u/Bobbyisbad

I asked her to check a table of greetings on our site — five phrases, and I wanted to know whether Saigon people actually say them or whether they were just grammatically correct.

She confirmed them. Then she added, unprompted:

"English just say hello, say xin chào." Then she said "same same, sound like tourist". Then she added a couple more examples.

She sorted them for me in about thirty seconds:

Younger than you → chào em

A man around uncle age → chào chú

A woman around auntie age → chào cô

An elderly man → chào ông

An elderly woman → chào bà

Older man, close to your age → chào anh

Older woman, close to your age → chào chị

Seven ways to say one English word. Pick wrong and you'll still be understood. My experience is they'll correct you to help you because they know you're trying to get it right.

If you only have a week or two in Vietnam without a lot of learning time, it's ok to use xin chào, but those relationship words will come in very handy to know and are words you'll hear over and over in conversations.

What I keep learning building our site: grammatically valid and things-people-say are two different sets, and only one of them is in a grammar book.

My girlfriend Kim is from Saigon, and I've spent a lot of hours recording her voice for a project, which means listening to the same words over and over. A few things came up that don't match what I was taught, and I'd rather find out I'm wrong now than keep repeating it.

Three questions for Southern speakers.

1. hỏi and ngã. I asked Kim directly whether they were different. Her answer was "same." Listening back I can't hear a difference either. I've started thinking of it as six written tones but only five distinct spoken ones. Is that how you'd put it, or is she flattening something other people keep separate?

2. chà and trà. Said slowly and deliberately they're different. At normal conversational speed I genuinely cannot tell them apart. I know the tr/ch merger is written about — what I want to know is how consistent it actually is for you. Always, sometimes, or word by word?

3. dứa. Every tone lesson I've come across teaches dừa and dứa side by side — same word, different tone, coconut versus pineapple. Kim told me she'd never say dứa — pineapple is trái thơm. That made me wonder whether dứa is actually common among Southern speakers, or whether it's mostly a Northern word. Does anyone in Saigon actually say dứa?

I'm not trying to correct anybody. I don't know how much of this is regional, how much is her family specifically, and how much is just her talking casually with me. Happy to be told I've got something backwards.

(Context on why I have hours of her recordings: I'm building a Southern-dialect learning thing with her voice. Not linking it, that's not what this post is for.)