James Baquet It’s hard for an American man of my age to write about Vietnam with any detachment. When I was a boy, Vietnam was divided into north and south, and there was a war between them. The United States entered this war, and I spent most of my adolescence dreading the draft. I really did not want to be a soldier. Fortunately — at least from my angle — the war ended just as I became eligible. Modern Vietnam — along with Cambodia and Laos once held as a colony of France known as “French Indochina” — is located in Southeast Asia on the eastern side of the Indochina Peninsula, which includes — besides those countries — Myanmar, Thailand, and sometimes the peninsular portion of Malaysia. The Indochina Peninsula is also called Mainland Southeast Asia, as opposed to Maritime Southeast Asia, the islands of the region. China lies to Vietnam’s north. In fact, the name “Vietnam” means “South Yue,” the “Yue” being a former designation for the people who lived in part of southern China. The northern portion of Vietnam was under the sway of China for over a millennium. This has left a huge number of Sinitic words in the lexicon, by some estimates 30 to 60 percent. There are also borrowed words from the French period, and increasingly, English is creeping in. Laos and Cambodia are to the southwest. Thailand lies across the Gulf of Thailand to the west, and the country also shares maritime borders with the Philippines, Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia. The country became independent of China in 969, and was ruled by a succession of dynasties until French colonization in the mid-19th century. After occupation by the Japanese in the 1940s, the country rebelled against French rule. From 1954 the country was free of the French, but divided into north and south at the 17th parallel north. Hanoi, formerly the capital of north Vietnam, is now capital of the entire country. The former capital of the south, then called Saigon, has been renamed Ho Chi Minh City since 1976. Today, Vietnam is an integral part of the world economy, and its growth rate has been one of the highest in the world. Vocabulary: Which word above means: 1. in contrast with 2. point of view 3. lack of emotion 4. required military service 5. word list 6. Chinese (linguistics) 7. those adopted from another language 8. inseparable 9. able to participate 10. fearing, being reluctant | 