THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY ENGLISH FACULTY ------GRADUATION THESIS “A Study on translation methods of personal pronouns from English into Vietnamese in the Thorn Birds” Student’s name:
Trang 1THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY ENGLISH FACULTY
- -GRADUATION THESIS
“A Study on translation methods of personal pronouns from
English into Vietnamese in the Thorn Birds”
Student’s name:Chu Thị Thanh Hiền
Trang 2CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1.1 Rationale
Nowadays, English is becoming more and more popular in the world People useEnglish as a means to connect between this country among other not only incommunication but also in culture, social activities, policy… In Vietnam, Englishplays an important role in all fields such as: science, technology, aviation,international sport, diplomacy and so on
Pronouns are words used to refer to someone or something in context so that we canavoid repetition in the process of communication Personal pronouns are a veryimportant part of the language system Both English and Vietnamese use personalpronouns in the category of politeness However, Vietnamese personal pronounsexpress the shade of meaning (polite/ impolite) much more clearly than the Englishones Vietnamese has a very complicated personal pronouns system, so it is verychallenging for English people want to master it
Moreover, personal pronouns play an important play in communication, especially
in Vietnamese They can reveal the social status or the relationship between thespeaker and the listener, in some cases, they can also show the politeness orimpoliteness of the speakers There is a change of personal pronoun whentranslating from English to Vietnamese or vice versa when we want to find theexact equivalence between the two languages, we have to depend on the context,the relationship between the speaker and listener In addition, the factors of sex, age
or feeling of the speakers are also very important In English, people prefer to usepersonal pronouns to replace/ substitute the mentioned noun phrase English useboth anaphora and cataphora to refer backwards or afterwards to the noun phrase.Meanwhile, Vietnamese tends to use full repetition to refer to the mentioned nounphrase Moreover, there is a case that Vietnamese uses ellipsis as the referred noun
is metaphorically understood Cultural factors in Vietnamese can be understood ascategory of politeness Although both English and Vietnamese refer to the category
Trang 3of politeness, but in English, personal pronouns can rarely express the very aspects
of the meaning (polite/ impolite) whereas in Vietnamese they contrast very well
In reality have many problems like that, but until now, still do not have any specificresearch on that issue Even if it had some researched, but it was not depth anddirect Therefore “A study on translation methods of personal pronouns fromEnglish into Vietnamese in the Thorn Birds” is chosen for my graduation paper
1.2 Previous studies
Until now, many authors have mentioned the topic of personal pronouns, however,there has not been an agreement on the concepts of personal pronouns In the worldand in Vietnam, there has been major achievement in the studies of personalpronouns
In 1988, Thai Duy Bao in Constrative analysis of etiquette in English-Vietnamesedialogue mentioned personal pronouns (PP) and nouns of address in English Theauthor wrote: “In English conversation, the use of PP is compulsory and traditionalsuch as PP “I”, “We” or the first-person pronoun, interlocutor (the addressor) and
PP “you” for second-person, who is participant (addressee) The personal pronounsappeared in all communication and social relationships despite differences in socialpositions, ages and intimacy level between speakers In other words, it reflectsrelationships between communication partners, between interlocutor andaddressee…” [5, tr 45-46] In addition, the author also mentioned types of address
in English which reflect position but not politeness, and not affected by differentshades of communication in different situations…
Generally speaking, there have been many studies and articles about personalpronouns in English or comparison between English and Russian, Sino, Swiss,Japanese, South African or Vietnamese… but no articles have mentioned thetranslation methods of personal pronouns in the novel “Thorn Birds”
In Vietnamese, personal pronouns were first studied by Alexandre De Rodhes in his
Dictionary of Vietnamese- Portuguese- Latin, in 1651, he mentions personal
pronouns, as well as the nouns indicating kinship with addressing functions such as
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Trang 4ông, bà, chú, bác, cậu… However, in this Dictionary, these personal pronouns were
not complete and did not reflect all terms used in real life In 1884, Trương VĩnhKỳ spent 30 pages in his book Grammare de langueannamite to describe personal
pronouns Nguyễn Văn Chiến had articles about Locality of kinship nouns in
Vietnamses, Address terms in Vietnamese In Semantics of conversational lines and pragmatics textbook [59, tr191-197], Đỗ Thị Kim Liên mentioned relevant issues
of personal pronouns in conversation or in communication between communicationparticipants such as pairs of interactive personal pronouns in asking and answering;the development ans conversion of personal pronouns with the content ofconversation; the development in psychology and emotion of characters whichinfluence the usage In addition we must also mention articles about personal
pronouns by Bùi Minh Yến in ther doctoral thesis “Addressing in family and society
of Vietnamese “[119] The doctoral thesis “Address terms originating from kinship nouns in Vietnamese” surveyed, described and analyzed carefully, completely and
comprehensively about all kinship nouns used to address in communication [31] In
2012, Trương Thị Diêm wrote about “Address terms originating from kinship nouns
in Catholic community of Vietnamese” [32] In 2012, Trương Thị Minh Phương
wrote about Address terms of Vietnamese emphasized some basic characteristics in
the use of layers of personal pronouns in Vietnamese and some practicalapplications in communication In 2014, La Thị Thanh Mai in her doctoral thesis
Addressing characteristics of Korean and Vietnamese discussed similarities and
differences in address terms in family and society contexts between Koreans andVietnamese
Further, I would like to mention the study of Truong Thi Bich Ngoc- a student ofHai Phong Private University, she studied on personal pronouns in English andVietnamese In that research, She provided the definitions of pronouns, kinds ofpronouns and their uses, found and discussed some difficulties in using personalpronouns and then gave them some suggestions Methods of her study are:Consulting grammar books and web pages for definitions and concepts of
Trang 5pronouns, especially personal pronouns, analyzing data and giving a lot ofexamples to make the study more understandable, discussing and analyzing morecommon factors effecting on translation Scope of the study including: thedefinition of pronouns, the classification of pronouns, the use of pronouns,especially personal pronouns, some difficulties and factors effecting on translation
of learners while using personal pronouns But she did not mention abouttranslation methods and what kind of methods using commonly
Additional, I read the study of Phan Anh in English- Vietnamese comparativelinguistic in 2011 He studied on “subjective and objective personal pronouns inEnglish and Vietnamese” In that essay, he had compared and contrasted the waypeople address the other through personal pronouns, in order to examine whatwould be the problems for both Vietnamese and English learners concerned withthese pronouns In his research, he had taken properly comparative between twolanguages Same as that issue, Huynh Ngoc Thanh had studied on personalpronouns in English and Vietnamese But he just only made the research onpersonal pronouns in English and Vietnamese, gave some example to help readerclearly He did not make properly on comparative
The next is the research of Nguyen Thi Bich Ngoc- a student of University of socialsciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University She studied on “personalpronouns in English, German and their equivalents in Vietnamese” In this thesis,she had described and analyzed the use of personal pronouns in English, German inspecific communication situations, also compare with personal pronouns inVietnamese to find out the similarities and differences in these language Researchsubjects are personal pronouns in English, German and equivalents in Vietnamese.That research focuses on the use of personal pronouns based on material fromEnglish and German novels that have been translated into Vietnamese Most ofthem are ancient stories and dialogues in these languages On the side of researchmethodology, he uses descriptive and analytical methods, comparative method andstatistical method
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Trang 6Another research had done by Vu Ngoc Anh- Student of social sciences andHumanities, Vietnam National University She studied on “personal pronouns onthe literatures of Nam Cao” Because Nam Cao have many literatures, therefore,she had selected some of them for documents of studies such as: “Nghèo”, “Chiphèo”, “ Lão Hạc” and “Những chuyện không muốn viết” She succeeds inclassifying the personal pronoun system in the works that she already selected.Based on his literatures, she used statistical and classify methods to dividedpersonal pronouns And then she summary that there are 49 personal pronouns with
1457 times appearance in four literatures:
First- person pronouns appearance 317 times rank 21.77%
Second- person pronouns appearance 133 times rank 9.13%
Third-person pronouns appearance 1006 rank 69.15%
Besides that, she found out exactly how many time each of personal pronounsappearance in each literal Then she made a comparative about that Insight of thatresearch, she made it properly But outsight of them, she did not compare with otherlanguage It did not mention with the cultural of the nation
Having a look at studies about personal pronouns in English and Vietnamese, wesee that no studies mentioned the comparison of personal pronouns incommunication between English and its Vietnamese translation, with the analysisinto a specific novel, therefore, we chose this topic: “Study on translation methods
of personal pronouns from English into Vietnamese in the Thorn Birds” and itsVietnamese “Tiếng chim hót trong bụi mận gai” translation
1.3 Aims of the study
My study is aimed to provide learners with the definition of translation, pronounsand personal pronouns Further, we would like to give full content of personalpronouns system both in English and Vietnamese The main tasks are statistical andclassify translation methods of personal pronouns from English into Vietnamese inthe Thorn Birds Find out which method is most commonly used and after that givesome proposals
Trang 71.4 Research subjects
In this thesis, we choose to investigate translation methods of personal pronounsused in Colleen Mc Culough’s Thorn Birds published by arrangement with Harperand Row, publishers, Inc During that thesis, we will choose all of personalpronouns used to vocative between characters to analysis and research, in order tofind out which is effective way to translate the personal pronouns from English intoVietnamese The results of the research can be applied in teaching foreignlanguages in general, and in teaching English in particular
1.5 Scope of the study
Basically, the personal pronouns are used throughout the novel, so I only selectsome typical chapters for in-depth and specific analysis We will select 4 chaptersfor depth research Thorn Birds was famous novel of Australian writer- Colleen McCulough published in 1977 That novel was translated into Vietnamese by someauthors such as … In this thesis, we selected the translation of by Phạm MạnhHùng translator (published in 2011 by literary publisher)
1.6 Research methodology
1.6.1 Listing and classification
We listed the number of personal pronouns including the first personalpronouns, the second personal pronouns and the third personal pronouns andexpressions of personal pronouns in character’s talk in specific context andclassified them into groups and subgroups to draw general observation
1.6.2 Discourse analysis
On the basis of personal pronouns collected using discourse analysis, wedescribed the equivalence between the original and translation in terms ofsemantics, context, reference system of personal pronouns, communicationtarget and etc In addition, we analyzed and explained the relationship betweenlanguage and psychology, culture, society to describe characteristics andtranslation methods of personal pronouns in character’s conversations in theEnglish original and the Vietnamese translation
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Trang 81.6.3 Comparison method
We compared characteristics and use of personal pronouns, which are suitablewith communication role, context and functions of personal pronouns used inthe translation from the English original into Vietnamese translation We didthis in order to find similarities and differences in the use of personal pronounsbetween these two languages
1.7 Organization of the study
This report is organized in three parts:
The first part is consisting of Abstract, acknowledgements, table of contents, list ofabbreviations, list of tables and figures
The second part is the main study designed in 4 chapters:
Chapter 1: Overview of the study includes: Rationale, previous studies, aims of thestudy, research subjects, scope of study, research methodology, organization of thestudy
Chapter 2: Literature review
Chapter 3: Research findings
Chapter 4: Recommendations and suggestions
The third part is CONCLUSION which provides overcoming and summary of thereport, Strengths and weakness of the report and Final comment
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURAL REVIEW
2.1 Theoretical of translation
2.1.1 The essence of translation
Trang 9The essence of translation is to understand the exact meaning of a text in onelanguage and convey it accurately in another The final result will be genuinecontent, not the mere shadow of an original one.
2.1.2 The definition of translation
Translation has existed in every corner of our life It is considered as anindispensable part in the field of not only literature, culture and religion but alsocommercial advertisement, popular entertainment, public administrationimmigration and education… Thus, definitions of translation are numerous, and agreat numbers of books and articles have written about this subject
Translation is an operation performed on language It is an across the board skillwhich helps to improve student’s language proficiently in the process of translation,
a text in another Thus, it is the important means of communication between people
is deferent language Since then, it can attract the attention of many linguisticsresearchers and translation theorists, so what is translation? There are manydefinitions around this Often, though not by any means always, it is rendering themeaning of a text into another language in the way that the author intended the text.Through translation is no longer a strange terminology in daily life, there is hardlyany agreement on the definition of it A great number of books and articles havebeen written about this debatable subject The following are some typicaldefinitions that are basic theoretical background for this study
As started by the definition on the website:
“Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source- language text bymeans of an equivalent target- language text” (as wikipedia)
This definition is so long and only show that translation is the interpreting of themeaning and the subsequent production of two texts One other definition is made
by the translator:
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Trang 10“Translation can be generally defined as the action of interpretation of the meaning
of a text, and production of an equivalent text that communicates the same message
in another language” (By Roger T Bell)
He also adds that:
“Translation is the expression in another language (target language) of what hasbeen expressed in one language (source language), preserving semantic and stylisticequivalence (By Roger T Bell)
Roger’s two definitions are the specific written about translation which indicatetranslation is the transferring both the form and the meaning from one language toother in equivalence We continuously consider one definition of Catford:
“Translation is the replacement of a text in one language (Source language) by anequivalent text in another language (target language)” (Catford: 1988)
This is the general definition about translation because it is only the replacementone language by an equivalent another language
Although these definitions are different in expression, they share common featuresthat they all emphasize the importance finding the closest equivalence in meaning
by the choice of appropriate target language’s lexical and grammatical structures.Some sorts of movement from one language to another also insist on the differentmethods of translation which will be taken into consideration in the next part According to Toury, he said that “Translation is a kind of activity, whichinveterately involves at least two languages and two cultural traditions”(1978:p200)
Besides that, as E.A.Nida said “Translation consists of producing in the targetlanguage the closest natural equivalent of the source language message, firstly withrespect to meaning and secondly with respect to style” (1959) On other view, he
Trang 11said that “translation is the interpretation of the meaning of a text in one language(the source text) and the production, in another language of an equivalent text (thetarget text) that communicates the same message”
Another opinion, Savory said that “translation is made possible by an equivalent ofthought that lies behind its different verbal expressions (1968)
As a simply understanding that “Translation is the action of explanation of themeaning of a text, and a subsequent production of an equivalent text called atranslation, that communicates the same message in another language Thetranslated text is called the source text, and the language it is to be translated into iscalled the target language; the final product is sometimes called the target text”The purpose of translation is to convey the original tone and intent of a message,taking into account cultural and regional differences between source and targetlanguages
While linguistic and cultural skills are critical, the most important quality a goodtranslator must have is the ability to write well in the target language Skilledtranslators must have the ability to understand the source language and the culture
of the country where the text originated, then using a good library of dictionariesand reference materials, to render that material clearly and accurately into the targetlanguage
Even bilingual individuals can rarely express themselves in a given subject equallywell in both languages, and many excellent translators are not fully bilingual tobegin with Knowing this limitation, a good translator will only translate documentsinto his or her native language When choosing a translator it is important to insistthat the translator only translate into their native language and into an area of theirsubject matter expertise
2.2 Theoretical of pronouns
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Trang 122.2.1 The definition of pronouns
The Oxford dictionary Online defines: “Pronouns are used in place of a nounthat has already been mentioned or that is already known, often to avoidrepeating the noun Pronouns are nominal substitute forms used to refer to aparticular antecedent (things or person or people have been mentioned before).”Moreover, the Cambridge Grammar Dictionary of English (2007) definespronoun’s usage as to “substitute for or stand for the reference to entities whichfull noun phrase make” In grammar, a pronoun is defined as a word or phrasethat may be substituted for a noun or noun phrase, which more replaced, isknown as the pronoun’s antecedent How is this possible? In a nutshell, it isbecause pronouns can do everything that nouns can do A pronoun can act as asubject, direct object, indirect object, object of the preposition, and more
Without pronouns, we’d have to keep on repeating nouns, and that would makeour speech and writing repetitive, not to mention cumbersome Most pronounsare very short words such as personal pronouns: He, she, they, it, we,… Asmentioned, pronouns are usually used to replace nouns, however they can alsostand in for certain adverbs, adjectives, and other pronouns Anytime you want
to talk about a person, animal, place or thing, you can use pronouns to makeyour speech or writing flow better
2.2.2 The classification of pronouns
A pronoun is a word which is used instead of a noun A pronoun is used instead
of a noun to avoid repetition of a noun in an essay Eg: He,she, they, it, her, his,him its…
Pronouns are classified into following types:
Personal pronouns (I/we/you/they/ )
Trang 13Possessive pronouns (mine/yours/his/hers )
Reflexive pronouns (myself/ourselves/ )
Demonstrative pronouns (this/that/these/those/ )
Interrogative pronouns (who/what/which )
Indefinite pronouns (someone/somebody/anybody/everyone/all/ )
Relative pronouns (who/whom/which/ )
Reciprocal pronouns (each other/one another )
Pronoun is a universal part of all language, a majority of languages havepronoun to refer to things/people mentioned already However, for eachparticular language, pronouns possess more than just one function of reference
2.2.2 Personal pronouns in English and Vietnamese
2.2.2.1 The definition of personal pronouns
As Wikipedia suggests, personal pronouns are “pronouns that are associatedprimarily with a particular grammatical person- first person (as I), second person(as you), or third person (as he, she, it, they) Personal pronouns may also takedifferent forms depending on number (usually singular or plural), grammatical
or natural gender, case, and formality The term “personal” is used here purely
to signify the grammatical sense; personal pronouns are not limited to peopleand can also refer to animals and objects” (Personal pronoun- Wilipedia, thefree encyclopedia)
Personal pronoun has three persons: speaker, hearer, and people or thing ismentioned A personal pronoun can be in one of three “persons” A first- personpronoun refers to the speaker, a second-person pronoun refers to the person
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Trang 14being spoken to (hearer), and a third- person pronoun refers to the person beingspoken of (people or thing is mentioned) For each of these three grammaticalpersons, there is a plural as well If we make a normal translation from English
to Vietnamese, we just have six words: “tôi, bạn, nó, họ, chúng tôi, các bạn”
Example: Bố mẹ cháu bảo cháu đưa bà cháu sang thăm hai cụ- They asked me
to take her to meet you
When you retranslate this English sentence, it become: Họ bảo tôi đưa nó cô ấyqua gặp các bạn”- Word for word translation
2.2.3 Personal pronouns in English
In English grammar, the personal pronoun system is deemed as a closed system
As the name implies, personal pronouns represent specific people, animals orinanimate object “They are not only used to substitute nouns, but also refer to aspecific individual or group” (Quirk et, al 1985,341-342) English personalpronouns are associated with three grammatical persons, and can take onvarious forms depending on person, number, case and gender The followingtable shows the personal pronouns in English
First person Second person Third personSingular Plural Singular Plural Singular PluralNominative/
OurOurs
YourYours
YourYours
Her/him/itsHers/ his/
its
TheirTheirs
Table 1.1 Personal pronouns in English
Trang 15As the table above shows, English personal pronouns present distinctionsbetween persons The first person pronouns refer to the speaker or the writer.The second personal pronouns refer to the person spoken to or the addressee.Furthermore, the third person pronouns are used situationally, and they refer topersons or things other than the speaker(s) or the addressee For example, in (1),
a husband speaking to his wife and nodding his head towards the children’sbedroom, might say:
(1) Are they asleep? (Where they refers to the children)
Moreover, as noted above, each personal pronoun has different forms for
grammatical number: singular and plural For instance, the first person singular I
is only used for the speaker whereas the first person plural we is used for the
speaker plus one or more other persons As the example in (2) below illustrates,
the first personal pronouns I and the third personal pronouns she are singular forms, and only refer to one person, whereas we and they are plural forms that
refer to two or more people
(2) I like coffee.
She is clever.
We went home.
They played doubles.
Personal pronouns have different forms based on their grammatical case Thefive personal pronouns have a further distinction between subjective, objective
and genitive case forms, such as I/ me/my, he/him/his, she/her/her, we/us/our and they/them/their As the table above shows, the only exceptions are the second person you and the third person it that do not have distinct subjective and
objective case forms Furthermore, the choice between subjective, objective andgenitive cases is made on the basis of grammatical function of pronouns in theclauses As their name implies, subjective personal pronouns act as the subject
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Trang 16and the object of a preposition; and genitive personal pronouns mark a noun asbeing the possessor of another noun The following example show the casefunctions of personal pronouns:
(3) a He was late (subjective case)
b It was he (subjective case)
c Sue likes me (objective case)
d I saw him (objective case)
e I gave it to him (objective case)
f This is my book It´s not hers (genitive case)
As the example in (3a) shows, the second person he is in the subjective case because it is in the subject position of the sentence In (3d), the pronoun him is
in the objective case because it stands in the object position, and the pronounhim in (3e) is in objective case which functions as a prepositional complement
Moreover, in examples (3b) and (3c), the subjective case form he and the objective case form me are both used as the subject complement As Quirk et al.
found, the “prescriptive grammar tradition stipulates the subjective case form,the objective case form is normally felt to be the natural one, particularly in
informal style” (p.336) Moreover in (3f), the first person pronoun my and the third person pronouns hers both stand in the genitive case.
Gender differences occur in English personal pronouns system The overtgrammatical contrast can mainly be identified between personal and non-personal gender The personal gender includes two sets of distinctions, which
occur in the third person singular pronouns For instance, he is used for male referents and she refers to female ones The plural form of the third personal pronouns, such as they and them, are both neutralized in grammatical gender Neutral gender is restricted to third person singular pronouns it, and it is mainly
indicated to animals of unspecified sex or to inanimate objects Besides, the first
Trang 17and second personal pronouns are inevitably of personal rather than
non-personal gender (Quirk et al 1985, p.341)
2.2.4 Personal pronouns in Vietnamese
The system of Vietnamese personal pronouns is absolutely more complicated
than the one of English Not only age, gender, person but also the social context,
attitude of the speaker to the listener as well as the relationship between the
speaker and listener are indicated through the way Vietnamese choose personal
pronouns in every day communication There are two branches in the system of
Vietnamese personal pronouns: true personal pronouns and kinship terms
(Wikipedia, “Vietnamese pronouns”)
Those are the ones used to indicate the person category, which can’t be found in
other word classes The following table illustrates the Vietnamese specialized
personal pronouns
Vietnamese Personal Pronouns
Person Singular Plural
Formal Informal In
English
Formal Informal In
EnglishFirst Tôi tao, mình I, me chúng tôi bọn tao,
bọnmình
Chúngmày, cácbạn
you
Third Masculine Ông ta, ngài
ấy, anh ấy
Thằng đó He, him Các ông ấy,
các ngài ấy,các anh ấy
Mấythằng đó,bọn nó
They,them
Feminine Bà âý, cô ấy Con nhỏ She, her Các bà ấy, các Mấy con They,
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Trang 18đó, cô ta cô ấy đó, bọn
Different with English, which just simply use: “I and you”; in Vietnamese, there
are so many ways: tôi, anh, chị, nó, chúng tôi, các cậu, chúng mày, chúng tao,
chị ấy, anh ấy, họ, con, cháu, tớ, anh, chị, em, bố, mẹ, bác, ông, mình, ta, đàng
ấy,… The difficulty and complexity are: Vietnamese personal pronoun also has
emotional nuance They can expressing: love, angry, respect, hate, despise,
formal, informal, familiar…
Moreover, Vietnamese vocative has a clear hierarchy: a child talk to an old man,
he has to use “thưa, bẩm”, but there is no vice versa here When talking to
children, parents can call them “thằng Tuấn, con Hiền”, but children can’t call
their parents by name
Personal pronoun is also used depending on the relatives or the strange of the
relationship
In a close friendship, they use “mày, tao” If they call each other by “quý anh”
or “ông”, it is a ridicule And with a stranger, using “mày, tao” is so impolite,
sometime it make the other angry
“Cụ già” and “lão già” have same meaning They talk about an old man, but
when we say “cụ già đó” (respect), it is very difficult with “lão già đó” In some
cases, “lão” is not quite old; it is a familiar way to call somebody, such as “cái
lão nhà tôi”= my husband
This is a table with the most common personal pronouns in the Vietnamese
language You have here that the “I” and “you” are interchangeable That means
Trang 19if you talk to your father, you use “con” for “I” and “bố” for “you” Your father,however, use “bố” for “I” and “con” for “you”.
Kinship terms are a very important part of the Vietnamese system to address orrefer to oneself and others They are even used much more than true personalpronouns Even though the listener is not a family member or relative, kinshipterms can also used as pronouns to address and refer to friends and unfamiliarinterlocutors (Luong, 1990) The Vietnamese kinship term system is quietcomplicated, it is not only very challenging for foreigners but also sometimeshard for Vietnamese people to master all kinship terms The below tablesummarizes the meanings and usages of the Vietnamese kinship terms:
(Wikipedia, “Vietnamese Pronouns”)
Term Reciprocal Literal meaning Note
Cha con Father many other terms are used,
depending on the dialect: ba, bố,tía, thầy
mẹ con Mother mẹ is the northern form, má is
used in the south many otherterms are used, depending on thedialect: u, bầm, mạ
Anh em older brother can be used to address any male
regardless of status e.g bymilitary personnel to those oflower ranks
chị em older sister
Em anh or chị younger sibling or
cousin of the samegeneration
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