I Can Hear Numbers!

Our street survival Vietnamese is improving. We've learned how to direct taxi drivers: "Straight ahead. Left. Right. Stop here, etc." We know a lot of words for food and drink items. And we're getting pretty good with numbers, in fact I can usually now hear what numbers the vendors are saying when they quote a price to me. This is made easier by the fact that the Vietnamese numbering system is pretty simple: once you learn 0 to 10, hundred, thousand, and million you've pretty well got it. Everything is a combination of those basic words: so twenty-five is hai (two) muoi (ten) nam (five) and two hundred fifty thousand is hai (two) tram (hundred) nam (five) muoi (ten) nghin (thousand). The only exception is 15, which is lam instead of muoi nam. It helps that most pricing is in very round numbers: 5000, 10,000, 150,000. Of course, they can also just write it out or hold up their calculator or the correct bills, but it's fun to be able to use my words.

P.