Language as an Adventure
Language is a funny thing. It separates us (see British and American English), or brings us together, Lao in our family’s case. The U.S. Government determined that I should study Lao late in 1963, along with six other guys, who were all being shipped off to become the nucleus of what came to be called the Forward Areas Program. Considering the fact that there were never more than about sixty people who spoke serviceable Lao during the next ten year period, we seven were a little more than a tenth of that total; which probably accounts for Agency refusal to move some of us anywhere else until Asian hospitality wore out. We were to start off as community development advisors, something which apparently needed little or no training for the advisors in those days. Happily, that never bothered any of us. Those were the days when there was nothing an American couldn’t do, if setting “his” mind to it. [Digression: there was also no political correctness at the time either, and words like “s/he” did not exist; or if they did, I had never heard about them.] It was a man’s world; one in which we knew what the Communist menace was; that it had to be defeated; and somebody in Washington had picked us out of some “phone book” to do a part of that job. In my case at least, that had to be literally true. Studying Government in Georgetown, while earning enough to stay alive at Bache & Co. on 16th Street, I received a call one evening. A man – name long forgotten if I ever knew it – asked if I was interested in going to Viet Nam. “Why not?” Before I actually came to the Department of State Building to sign up, there was a second call. Somebody had changed his mind; and the venue was changed. I was going to be sent to Laos instead, wherever that was (Ha ha, he had to go there to marry me, his Karma). Back to the world map. Found it. A small green spot squeezed between Thailand and what my older map called Indochina.
So, off I went to study all about Southeast Asia in Berkeley, CA; actually for the second time. When I had somehow been selected to go to Ghana as a Peace Corps volunteer in 1961, they sent me to Berkeley for three months Of African studies, to learn a bit of Twi (primary tribal language), and to be psychoanalyzed for listening to Jack Kennedy in the first place. At least one book came out of that exercise and the subsequent two-year stint in Ghana, written by the psychologist. Anyway, though nobody chose to verify our sanity before heading off to Southeast, Asia, they did set us up to meet some fascinating people who would impress me anyway (Bernard Fall being the most significant). Once indoctrinated properly, we then returned to the east coast, to a basement in Rosslyn, VA, where the Foreign Service Institute was then housed. There, I immediately learned two things: (1) I apparently had an “ear” for languages; and (2) even Roman idiots spoke Latin, albeit probably pretty badly. There, day after day for some six months, seven of us diligently studied Lao (not Laotian). Actually, much to my later dismay, I found that I had learned what I came to call Hoch-Lao, a language spoken by a relatively small elite class, based on Pali (the Indian language used by the Buddhist monks). Then it took a year or so in place to learn real Lao, the language used by most everyone else.
Thus, when I first met the Drouot Family in 1966 – they spoke French, Vietnamese, and Lao, and no English – and the only language we had in common was Lao. Thank God for that. Laure’s father, an entrepreneur then, selling mostly rock and gravel for our Grove-Jones road-building crews, was an absolute mine of information. A former Foreign Legion officer during WW-II, and the first “Indochina” war (French phase), and son of the last French Governor in central Laos; he filled in blanks people such as Bernard Fall had left out of my studies; and never would fill. Fall stepped on a mine his infantry guides never saw, on a visit to Viet Nam. So the author of “Hell in a Very Small Place” and “Street Without Joy” would fill in no more blanks for those of us who had listened to him those nights in Berkeley, as he explained what the French had done during their war. Mistakes that we, hopefully, would not be making. We eventually did though. Still, Emile Drouot was the home-grown version, teaching me things about Laos and Viet Nam, which I would use to stay alive, in my rapidly increasing Lao vocabulary at the time. Funny thing now that I think about it. As much as Laure had blown me away the first time I saw her in front of the colonial residence the family owned (age 16 at the time), I expect that it would have been simply a chance encounter, if her father hadn’t been willing to talk to this arrogant young American (we were going to win the war they lost) about the world he lived and fought in. We kept on talking for about four years, at which time his daughter decided that she might as well marry me, since I was in the house all the time anyway.
Back to language though. With the exception of a short period, when we sent our three-year old to a Chinese school in Paksé, and we all had to practice writing and speaking kindergarten Chinese – Isabelle couldn’t write her homework, so her father had to hold her hand and the brush – the three of us spoke Lao constantly. Laure and I still do, when we don’t want people to understand us. In the meantime, she learned English a heck of a lot better than I learned French (See her blog notes). Isabelle, of course, learned whichever language we thought necessary, including the Chinese episode noted above, which allowed us all to buy excellent things in the Paksé market places. She learned French, when we tossed her into central France for a month or so; and English really beginning in 1975, when teachers began telling me (in the U.S. and Afghanistan) that she was doing very well for a non-English speaker. She appears to have improved some since those days. At least her father and the Spotsy Bowling League members think so. As for her mother's English; read the blog. I'm George, and she's Gracie...
Say goodnight Gracie; Goodnight Gracie.
So, off I went to study all about Southeast Asia in Berkeley, CA; actually for the second time. When I had somehow been selected to go to Ghana as a Peace Corps volunteer in 1961, they sent me to Berkeley for three months Of African studies, to learn a bit of Twi (primary tribal language), and to be psychoanalyzed for listening to Jack Kennedy in the first place. At least one book came out of that exercise and the subsequent two-year stint in Ghana, written by the psychologist. Anyway, though nobody chose to verify our sanity before heading off to Southeast, Asia, they did set us up to meet some fascinating people who would impress me anyway (Bernard Fall being the most significant). Once indoctrinated properly, we then returned to the east coast, to a basement in Rosslyn, VA, where the Foreign Service Institute was then housed. There, I immediately learned two things: (1) I apparently had an “ear” for languages; and (2) even Roman idiots spoke Latin, albeit probably pretty badly. There, day after day for some six months, seven of us diligently studied Lao (not Laotian). Actually, much to my later dismay, I found that I had learned what I came to call Hoch-Lao, a language spoken by a relatively small elite class, based on Pali (the Indian language used by the Buddhist monks). Then it took a year or so in place to learn real Lao, the language used by most everyone else.
Thus, when I first met the Drouot Family in 1966 – they spoke French, Vietnamese, and Lao, and no English – and the only language we had in common was Lao. Thank God for that. Laure’s father, an entrepreneur then, selling mostly rock and gravel for our Grove-Jones road-building crews, was an absolute mine of information. A former Foreign Legion officer during WW-II, and the first “Indochina” war (French phase), and son of the last French Governor in central Laos; he filled in blanks people such as Bernard Fall had left out of my studies; and never would fill. Fall stepped on a mine his infantry guides never saw, on a visit to Viet Nam. So the author of “Hell in a Very Small Place” and “Street Without Joy” would fill in no more blanks for those of us who had listened to him those nights in Berkeley, as he explained what the French had done during their war. Mistakes that we, hopefully, would not be making. We eventually did though. Still, Emile Drouot was the home-grown version, teaching me things about Laos and Viet Nam, which I would use to stay alive, in my rapidly increasing Lao vocabulary at the time. Funny thing now that I think about it. As much as Laure had blown me away the first time I saw her in front of the colonial residence the family owned (age 16 at the time), I expect that it would have been simply a chance encounter, if her father hadn’t been willing to talk to this arrogant young American (we were going to win the war they lost) about the world he lived and fought in. We kept on talking for about four years, at which time his daughter decided that she might as well marry me, since I was in the house all the time anyway.
Back to language though. With the exception of a short period, when we sent our three-year old to a Chinese school in Paksé, and we all had to practice writing and speaking kindergarten Chinese – Isabelle couldn’t write her homework, so her father had to hold her hand and the brush – the three of us spoke Lao constantly. Laure and I still do, when we don’t want people to understand us. In the meantime, she learned English a heck of a lot better than I learned French (See her blog notes). Isabelle, of course, learned whichever language we thought necessary, including the Chinese episode noted above, which allowed us all to buy excellent things in the Paksé market places. She learned French, when we tossed her into central France for a month or so; and English really beginning in 1975, when teachers began telling me (in the U.S. and Afghanistan) that she was doing very well for a non-English speaker. She appears to have improved some since those days. At least her father and the Spotsy Bowling League members think so. As for her mother's English; read the blog. I'm George, and she's Gracie...
Say goodnight Gracie; Goodnight Gracie.
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