translation

I don't remember what we were doing when this came up, but last summer one of the people working with me on my research project said something in Vietnamese, paused, and asked what the English equivalent would be (he spoke English well). We thought about it and couldn't think of anything. The phrase (xuong qua) is an expression of happiness or contentment, and is versatile. It might describe a much relished vacation or a satisfying daily routine. You might use it for a moment, like while eating ice cream on a hot day, or for a state of being, like being married with a good job and cute kids.

There's also a phrase that can be considered its opposite: ko qua. Qua is in both, because it's a modifier to mean "a lot" or "too much." The contrasting words, xuong and ko, contrast in sound too, the "x" of xuong being a soft s-sound and the "k" of ko being a hard k-sound. Ko qua, which can be loosely thought of as an expression of suffering or pain, is also used liberally. My mom has used it to describe everything from picking apart shrimp shells for a meal to my weeks of studying to losing her brother during their escape from home. A day or so before my great-aunt passed, my mom went to visit her in the morning. At this point she wasn't as cognizant of the people around her but could still communicate pretty well. She didn't say too much, but she did say, ko qua.

Trying to capture one is as hard as the other. In thinking about writing about this, and in writing this, I find that maybe there's something that can allude to both of these elusive sentiments: what life this is.