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Vietnamese vs English - noi lai and play languages
On Sat, 11 Jan 1997, Anonymous Poster wrote:
> I've just read the biography book from the old scholar/Ancient art collector Mr.
> Vu*o*ng Ho^`ng Se^?n titled "Nu*?a ddo*`i ngu*o*`i hu*", he uses a lot of this
> play language (no'i la'i), especially for sexual terms. He talks about his trip
> to Tokyo in 1963 and met with two French friends. When they checked in the
> hotel and were given the Japanese robes which were too small for the French guys
> to cover the front and he uses the term "lu` coi"! .
> I remember people used to use a lot of "no'i la'i" when making jokes or secret
> codes, especially in the South many years ago.
As of my own experiences, its uses proliterated in various places in
Saigon during the period of 1985-89 (I left in 1989) as a street slang.
About 5-6 out of 10 words were "la'i" and the whole conversation can be
conducted in this manner. Most of the times, it was spoken extremely fast
to confuse others whose the conversation was not meant to. ;-)
> For the Gay Viet communities, I don't see we use it here in the U.S lately.
> Not sure if it's a stereotyped universal language for Gay queens to call each
> other "sister", "mother", "bitch",... The similar Viet terms "ba`", "me.",
> "chi.", "co^", "ddi~",... are used everyday here. Sometimes we call our Lesbian
Only to a certain crowd I guess. The people I know do not use such words,
and I do not feel that gay males must associate themselves or refer to
themselves as women. Afterall NOT all gays are or like to be effiminated
or be called as effiminated types.
This is merely my ideology and of friends who share the same thinking.
This is not meant to criticize others do call themselves in such manner.
Despite the common factor of being gays, we are individuals who might have
different ideas on how to conduct ourselves.
The above warning is necessary since i've experienced many rather
flamboyant reaction of name-callings from some individuals who want to
stop the stereotyping and discrimination of gays but instead exercise the
same treatment to others gays who do not sahre the same ideas as they do.
> friends "anh" as well! (Some of our friends encounter a few embarrassing
> moments when using these terms at home or public places! Be careful!)
> Besides that, I see another "Play language" that is pretty popular among Viet
> Gay queens here: Giving each other female names like "Lan", "Hue^.", "Hu*o*ng",
> "Lie^~u", "Mary Lou", "Nancy", "Susan",...
Again, this may only apply for 'queens' who like to be refered as such.
> Sometimes they import a few new terms from their trips to Viet Nam such as "Xu*a
> ro^`i Die^~m!" (It's old!), "Nghi~ sao va^.y Phu*o*.ng?" (What the hell do you
> think?),... which they use now!
Well, one term I know for sure is often used is Phu*o*.ng as to refer to
someone who is extremely flamboyant, as the term's meaning, a Phoenix or
alike bird. ;-)
> Because of the urge to express their feelings and/or to use these queer terms,
> Gay Vietnamese tend to talk in their native tongue whenever they have a chance
> to get together. Isn't it why this Vietnamese vs English discussion started
> here?
Well it is not to fight amongts oursleves about which language the
postings should be in, but somehow along the lines, we learn about how
some of us, Gay Viets speak, communicate with each other. And frankly i
have to add my two cents in your comment above, Anh Ngo Lee:
Due to the lack of terms which describe homosexual nature topics in
Vietnamese or the uncomfortable of using Vietnamese terms, some of us,
(again I can only speak for my own experiences and my friends') do not use
Vietnamese when discuss about gay stuff. ;-) We do switch back and forth
between English and Vietnamese and even mix the words if we must ;-) such
a mess in linguistic but sometimes we do not care much as long as we
understand each other. ;-)
Well shoudn't we have some other topics to discuss about besides this?
Instead of flaming/pamming the Vietnamese postings, we should arrpeciate
those postings as the poster's courage to contribute some of his/her own
ideas to our discussions. After all, we are a discussion group and
because of our heterogenous nature, we should value our differences and
enjoy the variety instead of whining about posts in Vietnamese (or
English) and demanding more work from the poster to translate the post or
post it in bi-lingual fashion.
Any comment,
please send to Minh at <email> or
<email>
--
Minh University of California, Irvine
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