Underwear

One thing I always get a kick out of is when a student (or me) says the word "underwear." Inevitably this compound word always gets a round of laughs by ever single Vietnamese adult in the room. This word, more than any other, never fails to bring out Vietnamese immaturity. I once even had a student ask me, when playing a vocabulary game about clothing, whether she could say the word "underwear." She whispered the word like it was a curse word. Now keep this in mind when reading the next paragraph....

Many Vietnamese boys often wear boxer shorts out in public. They wear them to the gym, walking around the neighborhood and when they play soccer; even one of my private students often wears just boxers and a t-shirt when I teach him. At first I thought this was, well, odd. However, after being in Asia for some time I realized that this was just something that was lost in translation. Boxer shorts are labeled "boxer SHORTS". Men here think they are actually shorts (presumably that boxer's wear). This is an easy misunderstanding especially since most Vietnamese men only wear tighty whities or banana hammock undies. To them, boxer shorts are athletic shorts. To test my theory, I asked a few people recently about why they were wearing boxer shorts. The answer -- confirming my theory -- was that they were shorts. Well, imagine the look on their face when I told them that they were really wearing underwear in public! Yeah, there were gasps...