? Never. Create those rhythms and wordplay on my own? Impossible.

This may be strange, but I am afraid that my children will forget the Vietnamese that I so love. Their knowledge and understanding of Vietnamese will be an even smaller percentage than mine. Their retention rate perhaps even less. They will know conversational Vietnamese, but to debate the merits of Nguyen Du's "Truyen Kieu," they'll never be able to do it. Or, perhaps, they might? I can only hope.

I fear that their worlds will be even smaller because of their limited language skills. I am afraid that their understanding of the world will be restricted because of their limited linguistics skills. I hope they will want to learn to be multilingual, and hope that they'll recognize the importance of being a polyglot. I pray that they'll recognize the responsibilities they will carry and appreciate opportunities they will have when they broaden their horizons with different languages. I pray that they'll learn to love being able to switch back and forth like Ilan Stavans' "linguistic chameleon", being able to click from one phrase to the next, having at their disposal multiple modes of communicating their imagination, their hopes and their disappointments.

For now, I continue practicing my Vietnamese, one word at a time.

"Sau rieng, rieng mot ta sau..."