Nancy K. Napier is a blog contributor to Psychology Today! She will post in her ‘Creativity Without Borders’ blog approximately once every two weeks. Make sure to 
so you don’t miss out!
Here’s a peek at her latest blog post:
“If ever we worry that our high-tech world will overpower our high touch needs, we should remember that in Vietnam, electronic mail is “two computers massaging each other.”
I lived in Hanoi, Vietnam, for several years when my colleagues were just beginning to learn English. Although I have some language skills—I speak German, can keep up somewhat in French, studied (and have forgotten) Japanese—Vietnamese is beyond me. When I reached the lesson where I learned that two words just a smidgeon different from each other could mean “chapel” or “brothel,” I gave up. Just how would it look to some Vietnamese early on a Sunday morning if a straight-looking American female professor asked for a house of ill repute?
So I look to my colleagues with awe and amazement as they speak their own form of English. And the results, while sometimes funny, are always charming, and often enlightening. If a few cases, I’ve simply adopted the Vietnam-English phrases because they make more sense.”