In Vietnam, it’s common to be asked your age.
Though Westerners may be shocked by this at first, it is an important question to choose the correct way to address someone.
For example – chị for a woman a little older than you or em for a woman a bit younger. But before you go about answering that question, there are two important differences to counting age in Vietnam.
In Vietnam, there’s only one birthday, and everybody celebrates it on the same day. Tet, AKA the Vietnamese New Year, is intended to herald the coming of spring, but it’s also the day when every man, woman, and child alike puts on party hats and blows out the candles on a collective cake. “The Actual Age” is a slight variation on the Western Age.
When people use this method, they take “Tuổi tròn,” add one, and call that “Tuổi mụ” or “the Actual Age”. The reason for adding one is they consider the nine month time of pregnancy as one year of your life. This method is typically used by “old” generations.
Say your birthday is in September. So in the Western calendar you’d be turning 32 next month. However since Vietnamese count you as 1 when you’re born and you get older at Tết, you’d have been 33 years old since the last Tết anyway.
Not a bad way to consolidate astrological signs, all things considered. (While more and more Vietnamese are adopting the Western idea of age in modern times, most adhere to the uniform aging policy).
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