Encountered such situation yesterday during my diner.
As usual, almost daily frequenting this bun cha joint run by end 40's lady, sitting on a small little stool and table, munching my food while observing views that pleasuring my eyes, flushing my throat with bia hoi... how wonderful can it be right. Well after flicking and adjusting the "tam" couple of time, it's time to move... and this is where the rude awakening started.
Getting used to "em oi", I started uttering "em oi... toi an mot suat bun cha, bao nhieu tien?". To my dismay, the lady start grumbling as though as she woke up from wrong side of the bed that day. Sensing something amiss, lucky with my colleague accompanied, get him to translate what is going on. With him as intermediate, cross words like how old are you is the source that triggered her dis-pleasure.
Now the question is that who to distinguish when to use what?
To my understanding, there are different categories in addressing female:
- Cu / Ba ( grandmother or someone is more than 60s )
- Bac / Co ( age group between 50s to 60 )
- Chi ( between 40s to 50s )
- Em ( majority no group age ) - depending on how old I am to address.
When I'm in Saigon, pretty confident that addressing any ladies by "em oi" will be perfectly correct unless you could see that she is old enough to be "ba". In facts all ladies here preferred to be called "em". Unfortunately in Hai Phong, addressing any lady needed some rocket science experiment before uttering the salutation. How I wish that it could be as simple as Auntie and or Uncle or Sir and or Madam.
Ending the "dispute", xin loi nhe spontaneously spill out from my mouth and continue with toi hieu roi... "chi" oi... vang vang. She know that I am a foreigner and by acting smart aleck... she confidently said "What The Heo" which I laugh all the way back home.
Troi oi... will patronise her joint today to see her reaction.
p/s: btw... I am same age as her as well.