Yes, you younger sister!
July 2023
Besides the typical and omnipresent honking, there is another sound that caught my attention right after I had finished the 14-day Covid quarantine upon entry. Everywhere, on the street, in stores, in restaurants, in the backyard of my house, I heard this "ơi" but had no idea what it was. At that time, I did not speak a single word of Vietnamese. One day, my friend Cô Lien walked me home, and when I heard the "ơi", I was finally able to get an answer.
"Ơi is a simple and clear way of getting someone's attention wherever and whenever, means ‘excuse me’ and always comes along with a personal pronoun”, she said, "It's perfectly fine to yell "em ơi" at the bank, workplace or café, as long as the people you're addressing are younger than you. Just learn the pronouns and give it a try. It will work out”, was her advice before we said goodbye. I'm glad she didn't tell me then how complex these personal pronouns are and that there are countless ones.
It took me month to learn the basic ones and call the girl at Labonté café “em ơi”, the doorman “anh oi”, the women, where I buy pineapples “chị ơi”, because I was afraid of sounding rude if I used the wrong pronoun and that short “ơi". But I got used to it and meanwhile the “ơi” escapes my lips without thinking. My decision for the personal pronoun with which I refer to myself and with which I address the other requires considerably more effort. Pronouns change depending on the gender, the age difference, and the relationship between the speakers.
More than five for "I" only
There are at least 5 pronouns to refer to me: The first one I learned was “tôi”, a neutral representation for “I”, which is used when a woman or man talk to someone considered equal. I find it a bit too neutral, and I don’t refer to myself as “tôi” that often.
In the office, I am older than almost all my colleagues, so "chị", which means "older sister", would be formally correct when referring to myself. However, they keep telling me, to use “em”, which is a younger male or female sibling. I guess they want me to feel equal and part of the team. Our Vietnamese director is younger than me, very experienced and an excellent resource when it comes to work, and of course I respect her. In this case, I take advantage of the language and address her as elder sister, "chị ơi", without using her first name though. But when I talk about her in front of others, I say “chị Lan”, elder sister Lan.
In a situation where I am the older, elder sister, an auntie, so to speak, I am "cô". Besides, "cô" is also a polite form of address a female teacher, especially in public, to make it clear to other ears that she and her male student have a purely professional relationship.
Another kinship term that is embedded in a pronoun is “Bà”, used to address a woman in the age of a grandmother. Outside kinship the meaning changes. "Bà" then refers to a "Mrs." and is used to formally address an older woman or a woman in a position of authority or respect.
You can probably imagine how much pronouns challenge me, but I find it totally fascinating how these words can shift distance between speakers and also how they express hierarchies. I personally feel that my I is more fluid here than at home. I am happy to be addressed as “em”, “chị” or "bà", because it makes me part of my environment and assigns me a clear role as the older sister, the younger sibling, the auntie or simply someone who belongs to another generation. These are not all pronouns that refer to women and please note that there is the same selection of personal pronouns for men.
Confucianism
Discussing the world of Vietnamese pronouns with Cô Lien again the other day, I realized that respect is the cornerstone of relationships in Vietnamese society and the underlying concept is Confucianism. Confucianism regards the family as the foundation of society, and as strongly as the family is organized hierarchically, so is society. This concept of society as an extension of the family is reflected in the transfer of a language originally intended for domestic life into social use, among other things precisely through pronouns.