You'd Better Know Who's Who
A Primer on How to Insult Your Various Relatives-In-Law
This Substack is about life in Vietnam from the viewpoint of an expat who spent his first 60 years in a low-context culture.
Today’s post is about the myriad different ways there are to say “you” depending on who’s speaking and who the “you” is. To make it interesting, only one, maybe two, are ever correct.
It took me about two years to realize that I was insulting the relatives-in-law on a fairly regular basis. Actually, that’s not 100% accurate. Let me rephrase …
You will always be the “rude” one
It took about two years for my girlfriend (who later became my wife) to tell me that the relatives-in-law refer to me informally as “tây thô lỗ” (tai to lo) or “rude westerner” because I didn’t address them properly. Additional rudeness was perceived via my direct style of communication that has no place in polite Vietnamese culture.
They put up with me because I took on what they saw to be the burden of a divorced woman and her child, relieving her parents. It’s very rare for a man in Vietnam to treat a child not of his blood as if she were his own, and they admire the relationship my daughter and I have.
Direct confrontation is avoided in Vietnam whenever possible. Instead, people talk about you behind your back and hope that someday someone else will find a way to tell you you’re being an asshole. I felt bad — for about twenty seconds — until I thought,
Why tf didn’t you tell me before???
They thought me rude because I referred to relatives who are younger than me — at 63, that’s almost everyone — as “em” because that’s what you call younger people. This, I had (wrongly) figured out all on my own. It was wrong because these people are related to my wife and there’s a whole hierarchy that Vietnamese people are taught from infancy and no one over the age of three ever gets wrong. To non-Vietnamese, it’s as clear and navigable as the thick, deep mud under the Mekong River.
If you aren’t talking to your spouse’s relatives, you can get away with:
Con for children
Em for younger men and women
Anh1 (older brother) for men of your generation who are older than you
Chị (older sister) for women of your generation who are older than you
Chú (uncle) for men one generation older or someone to whom you want to show respect.
Cô (aunt) for women one generation older
Bác (sir/ma’m) for men or women two generations older
Ông (sir) for men two generations older to whom you want to show additional respect
Em, anh, and chị as described above also apply to siblings, even as small children. The twin brother born 2 minutes before you will always be anh to you and you will always be em to him.
These terms are different in the north, so don’t go there.
Just kidding.
Some of the most beautiful parts of Vietnam are in the far north. Go there.
If you are married to a Vietnamese, it’s safest to ASK them how you address everyone BEFORE you speak; or pay attention to how your spouse addresses them and do the same. I, of course, didn’t do that ‘cause no one told me about this particular spider’s web and I didn’t know enough to ask.
You now have no excuse. ASK or LISTEN. Or both.
When my wife finally told me I was doing it wrong, I still didn’t ask how to do it right, ‘cause I knew I wouldn’t remember right away. I just stopped using pronouns and listened until I sorta figured it out. Also, if there’s a best way to get her into hair-on-fire mode, it’s asking a question twice or asking for clarification when something is perfectly clear to her. Fortunately, my daughter is now old enough that if I want to know something, I ask her. If she goes grouchy on me, I can take away her phone.
The tricky thing about addressing relatives-in-law is that your age doesn’t matter. For a long time, no one told me that when you get married, your status in your spouse’s family becomes the same as that of your spouse. If they are the oldest, you get top-billing, even if you’re younger than their siblings; if they are the youngest, you could be older than your spouse’s parents and you still get bottom-of-the-barrel status.
Parents
Something else I learned the hard way: parents in this society are infallible, all-knowing, and the ultimate authority. They are never challenged or talked down to, regardless of how egregious their behavior gets. My FIL, for example, goes on a screaming bender if he feels even a small slight and no one can tell him to shut it. I wish I’d recorded the most recent one; at over 40 minutes, it was epic.
That covers the immediate family. Now let’s look at the extended family…
The pronoun you use for them is based on your mother- or father-in-law’s sibling rank and applies ONLY to that side of the family. If your MIL is the oldest sibling and your FIL is the youngest sibling, you get to address their same-age brothers differently.
Buddha help you if you get it wrong.
But wait! There’s more!
The terms for grandma, grandpa, uncles, and aunts are different on your FIL’s side and MIL’s side; it’s not just aunt or uncle or whatever. When I was growing up, my father’s brother and my mother’s brother (if she’d had one) were both “Uncle (insert name here)”. Here they use similar but different terms for each side of the family and it’s an insult to include the person’s given name.
DON’T DO IT!
The fun really ratchets up if there are step-grandparents, uncles, and aunts. I’m not going there, though this article touches on it.
The easy fix to this is,
Don’t marry a Vietnamese person who has any living relatives beyond siblings.
If you can’t help yourself, please ask how to address everyone, because chances of you figuring it out on your own hovers just below zero.
I need a beer. Can I get you one?
To make it more interesting, both “Anh” and “Ánh” are names given to females. One of my sisters-in-law is named Anh, so she’s Chị Anh. The other is Ánh, so she’s Chị Ánh. Since I can’t always get the tones correct, my daughter suggested I refer to them as “Nơ’s mother” and “Ruby’s mother” when they’re not in the room. It works.
I have been reading a bit about this recently in Nguyen Van Huyen's book "The Civilization of Vietnam". It was written more than 50 years ago about older laws of Vietnam. I think this would have applied to anyone 100+ years ago.
In the olden days of Vietnam, fathers had complete say over the family. The father had the right to punish his children to the point of death. If he killed them, little could be done, because legally, a child was unable to contradict or sue their own parents for any wrongdoing and (even more shocking) it wasn't a crime to kill your own children.
This behavior extended to the marital relationship too. If a man was a little low on cash and his wife failed at bringing in enough money (that's right, the woman was responsible for managing and earning the families money while the man 'managed' the assets). This allowed the husband to lend out his wife for (what I assumed were) sexual services to bring in some pocket money if he wished.
Children had to ask for permission to travel outside the home and were not allowed to move out unless they were able to buy their own house or they were married.
This book is full of shocking old time laws.