On the anniversary of the death of my Hanoi-born wife’s auntie in Ho Chi Minh City, two distant branches of a family tree come together to put the Vietnamese language’s strict conventions regarding pronouns through its paces.

When talking, Vietnamese clans stick rigidly to kinship terms so everyone will know what generation they belong to and who is washing the dishes (it’s probably going to be the youngest adult female). But inter-generational dynamics can get a little knotty, especially when second marriages come into play. On this occasion I am introduced to my mother-in-law’s half-sister’s husband’s stepdaughter. To my 38-year-old eyes, she looks like a bac (elder auntie) or even a ba (grandmother/great-aunt) but I’m told to call her chi (older sister) and her septuagenarian husband anh (older brother). The husband, who is sipping locally produced red wine on the rocks, is the oldest man in the room, but according to his in-laws’ family tree he’s not even on the same branch as the most senior individuals at the dinner. Enjoying the view from that perch is my wife’s father, whom the septuagenarian must refer to with more than a hint of weariness as chu (uncle).

As the commemorative meal begins, the pronoun-themed sideshow continues when a 35-year-old man, who is apparently my “nephew”, frogmarches his 10-year-old daughter up to me and demands that she says chao ong (great-uncle) to me and chao chu (hello, uncle) to my four-year-old son, who is too busy throwing a tantrum under the table to acknowledge the greeting. As my wife is the eldest child in her family, her sister’s son must also refer to my son as anh (older brother) even though he’s much younger.

As Vietnamese people often talk in the third person, a person’s “ranking” often becomes their identity in the context of family affairs, for example, a mother will refer to herself as me or ma (mum) when talking to her kids. This is helpful when meeting distant relatives you may or may not have met. Once, at another large family celebration, my wife told me to pay my respects to a middle-aged woman as she was the head of my father-in-law’s extended clan. So, what was her name? My wife shrugged. She couldn’t remember and it didn’t matter: “Just say chao bac (hello, great-aunt).

Out of the family, Vietnamese also prefer to use kinship terms. Once you might have asked directly, now when two Vietnamese people of a similar age and background first meet, they may try to infer from looks or conversation which person is older. But they can get it wrong. My wife has expressed genuine annoyance when discovering someone she called chi (older sister) for years has turned out to be the younger person.Matters also get complicated for less-than-fluent Vietnamese speakers. In an effort to show deference to a regular customer, the 40-something-year-old owner of a bakery I used to go to in Hanoi started to greet me by saying Chao anh (Hello, older brother), but in this scenario it’s more like Hello, young man, to which I initially replied, Chao em (Hello, younger brother). A loose translation of his response could do Dr Seuss proud: “Older brother, you cannot call me younger brother, as older brother you are much younger, so call me older brother too.” By elevating my status then immediately pulling rank, he had put our respective pronouns in place. After that it seemed easier to order coffee from one my “younger sisters”. As you were, older brother.

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