WEBVTT

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"Poem for a Vietnamese Student."

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Where I teach in
San Diego, we have

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a lot of Vietnamese students,
and sometimes, we're

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taunting even though you
don't know what's happening.

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A punji stake is a piece
of bamboo that's sharpened,

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dipped in feces, put in grass
so it's hidden at about a

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45 degree angle so somebody can
step into it and get infected.

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And so the Vietnamese
or the Viet Cong

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rather would put out an American
soldier without any money.

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So that's one word,
and the other word

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is sin loi, which means I'm
sorry in Vietnamese or sorry.

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So I have an exercise
that I do with students

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so they can learn
the dictionary.

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And this student came up, and
I choose the word, put it up,

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et cetera.

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And she chose what I would
think is an interesting word

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as you'll see in the poem.

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"Some words have tongues
sharp as punji stakes.

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They lie awake and ambush
as long as necessary.

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Sometimes in the
shadows of other words--

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gobbledygook."

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I need to explain
that gook was a term

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that American military personnel
used for the Vietnamese.

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"They know the
future because they

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have no regret for the past.

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They are ill-mannered,
pretend to be deaf as clocks,

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in love with the
sound of their names.

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They lie awake and ambush
as long as necessary

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sometimes in the
shadow of other words--

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gobbledygook.

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They find their way into
our life, into our blood,

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and haunt us.

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We pay with our lives.

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All our lives.

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Welcome to America, sin loi.

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Get your dictionary,
go to the board,

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look up a new word,
write down guide words,

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entry word, phonetic
spelling, learn

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how to pronounce the word.

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Which syllable is stressed?

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Repeat after me, gobbledygook,
gobbledygook, gobbledygook."

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