Name: ĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐĐD (Năm điều ở Việt Nam mình không thể hiểu)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T05:52:54.000Z
Duration: 8 min 17 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

As you guys know, in the two and a half years I've been in Vietnam, I've learned about a lot of new things.

Shuttle-cock kicking. (or whatever you call it in English)

Riding a motorbike in this crazy traffic.

But there are still five things in Vietnam that I can't understand, even though I've tried really hard.

You might feel this topic is a bit negative,

but I swear that someday I'll make a video about the  things in Vietnam I wish my country would adopt.

I speak English in this video. You can click the settings button to choose English or Vietnamese subtitles,

It's very confusing for a foreigner to witness the beginning of a Vietnamese meal.

(Inviting individual family members to eat. Pretty much untranslatable. One of them would be something like, "Nephew invites mother's younger brother and his wife to eat." So fuck it, I'm not going to bother.)

Now, in the two and a half years I've been here,

I've learned that this custom is just a way for younger people to show respect to their elders.

And I also understand that customs are just customs.

Sometimes we don't understand where they come from, or why they take the form they do,

But the thing that still makes this custom difficult for me to understand is the use of the word "mời"—invite.

In the West, we usually invite someone to do something when we've done something for them. For example:

"I made some lemonade. I'd like to invite you to drink some."

I bought tickets to go see Justin Bieber. I'd like to invite you to come with me.

I remember being very confused the first time someone explained the custom of inviting older people to eat.

She worked to earn the money, she bought the food, she cooked the food, and she put the food on the table.

Well yeah, exactly, that's why he has to invite his mom to eat.

From a Westerner's perspective, it seems like it should be the other way around—

the older people invite the younger people to eat,

and the younger people wait to be invited before putting food in their mouths.

Here's how I imagine things would play out if I invited my mom to eat.

And let's just imagine that my family speaks Vietnamese, ok?

What did you do to get the right to invite me?

You ought to be asking my permission to eat.

Yes, ma'am. May I have your permission to eat?

"Worrying about safety in the wrong places, at the wrong times"

This is something I observe constantly in Vietnam.

There seem to be a lot of people here who are worried about safety in all kinds of situations.

You trying to go see Grandma and Grandpa in heaven?

And sometimes they're concerned about safety in very dubious situations.

Hey, if it weren't mandatory, would you wear a helmet?

"Chewing freely, toothpicking discreetly"

This doesn't apply to everyone in Vietnam, or even most people,

but you do see a lot of people here eating sort of like this:

Where I come from, it's considered quite rude to eat like that.

But I can accept this difference in cultures.

Every culture has different expectations for polite behavior at the table.

In some cultures, it's considered rude to talk very much during a meal.

In other cultures, it's considered impolite to eat everything on your plate.

So when I see Vietnamese people chewing with their mouths open, I don't like it, but I try not to judge it.

But the thing that I can't understand is you often see those same people, who eat like this,

And then when they finish, they use a toothpick like this:

They're embarrassed about people seeing them pick a few bits of food out of their teeth,

when just before they showed everyone their mouth full of food?

The open-mouth chewing is surely the more offensive thing.

Kind of seems to me like pissing in the kitchen sink,

and then excusing yourself to the bathroom to fart.

I remember the first time I looked at a wedding album here.

I was at my neighbor's house, and she had an album from her son's wedding.

I opened it up, and everything was in English.

I knew that she and her family didn't speak English, so I asked her, in Vietnamese,

I've seen some more albums since then, and they, too, were in English.

It seems that all wedding albums here are.

So why are Vietnamese families that speak no English

having wedding albums made in English instead of Vietnamese?

Do people think it's some kind of status symbol, like,

"Oh, Vietnamese simply won't do for our wedding. It must be English."

Wouldn't it be more meaningful to have an album in a language that the family can actually understand?

Well, let me tell you, it would definitely be more meaningful,

because a lot of the English in those albums is meaningless.

Grammar mistakes, spelling mistakes, wrong words, things that make no sense in the context of a wedding album . . .

I saw one album where, next to a lovely picture of the bride and groom,