One of the most common words to hear yelled at a westerner on the street is "Yo!" (as in yo-yo). Most often it's used by the xe-om drivers wanting to get your attention and persuade you into a ride to your destination. For a while, I couldn't figure out why they kept yelling out, "Yo!" Where did they learn this? Who says, "Yo!" unless it's an adolescent gone wrong?
And then about a week ago, I finally figured it out. Because the vowel pronunciation of Vietnamese is so different from English, they think "yo" is the correct pronunciation of 'you'. Wait until they try to learn 'they'.
