Child Wants a Coffee
If I walked into a Vietnamese café and wanted to order, I wouldn’t know how to say, “May I please get one coffee to-go?” I might say, “Child wants a coffee.”
Despite growing up in a Vietnamese household, I barely learned enough to talk to my grandparents. I don’t understand the news. I can’t follow a political debate. And unless someone speaks the exact dialect my family uses, they might as well be speaking Klingon.
What I do know is the basics: how to show respect, how to eat, how to say happy birthday. I really didn’t learn to speak in complete sentences until I was 20. It was difficult and it still is. But when it comes to being polite, precise, or even casually fluent? I’m lost.
Generations
On average, it takes 2 to 3 generations for a family to lose strong ties to their homeland and cultural identity—unless active steps are taken to preserve them. Cultural loss is not inevitable, but it is likely without intention.
First-generation immigrants often hold tightly to their homeland. They speak the language, observe cultural rituals, and maintain close ties.
Their children—the second generation—are usually born or raised in the new country. They might be bilingual and bicultural, but they often feel pressure to assimilate. Cultural practices shift. Traditions are selectively passed down.
By the third generation, many speak only the dominant language and feel distant from ancestral customs.
Sociologists often refer to the “three-generation model” (sometimes called the “third-generation rule”) which observes that:
“What the son wishes to forget, the grandson wishes to remember.”
— Marcus Lee Hansen, historian
Yellow-Americans
You know what’s funny? In Vietnamese, a white United Statesian is called “Mỹ trắng.” A black United Satesian is called “Mỹ đen.” There isn’t a word for a Vietnamese or Asian person born and raised as an American. I once asked my mom, “Wouldn’t I just be Mỹ vàng,’ then?” She laughed knowing that maybe I would be the one who coined this word.
In Vietnamese, a white American is sometimes called “Mỹ trắng” (literally white American) and a Black American “Mỹ đen” (literally black American). But what about someone like me—Vietnamese by ethnicity, but born and raised entirely in the U.S.? One day I asked my mother, “Wouldn’t I be ‘Mỹ vàng’ then?” (literally yellow American) She laughed. I might be the first to coin it.
There is actually another word, “Việt Kiều,” which means “Overseas Vietnamese.” I have been told it is an outdated word.
There isn’t actually a term—no tidy phrase for Vietnamese Americans born here— and that says something. It reflects the tension between being “from” somewhere and being seen as always a bit foreign.
I lean just a bit more American than Vietnamese. (Actually, a lot more). My dad once told me, “Your grandma is Vietnamese, you’re just American.” It was in a joking kind of way, but I think somewhere in the back of his mind, there would be some time in my life that I would lose my Vietnamese identity completely.
This search for a word—any word—that captures who I am linguistically and culturally, reveals the bigger question: what happens when language can’t catch up with identity?
Note: “Yellow-American” is not an appropriate phrase in English.
Hay quá! Hay quá!
Any non-Vietnamese speaker who married into my family would do their best to learn a few polite phrases in Vietnamese. And the response they would always get is “Hay quá! Hay quá!” (“So good! So good!). But here’s the thing—Vietnamese has no exact word for “good” the way English does. A child being obedient, a person doing well in school, a magical performance—these all require different descriptors. When someone says “Hay quá!” after hearing you attempt Vietnamese, it’s like clapping for a great performance. It recognizes effort, not perfection. And it always makes me smile.
Pronouns, Titles and Third-Person
What I learned in Vietnamese is that everyone has a title. I don’t mean for it to sound fancy, but I was never taught to use pronouns. In English, whomever I am speaking to is “you,” and I would always refer to myself as “me.” That really isn’t a part of the Vietnamese vocabulary. There is “toi,” which is kind of formal, kind of informal, but definitely not familiar. And a really funny thing I learned watching Vietnamese Masterchef… “you” is “bạn” …which literally means “friend,” whether or not you’re friends. That’s always bugged me, because being a worldly traveler myself, I’ve come to learn that whenever you start hearing someone call you, “My friend! My friend!” Run.
So, I learned that we speak in 3rd person and everyone has a title (kind of). I don’t mean a title like Sir Elton John. But we all get some sort of title. For example, I am my parents’ child, so they call me “child,” and they would call themselves “mom” and “dad.” There is no “you” or “me.” Here’s an example (if my mom and I spoke Vietnamese with each other):
Mom: Hello, Child! Is Child hungry?
Me: No Mom, Child is not hungry.
Mom: Are you sure, Child? Mom can make Child something to eat.
Me: Child does not need Mom to make anything. Child is not hungry.
Yes… you read that right. No matter how old I get, I will still call myself “child” when speaking to my mom…
It sounds absurd in English. But in Vietnamese, it’s natural. The structure reflects hierarchy, respect, and relationships. You always know where you stand with someone—literally, by the word you use for them.
How Fluent is Fluent?
In my opinion, true fluency in a language goes far beyond everyday conversation. You aren’t truly fluent until you can understand legal jargon, follow a president’s State of the Union address—whether it’s inspiring or laced with propaganda—or make sense of a scientific report or complex medical terminology. By that standard, the only person I know who is truly fluent is my mom.
Generation 2.5
I will probably never be fluent in Vietnamese. I can speak bits of it, but I don’t consider myself bilingual. I can’t read legal documents, I can’t follow debates, and I can’t switch registers the way fluent speakers can. I don’t even speak “Vietlish,” the casual mix of Vietnamese and English some families use. Mine didn’t teach me slang or informal speech. I learned phrases for meals, birthdays, and ceremonies—not for daily life.
So when someone asks, “Do you speak Vietnamese?” I say, “Not really.” I know words. I don’t know jokes. I know titles. I don’t know the language the way it lives and breathes.
And yet, I feel tied to it. I’m part of that in-between generation. Not quite second-generation, not quite third. Maybe 2.5. We exist in a gap—not fluent in the language of our ancestors, and never fully embraced by the country they left behind. But we carry the sounds. The laughter. The echo of what was almost lost.
That’s the funny thing about being 2.5 generations removed: you feel both close and far, fluent and frozen, local and foreign—all at once.
And sometimes, you just want a coffee. Even if you have to ask for it like a child.
*The woman with a coffee image is AI-generated