I can do Vietnamese tones perfectly, I can even do both northern and southern "dialects." And my grasp of the idiom is good; where most westerners can only point at a sandwich and hold up a finger, I use the counting-word ô for sandwich (same word as for "umbrella") that shows I actually know idiomatic Vietnamese. Between tones and idiom, people think I am fluent, which I am not.

Today, living here 13 years, today I learned the word for "wrong." I am far from fluent.

But I can't speak fast. In any language, unless I am near passing out from barbituates or benzos, then I speak like an auctioneer. And Vietnamese is spoken very fast, like most tonal languages.

There was a phrase in the book I learned from that I could hear on the recordings, three difficult tones in a row, VERY fast. I was finally able to do it after the tones were solid. "There will be a big storm."

I got Cantonese tones in six weeks, one day I realized they were like G C E in music and after that I had no more trouble. Vietnamese tones took me a year to get right and several more to make them second-nature. Now they're easy.

I live in the south but I use the Hanoi dialect because it makes me sound more educated. But I doubt I will ever understand the spoken language very well.

I know four words spelled cu with different tones.

* old (things, not people)

* counting-word for underground vegetables (onion, etc)

* owl

* penis

Nobody smirks if I say onion or garlic, nobody thinks it sounds like penis. The tones are too fundamental for that.