“What would you do if you could see your whole future ahead of you?”
This is the question from Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life”. Ted Chiang wrote a story of a linguist who has an opportunity to learn the alien’s language. The aliens talk and write in circles – which means they can see the present and the future at the same time – by deciphering the language, the linguist can see some inevitable tragic events. To Ted Chiang, language shapes the way we see the world.
I don’t have my whole future ahead of me, but what I always see before my eyes is the past. I was a total nerd when I was in high school, I didn’t have many friends when I was in secondary school, and I wrote so many bad articles that they went straight to the company’s archive. Every mistake that I made, every shame, every time I felt like I wanted to disappear; still feel visible, like they just happened yesterday, wandering before my eyes to remind me that the past never truly disappears.
In Vietnamese, there is no clear past, present, or future tense. If someone asks us what we had for dinner yesterday, we can simply answer, “We eat chicken”. The past can be the present; the distinction is fluid. In Vietnamese, whenever I talk about someone I don’t know, or some new artist, the conversation likely includes the question, “Do you know what they did?” Something ugly may appear, mistakes can be unveiled – a person can have said some ignorant jokes ten years ago, or have had a different political viewpoint three years ago, or had rhinoplasty. That person, no matter what they do in the present, will always be defined by what they did. In the country where I was born, my past is my present. Who I was somehow remains who I am.
Not until I planned to apply to Oxford did I learn to use English on a daily basis. English is a new horizon to me, where I always have to remind myself to conjugate the right verb. When I tell some stories in the past, I become more conscious that I was and I am are two different tenses, and that it is possible that who I was is no longer who I am. When I use English, the past is not images floating in front of me, it is all behind me. And because the past is behind, I can always choose to move on.
I was in my friend’s house in London for a couple of days before moving to Oxford. The first question I got from her was “Have you eaten?”, and then she took me to a Vietnamese restaurant. When I came to Oxford, the first question I got from my landlord was “How are you?”. We exchanged some dry sentences, then I cooked my own dinner and ate alone.
If you have a close relationship with Vietnamese, you would know the greeting we share is usually not “How are you?”, but rather “Ăn gì chưa?” (Have you eaten?). Our love is expressed through food, through the questions about food and taking each other to eat or cooking good food – even if the meal has a thousand ingredients and takes hours to make. When we flirt, a common question is “Have you eaten?” as well. But I can’t do that in the UK. Being in the UK means that question is fading, and somehow, it is disappearing from my love language. I don’t feel that asking “Have you eaten?” is something people would understand as care, I only ask it when we actually need to go eat. I’ve replaced “Have you eaten?” with “How are you?” when meeting new friends, and even on dates. And because there’s suddenly a clear boundary there, I feel an enormous distance between English and Vietnamese.
I always remember the couple from Past Lives (Celine Song), with the husband from America and the wife from Korea. Although he tries to learn his wife’s language, the husband can never completely understand her, because whenever we use our mother tongue, every memory floods. With Vietnamese, the past is as strong as the present. I come from Vietnam, but I’m living in the UK and use English, so English is a part of me. English helps me accept the past as the past. In English, I try to ask, “How was your day?”.
“To have a second language is to have a second soul” (Charlemagne, Holy Roman emperor). As I have more soul, I have more choices to live a happy life. English helps me stop clinging to the past, but only when I use Vietnamese does the sentence “Have you eaten?” is a strong love language – the one that creates who I am. Studying abroad helps me know that Vietnamese and English are all parts of me, and I choose to love both souls.
/ I think in English and I stop talking about the past /