Instant Vietnamese for Jarheads

[Sustinemus]

A friend of mine was a Marine radio repairman on Okinawa and one day was instructed to check out his weapon and report to somewhere or other. As it turned out, he was assigned to one of the big rust buckets they used to evacuate and transport refugees from Saigon and elsewhere.

On the voyage to the pickup point, they were given a crash course in Vietnamese, with a printed list of phonetic mnemonic English words easy enough for the Jarheads to remember. He gave me a copy of this and I transposed it a bit into a spreadsheet, copied below. I thought the mnemonics interesting...

ENGLISH	VIET	PHONETIC for JARHEADS
WHO SPEAKS ENGLISH?	AI NOI TlENG ANH?	I NOY TING ANN
NO WEAPONS ALLOWED	CAM KHI GIOI	COMB KEY YOY
FOLLOW ME	THEO TOI	TEYO TOY
DON'T TALK	KHONG NOl	COMB NOY
REMAIN CALM	BINH TINH	BING TING
SIT DOWN	NGOl XUONG	NGOY SUE-UNG
STAND UP	DUNG LEN	DOOM LYNN
COME HERE	LAI DAY	LIE DAY
WHAT DO YOU WANT?	MUON GI	MOON YEE
WATER	NUOC	NOOK
FOOD	DO AN	DOE ON
TOILET	CAU TIEU	COW TIU
DOCTOR	BAC -SI	BAK SHE
YES	YA PHAI	YA PHIE
NO	KHONG	COMB
MAN	ONG	OM
WOMAN	BA	BA
CHILD	EM	M
PLEASE	XIN	SIN
DON'T MOVE AROUND	KHONG DI DAU	COMB DEE DOE

[Sustinemus]

They tossed a lot of nice pistols into the sea...

[GunnyG]

The phonetic is pretty close.

[nf1e]

Chu hoi, didi mao, dinki dao, GI #1, vc #10, love you all night.

[Jim11B20]

It's bad I know what you said Art, even though I was never in country. Definitely beaucoup dinki dao.

[VanHahner]

Chu hoi, didi mao, dinki dao, GI #1, vc #10, love you all night.

[littlejohn]