Before the absolute hegemony of English, sailors, as the only frequent travellers, were primitive, grunting polyglots. Columbus, for example, was said to speak "a thousand languages badly." With Genoan as his mother tongue, he wrote in a Portuguese-inflected Spanish, sprinkled with Italian and Latin. Like other sea dogs, he was also conversant in lingua franca, at the time a combination of all the Romance languages, mixed with Arabic, Greek and Turkish. Using few pronouns, fewer prepositions and a pared down syntax, no past tense, barely a future, lingua franca was a negotiated, constantly evolving medium that allowed disparate peoples to communicate without screaming and gesticulating, to haggle, make love, or at least take turns on the dame de voyage after sharing a hunk of moldy cheese. Lingua franca's role was diminished when one culture asserted dominion over another. Unlike sailors, soldiers of an occupying army are rarely disposed to negotiate with the locals, in any language. They learn few foreign words, if any, but the quaint, sullen natives must understand, at the very least, "Stop!" and "Don't move!"
Nearly three milion U.S. soldiers served in Vietnam, but they stole no Vietnamese words. Why should they? "Tet" is included in many American dictionaries, but you never hear it in conversations. In 1988, Yusef Komunyakaa, a Vietnam War vet, published a poetry book, Dien Cai Dau. Literally, "Crazy the Head," it's an exclamation of exasperation, I'm driven insane, điên cái đầu! What's the Arabic equivalent, I wonder?
Stop! Don't move! Ti mi hazer venir pazzo! You're driving me nuts! Hanging out with the U.S.A., Vietnamese have absorbed a few English words. In 1998, I found myself in Can Tho, the chief city in the Mekong Delta. Sitting in a cafe near the large, goofy Ho Chi Minh statue, I saw a gaggle of swishy young men marching down the street. The way they swivelled their hips would make Little Richard proud. “Ladiman!” the man at the next table exclaimed.
I had never heard that word. “What’s a ladiman?”
“Gay. They’re gay. They’re ladiman!”
The common Vietnamese term for a male homosexual is either bê đê, from the French pédé, or bóng, a word meaning both “shadow” and “shiny.” There is also the slang hi-fi, stereo sexuality, I suppose, and a play on the term hai phái, dual genders. It took me a moment to figure out that ladiman is a corruption of the English expression “ladies’ man.” Reincarnated as a Vietnamese slang, its meaning has been inverted, from a heterosexual stud to a half-and-half, a lady/man.
Many English words adopted into Vietnamese are merely technical: radio, TV, video, computer, fax... Others, military: xe tăng [tank], bom [bomb], na pan [napalm], mìn [mine]...
Constantly on the lips of the young set is mô đen [modern], meaning “stylish” or “hip,” as in, “My sister is so mô đen, she only listens to róc [rock], rap and jazz. She only wears imported jean[s].”
One peculiar transplant is lô gích [logic]. The logic for incorporating a foreign word is to introduce a new object or idea. Why do Vietnamese import “logic,” when they already have lý luận? For cachet purposes, I suppose, the same reason why Italian restaurants in the U.S. are dubbed “ristorante.”
Unlike French, which has given Vietnamese ragu [ragout], bơ [beure], phô ma [fromage], sà lách [salade], phở [pot-au-feu], sô cô la [chocolat], bánh gatô [gateaux], bánh flan [flan], paté, paté chaud, and yaourt, almost no American food names have made it into Vietnamese. The handful of street stalls in Saigon advertising "hot dog" peddle a forlorn-looking Vienna sausage, served without mustard or ketchup.
Cocktail, often spelled cooktail, is a non-alcoholic mixed fruit drink. A cao bồi [cowboy] is a hoodlum. Mít tinh [meeting] means a street demonstration. Mátxa [massage] has illicit connotations which the traditional đấm bóp (literally: “punch and squeeze”) does not. Bê bi is just a baby, but má mi [mommy] is a madame in a whore house.
When someone is kicking back with a bia to enjoy a phim sếch, he’s nursing a cold one while rinsing his eyes with a sex video, which leads us to o li zin, from the English “origin.” Not a noun in Vietnamese but an adjective, this word means, curiously enough, “virginal.”
“Are you o li zin?”
“Yes, I am still a virgin.”
“Are you a ladiman?”
“No, I am a ladies’ man.”
Even “American” has been reshaped in the Vietnamese lexicon. In 1995, as I was walking on a Saigon street--literally, since there was no room on the sidewalk--a cyclo driver, pedaling alongside, hassled me relentlessly to ride in his cab. Despite my repeated refusals, he nagged on.
"Where are you from?" The guy asked.
It's my least favorite question. I didn't answer him.
"Where are you from?" He repeated.
Again I ignored him.
"You are a Nacirema," he decided, and pedaled away.
Nacirema is American spelled backward. He was right. I am a backward American.
9 comments:
excellent post. full of fascinating info. have you read "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema"? It's an article from American Anthropologist, the journal of the American Anthro Association (58:3, June 1956).
how bizarre this man called you a nacirema in the street and it made me think instantly of this article. so strange.
Hi jip,
I'm not familiar with this article, but I'll try to find it in a library. Thanks!
Vietnamese like to reverse the order of compound words for ironic, humorous effects, for example: giải phóng, liberation, is sometimes converted to phỏng giái, having your crotch burnt. It is strange, but not totally unexpected, that they would read a word backward.
Linh
BODY RITUAL AMONG THE NACIREMA
Horace Miner
From Horace Miner, "Body Ritual among the Nacirema." Reproduced by permission of the American Anthropological Association from The American Anthropologist, vol. 58 (1956), pp. 503-507.
Most cultures exhibit a particular configuration or style. A single value or pattern of perceiving the world often leaves its stamp on several institutions in the society. Examples are "machismo" in Spanish-influenced cultures, "face" in Japanese culture, and "pollution by females" in some highland New Guinea cultures. Here Horace Miner demonstrates that "attitudes about the body" have a pervasive influence on many institutions in Nacireman society. The anthropologist has become so familiar with the diversity of ways in which different peoples behave in similar situations that he is not apt to be surprised by even the most exotic customs. In fact, if all of the logically possible combinations of behavior have not been found somewhere in the world, he is apt to suspect that they must be present in some yet undescribed tribe. This point has, in fact, been expressed with respect to clan organization by Murdock. In this light, the magical beliefs and practices of the Nacirema present such unusual aspects that it seems desirable to describe them as an example of the extremes to which human behavior can go.
Professor Linton first brought the ritual of the Nacirema to the attention of anthropologists twenty years ago, but the culture
of this people is still very poorly understood. They are a North American group living in the territory between the Canadian Creel the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico, and the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles. Little is known of their origin, although tradition states that they came from the east....
Nacirema culture is characterized by a highly developed market economy which as evolved in a rich natural habitat. While much of the people's time is devoted to economic pursuits, a large part of the fruits of these labors and a considerable portion
of the day are spent in ritual activity. The focus of this activity is the human body, the appearance and health of which loom as a dominant concern in the ethos of the people. While such a concern is certainly not unusual, its ceremonial aspects and associated philosophy are unique.
The fundamental belief underlying the whole system appears to be that the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease. Incarcerated in such a body, man's only hope is to avert these characteristics through the use of the powerful influences of ritual and ceremony. Every household has one or more shrines devoted to this purpose. The more powerful individuals in the society have several shrines in their houses and, in fact, the opulence of a house is often referred to in terms of the number of such ritual centers it possesses. Most houses are of wattle and daub construction, but the shrine rooms of the more wealthy are walled with stone. Poorer families imitate the rich by applying pottery plaques to their shrine walls. While each family has at least one such shrine, the rituals associated with it are not family ceremonies but are private and secret. The rites are normally only discussed with children, and then only during the period when they are being initiated into these mysteries. I was able, however, to establish sufficient rapport with the natives to examine these shrines and to have the rituals described to me.
The focal point of the shrine is a box or chest which is built into the wall. In this chest are kept the many charms and magical potions without which no native believes he could live. These preparations are secured from a variety of specialized practitioners. The most powerful of these are the medicine men, whose assistance must be rewarded with substantial gifts. However, the medicine men do not provide the curative potions for their clients, but decide what the ingredients should be and then write them down in an ancient and secret language. This writing is understood only by the medicine men and by the herbalists who, for another gift, provide the required charm.
The charm is not disposed of after it has served its purpose, but is placed in the charmbox of the household shrine. As these magical materials are specific for certain ills, and the real or imagined maladies of the people are many, the charm-box is usually full to overflowing. The magical packets are so numerous that people forget what their purposes were and fear to use them again. While the natives are very vague on this point, we can only assume that the idea in retaining all the old magical materials is that their presence in the charm-box, before which the body rituals are conducted, will in some way protect the worshipper.
Beneath the charm-box is a small font. Each day every member of the family, in succession, enters the shrine room, bows his head before the charm-box, mingles different sorts of holy water in the font, and proceeds with a brief rite of ablution.
The holy waters are secured from the Water Temple of the community, where the priests conduct elaborate ceremonies to make the liquid ritually pure.
In the hierarchy of magical practitioners, and below the medicine men in prestige, are specialists whose designation is best translated "holy-mouth-men." The Nacirema have an almost pathological horror of and fascination with the mouth, the condition of which is believed to have a supernatural influence on all social relationships. Were it not for the rituals of the mouth, they believe that their teeth would fall out, their gums bleed, their jaws shrink, their friends desert them, and their lovers reject them. They also believe that a strong relationship exists between oral and moral characteristics. For example, there is a ritual ablution of the mouth for children which is supposed to improve their moral fiber.
The daily body ritual performed by everyone includes a mouth-rite. Despite the fact that these people are so punctilious about care of the mouth, this rite involves a practice which strikes the uninitiated stranger as revolting. It was reported to me that the ritual consists of inserting a small bundle of hog hairs into the mouth, along with certain magical powders, and then moving the bundle in a highly formalized series of gestures.
In addition to the private mouth-rite, the people seek out a holy-mouth-man once or twice a year. These practitioners have an impressive set of paraphernalia, consisting of a variety of augers, awls, probes, and prods. The use of these objects in the exorcism of the evils of the mouth involves almost unbelievable ritual torture of the client. The holy-mouth-man open the clients mouth and, using the above mentioned tools, enlarges any holes which decay may have created in the teeth. Magical materials are put into these holes. If there age no naturally occurring holes in the teeth, large sections of one or more teeth are gouged out so that the supernatural substance can be applied. In the client's view, the purpose of these ministrations is to arrest decay and to draw friends. The extremely sacred and traditional character of the rite is evident in the fact that the natives return to the holy-mouth-men year after year, despite the fact that their teeth continue to decay.
It is to be hoped that, when a thorough study of the Nacirema is made, there will be careful inquiry into the personality structure of these people. One has but to watch the gleam in the eye of a holy-mouth-man, as he jabs an awl into an exposed nerve, to suspect that a certain amount of sadism is involved. If this can be established, a very interesting pattern emerges, for most of the population shows definite masochistic tendencies. It was to these that Professor Linton referred in discussing a distinctive part of the daily body ritual which is performed only by men. This part of the rite involves scraping and lacerating the surface of the face with a sharp instrument. Special women's rites are performed only four times during each lunar month, but what they lack in frequency is made up in barbarity. As part of this ceremony, women bake their heads in small ovens for about an hour. The theoretically interesting point is that what seems to be a preponderantly masochistic people have developed sadistic specialists.
The medicine men have an imposing temple, or latipso, in every community of any size. The more elaborate ceremonies required to treat very sick patients can only be performed at this temple. These ceremonies involve not only the thaumaturge but a permanent group of vestal maidens who move sedately about the temple chambers in distinctive costume and head-dress.
The latipso ceremonies are so harsh that it is phenomenal that a fair proportion of the really sick natives who enter the temple The concept of culture ever recover. Small children whose indoctrination is still incomplete have been known to resist attempts to take them to the temple because "that is where you go to die." Despite this fact, sick adults are not only willing but eager to undergo the protracted ritual purification, if they can afford to do so. No matter how ill the supplicant or how grave the emergency, the guardians of many temples will not admit a client if he cannot give a rich gift to the custodian. Even after one has gained admission and survived the ceremonies, the guardians will not permit the neophyte to leave until he makes still another gift.
The supplicant entering the temple is first stripped of all his or her clothes. In everyday life the Nacirema avoids exposure of his body and its natural functions. Bathing and excretory acts are performed only in the secrecy of the household shrine, where they are ritualized as part of the body-rites. Psychological shock results from the fact that body secrecy is suddenly lost upon entry into the latipso. A man, whose own wife has never seen him in an excretory act, suddenly finds himself naked and assisted by a vestal maiden while he performs his natural functions into a sacred vessel. This sort of ceremonial treatment is necessitated by the fact that the excreta are used by a diviner to ascertain the course and nature of the client's sickness. Female clients, on the other hand, find their naked bodies are subjected to the scrutiny, manipulation and prodding of the medicine men.
Few supplicants in the temple are well enough to do anything but lie on their hard beds. The daily ceremonies, like the rites of the holy-mouth-men, involve discomfort and torture. With ritual precision, the vestals awaken their miserable charges each dawn and roll them about on their beds of pain while performing ablutions, in the formal movements of which the maidens are highly trained. At other times they insert magic wands in the supplicant's mouth or force him to eat substances which are supposed to be healing. From time to time the medicine men come to their clients and jab magically treated needles into their flesh. The fact that these temple ceremonies may not cure, and may even kill the neophyte, in no way decreases the people's faith in the medicine men.
There remains one other kind of practitioner, known as a "listener." This witchdoctor has the power to exorcise the devils that lodge in the heads of people who have been bewitched. The Nacirema believe that parents bewitch their own children. Mothers are particularly suspected of putting a curse on children while teaching them the secret body rituals. The counter-magic of the witchdoctor is unusual in its lack of ritual. The patient simply tells the "listener" all his troubles and fears, beginning with the earliest difficulties he can remember. The memory displayed by the Nacirerna in these exorcism sessions is truly remarkable. It is not uncommon for the patient to bemoan the rejection he felt upon being weaned as a babe, and a few individuals even see their troubles going back to the traumatic effects of their own birth.
In conclusion, mention must be made of certain practices which have their base in native esthetics but which depend upon the pervasive aversion to the natural body and its functions. There are ritual fasts to make fat people thin and ceremonial feasts to make thin people fat. Still other rites are used to make women's breasts larger if they are small, and smaller if they are large. General dissatisfaction with breast shape is symbolized in the fact that the ideal form is virtually outside the range of human variation. A few women afflicted with almost inhuman hyper-mamrnary development are so idolized that they make a handsome living by simply going from village to village and permitting the natives to stare at them for a fee.
Reference has already been made to the fact that excretory functions are ritualized, routinized, and relegated to secrecy. Natural reproductive functions are similarly distorted. Intercourse is taboo as a topic and scheduled as an act. Efforts are made to avoid pregnancy by the use of magical materials or by limiting intercourse to certain phases of the moon. Conception is actually very infrequent. When pregnant, women dress so as to hide their condition. Parturition takes place in secret, without friends or relatives to assist, and the majority of women do not nurse their infants.
Our review of the ritual life of the Nacirema has certainly shown them to be a magic-ridden people. It is hard to understand how they have managed to exist so long under the burdens which they have imposed upon themselves. But even such exotic customs as these take on real meaning when they are viewed with the insight provided by Malinowski when he wrote:
"Looking from far and above, from our high places of safety in the developed civilization, it is easy to see all the crudity and irrelevance of magic. But without its power and guidance early man could not have mastered his practical difficulties as he has done, nor could man have advanced to the higher stages of civilization."
References
Linton, Ralph. 1936. The Study of Man. New York: D. Appleton-Century.
Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1948. Magic, Science, and Religion. Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press.
Murdock, George P. 1949. Social Structure. New York: Macmillan.
lin's din is hamak.
he is bashi bazouk.
Hi, Linh,
Are you are the bashi bozuk (the crazy one, the broken head)? Are you hamak (hammock) or maybe ahmak (the stupid one, I don't think so.
If the ahmak goes to the hamam (khamam, bath house), the keseci (the man who washes you with kese, the slightly abrasive scrubbing cloth) will handle his tasak[lar] (balls).The rolls of dirt and dead skin which peel off is called in child language makaron (macaroni).
Dying In A Turkish Bath
Did you ever attend a public bath?
I did.
The candle near me blew out,
And I became blind.
The blue of the dome disappeared.
They relit a candle on the navel stone.
The marble was wiped clean.
I saw some of my face in it.
It was bad, something awful,
And I became blind.
I didn’t expect quite this from my face.
Did you ever sob
While covered in soap?
(Cemal Süreya)
Ciao,
Murat
Yo Phaneronoemikon,
You're not in Portland, man, you're on the Isle of Man, dodging the IRS. Oil and gold are inching up, just like I said they would.
Linh
there is also bo^i from "boy" refer to a butch lesbian/stud who prefers male clothing.
Hi Linh, interesting study. Just want to add that many years after the so called April 1975 "phong giai" of South Viet Nam,a lot of french-educated Vietnamese commented that the French, who lost to the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu, managed to leave their language in Viet Nam, whereas the "Naciremas" took everything with them.
I was surprised to read that the soldiers in Vietnam did not bring home any words. My group in southern Ohio began using the expression "didi mau" as slang for "let's get out of here." I thought that was Vietnamese, although I guess it could be French like "beaucoup," which was used to explain a large quantity and entered our local slang through Viet-vets.
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