1) "Neither man had bothered to learn much of the enemy's language. Both knew a few and derogatory phrases,a few crude words of command or interrogation, but not much more."(Vea, 79)
2) This qoute means that even though they are fighting against each other they didnt bother to learn each others language to communicate. They were just told to fight the enemy and thats what they did. the importance of this is that when some Americans and some Vietnamese talked you can see the hate they had for each other even though they didnt know each other, an example is the type of language they learned. They were never able to find the full truth because they had too many obstacles to get it, for example the language.
3) Why didnt the Vietnamese or the americans learn to speak each others language?
Why did they both learn french instead of any other language?
Q1. I think that the enemies didn't bother to learn the other languages because they didn't wanted their soldiers to make peace with their enemy. They wanted their soldiers to fight for their country and not on what they believe. Just like in the book "Gods go begging" Hong and Jesse communicated because they both knew French. And because of that they didn't see each other like enemies and it seem that they wouldn't kill each other.
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