To Sir, With Love
Old man look at my life,Twenty four
and there's so much more
--Old Man, Niel Young
____________
This post is dedicated to Publius.
A few days before Christmas, Ranger discovered a new Vietnamese restaurant and surprised Lisa with a new experience.
The Vietnamese owner, Joseph, was born in 1975, spoke Vietnamese fluently and was one of the Boat People. Ranger pulled up his residual memory of the language, and Joseph was most cordial and informative. As Lisa has been skeptical of Ranger's translations in the past, this was an ideal opportunity to fact check.
Joseph confirmed the correctnesss of Ranger's terms, but with one small added teaching point
Om noi and ba noi are the respective terms for "old man" and "old woman." They are usually terms of respect and endearment, and when Om Noi is used as "Old Uncle," the intent is one of reverence. Ranger shared that the Vietnamese workers often referred to him as "Om noi," happily presuming a sense of familiarity and perhaps even some affection, though most likely, he assumed it was meant in the Army sense, i.e., The Commander, Head Honcho, etc.
Om noi and ba noi are the respective terms for "old man" and "old woman." They are usually terms of respect and endearment, and when Om Noi is used as "Old Uncle," the intent is one of reverence. Ranger shared that the Vietnamese workers often referred to him as "Om noi," happily presuming a sense of familiarity and perhaps even some affection, though most likely, he assumed it was meant in the Army sense, i.e., The Commander, Head Honcho, etc.
But Joseph smiled somewhat uneasily and shared that the term has another meaning. Om noi can mean, "bossy bastard." This he said with some trepidation in his impeccable English.
Lisa laughed, confirming the correctness of the latter definition, and Joseph seemed relieved that his astute reading had been taken so well. Ranger replied that he was a bossy bastard; that's why he had bars on his collar.
Maybe next lifetime, the gentler Ranger Om noi.
Labels: ba noi, bossy captain, om noi, vietnamese double entendre
posted by rangeragainstwar at 10:41 AM
11 Comments:
The meanings aren't mutually exclusive. Think back to uncles you've known. Probably my favorite, John, was one of the bossiest bastards I've ever known. Or parental relationships. Or military relationships. I recall a couple of colonels and one or two sergeants as well.
"Bossy" ain't bad at all, so long as it's accompanied by love.
Bossy sucks otherwise.
I'll pull security on Publius on this one; there's a kind of wierd pride in having the hardest pecker in the battalion as your boss.
"That's bullshit, dude. OUR Old Man will ruck your ass off all day, keep you at 100% security all night and THEN personally kick your ass if you snivel about cold C's for breakfast."
So I'd bet there was a certain wary affection in your guys' description of you.
But next lifetime? Flower-sniffing Love Child. Boom, baby!
one of the genius things about the vietnamese langauge is that much of the meaning is derived from context and inflection.
the word ma for instance can mean mother, soldier, orange ice cream, dog, and my favorite (rising inflection) "motherfucker."
he's absolutely right that om noi can have many meanings. but, that's where the beauty of the language comes to play. if you felt the respect and love when they called you om noi, it was probably very genuine. more than anything else, what i loved about the vietnamese people was that genuine sense. others found them to be duplicitous and shifty. i, working in their language found them to be very up front.
by my third tour i had relaxed a lot on my derision of the marvins. after all, i could hardly blame them for not wanting to get themselves killed, or even not wanting to piss off the sure winners. something i had before perceived as treachery or double dealing was simply pragmatic self preservation.
when it came time in my recovery to make my "list of all persons we had harmed" my sponsor made it pretty simple.
"let's start with continents, southeast asia, west africa, lebanon, and such. if you meet somebody from there, you owe them."
in the stranger than strange department, some of my closet vietnamese friends were on the other side until they chu hoi'd. i can understand those guys perfectly. they didn't sell out their side, their side was usually as bad or worse than ours. they made a pragmatic choice for themselves and their families. that, i can respect.
when my sister was nursing in the central valley of california she called me one night because there was a hmong family there to be treated. i told her that everything to the hmong is a family issue, and i said i was certain that one of the younger folks would have an excellent command of english. later she asked me where the hmong were orginally from. i said:
"hmong-tana, of course."
MB,
And of course I remember du ma my.
But I'd never say such a thing. jim
Publius, FDChief,MB,
One of my VN called POP (of course since our greasy spoon was called Porkchop) was tortured by the NVN and couldn't talk, all he did was grunt. I communicated better with him than i did with 2 wives.On Christmas I offered them presents and all Pop wanted was a aluminum bowl and a spoon!I've never forgotten this,as I had poncho liners , clothes etc...
On the flip side we rec'd a large shipment of used toys thru a Catholic charity and these didn't make it down to troop level. The VN officers put them in a truck andtook them to Saigon. Oh well, it was a good idea.
I frequently gave my workers food for their families.
in direct violation of the US , LTC's orders.
FDChief.
The females called me om noi also.If I remember correctly they started it./I feel myself slowly evolving into a being that could possibly maybe want to smell a flower. jim
the word ma for instance can mean mother, soldier, orange ice cream, dog, and my favorite (rising inflection) "motherfucker."
i like that. i gather it's like that in chinese as well. i'm trying to get a few words and at least try to pronounce them right.as i mentioned before, i'm not good at languages, especially after 9 months on reglan. but i'd like to know a little bit because my granddaughter is learning a bit at the age of 4. my little mai.
Well, I was called du ma my a lot more than om noi. But I prefer to think that I was just being called a soldier....in a loving way, of course.
I'm with MB about the Vietnamese. Our relationships with them were always colored by the amazingly strange twists of fate that placed all of us in such close quarters. With a great deal of time in Asia, and speaking another Asian language, I've had much contact with folks on the other side of the world. I'm always conflicted, but I think I liked the Vietnamese most of all.
And, oh, BTW, Ranger, just why is this post for me? Laid back as I am, there is no way, no how that I can be termed bossy. I'm reminded of that here in California, where I'm subjected to the tender mercies of a grown daughter. And I gotta say, no man I've ever known approaches a grown daughter on the bossy scale.
To borrow from FDChief, I've always been a flower sniffer in this lifetime.
Publius,
Jim did not mean to imply you were bossy. Rather, this was an attempt, however feeble, to acknowledge his own overbearing manner.
It was dedicated to you in acknowledgment of your comment to the previous piece. I'm glad you are a flower-sniffer, and your input is always most appreciated.
re: hard ass boss
one off hand remark i made whilst wandering through the boonies became a catch phrase for the entire team.
we were about a day out and i was trying to cover some ground. a newer member requested a stop so he could pee.
i told him "if you got piss left i'm not driving the pace hard enough. 3 minutes, then move out at a jog."
needless to say we were not obsessed with the concept of hydration like they are today.
MB,
If your piss was not dark yellow, you weren't doing your job.
MB, Jim: One of my first line platoon daddies pulled me aside before our first serious hump.
"Now listen up, doc," he says, "I expect half of these pussies are gonna fall down somewhere between here and the company area wrigglin' and cryin' that they're a goddam heat casualty. You tell you can't find a vein and you're gonna have to stick your little water hose right up their goddam rape tool."
"Anybody who stays down after that, you can plug 'em in and fill 'em up."
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