Tiếng Việt rất phong phú. Chỉ riêng thành ngữ bốn chữ thôi mà hơn cả ba nghìn câu. Ông Nguyễn Đăng Liêm đã chọn ra 825 câu phổ thông và đã bỏ công dịch sang tiếng Anh. Bạn nào—nhất là những bạn xa xứ từ nhỏ—muốn học hoặc tìm hiểu thêm về văn học tiếng Việt, hãy đọc dự án “Tứ tuyệt” dựa trên bài nghiên cứu của ông Nguyễn Đăng Liêm.

Dưới đây là 30 câu tôi mà tôi thích.

1. Bán trôn nuôi miệng: To sell the backside to feed the mouth; to prostitute oneself
2. Bà tâm khổ khẩu: Maternal heart, (but) harsh mouth
3. Cởi lòng phơi ruột: To unveil one’s heart, to expose one’s bowels; to reveal one’s innermost concepts
4. Chận ngõ đón truông: To bar the way, to close the path; to obstruct someone’s opportunity
5. Chia uyên rẻ túy: To divide ducks and essences; to separate a couple
6. Chọc trời khuấy nước: To tickle the sky, to stir up water; to be very powerful
7. Dở ngô dở khoai: To be half corn, half potato; cannot determine what it is
8. Ganh hiên ghét ngõ: To hate veranda and gate; to hate somebody, to envy somebody
9. Quấy hôi bôi lọ: To stir up a stench, to blacken with soot; to humiliate
10. Canh tàn khắc lậu: Time flies
11. Gan bầm ruột héo: Dried liver, wilted intestines; very sad
12. Gan đục lòng trong: Troubled liver, clear heart; intricacies of human sentiment
13. Gừng cay muối mặn: Peppery hot ginger, salty salt; hard realities of life
14. Gió lặng sóng êm: The wind stops, the waves are calm; peace
15. Hương phai phấn lạt: Vanished perfume, faded powder; age, lack of freshness
16. Mưa dại gió mai: Wild rain, northwest wind; unexpected circumstances
17. Văn hay chữ tốt: Good literary style, beautiful writing; well educated
18. Lòng chim dạ cá: Entrails of birds, stomach of fish; ungrateful, disloyal
19. Lòng gấm dạ thêu: Brocaded entrails, embroidered stomach; kindhearted
20. Lòng lang dạ thú: Entrails and stomach of animals; cruel
21. Mặt sắt râu ngô: Steel face, corn whiskers; insensible, indifferent
22. Mặt sứa gan hùm: Liver of jellyfish, liver of a tiger; cruel
23. Mẹ gà con vịt: Hen for mother, duckling for offspring; stepmother raising children of the first marriage
24. Mèo đàng chó điếm: Vagrant cat, frivolous dog; good-for-nothing, scamp
25. Miệng hùm nọc rắn: Mouth of tigers, venom of snakes; terrible words
26. Nắng lửa mưa dầu: Burning sunshine, rain of boiling oil; difficult times
27. Tiền rừng bạc biển: Money like a forest, silver like an ocean; very rich
28. Quỉ sợ thần kinh: The demon is afraid, the devil trembles in terror; terrible
29. Quít làm cam chịu: The tangerine does, the orange bears the consequences
30. Có ơn phụ ái: To ignore a favour received, to neglect a favour; ungrateful

At 48, I would never expect to learn skateboarding if it was not for a longboard. In October last year, a parent at the Vovinam learning center gave away his kids’ old skateboards and scooters. Since no one wanted the Kryptonics cruiser skateboard, I picked up. My intention was to work on my snowboard carvings during off season.

I started off skating on flat, smooth surfaces such as tennis and basketball courts. Even though I had rollerbladed, ice-skated, skied, and snowboarded, skateboarding felt so much different. It was hard to keep my balance and to stay on the board. I kept bailing out, but I didn’t give up.

I didn’t learn how to skateboard properly. I just tried to transfer my snowboarding skills over. It was hard at first, but I knew I would get it through determination, persistence, and repetition. I am the type of person who likes to build up his skills one day at a time.

I didn’t get too far with longboarding last year before I had to switch back to skiing and snowboarding in the winter. This summer, I picked the board back up. I continued on the tennis courts then moved on to an elementary school’s parking lot near my house. Then I went on to several huge parking lots at George Mason University. I have been skating at one parking lot with a gentle incline. At the beginning, there were a few parked cars. In recent days, the whole parking lot had been emptied as though it was reserved for me to skate.

Although my goal was to practice my snowboard skills, I enjoy cruising on the longboard. I am not interested in skateboarding at the skatepark like I am doing on rollerblades. Dropping in and riding the ramps seem to be too terrifying. I am not interested in skateboarding on the streets either. It’s too dangerous. I just stick to parking lots for now until I can find someplace with a bit of a hill, but not too much.

Despite the summer heat, I have been longboarding and rollerblading about 30-45 minutes a day—sometimes twice a day.

When I came across Nguyễn Đăng Liêm’s “Four-Syllable Idiomatic Expressions In Vietnamese,” I knew I wanted to create a Vietnamese typographic sample out of it. The study was published 56 years ago—8 years before I was even born. The copy was 66 pages in a non-selectable-text PDF. Mr. Nguyễn selected 825 four-syllable idiomatic expressions and each word with Vietnamese diacritics was marked with a black pen by hand.

Turning a PDF into HTML without any automation would be too time consuming; therefore, I turned to AI for help. I have been resistant to using AI, but I wanted to experiment with large language models for this project.

Fortunately George Mason University has an enterprise AI platform with 6 different agents: 2 from OpenAI, 2 from Anthropic, and 2 from Meta. My first attempt was using GPT-5.4 to convert the PDF file into semantic HTML. I let it run in the background. Maybe an hour or so later, GPT-5.4 gave up. It exceeded its limits. I switched to Claude Sonnet 4.6, and it hit the same limit.

I went back to GPT-5.4 and asked it to convert PDF to text instead. GPT-5.4 was able to give me the text file, but all the Vietnamese words were mixing with unicodes. It was just a mess. I asked Claude Sonnet 4.6 to do the same and it gave me clean text without Vietnamese diacritics. We were getting somewhere. I then asked Claude Sonnet 4.6 to turn text into semantic HTML and convert dumb quotes into smart quotes. Claude Sonnet 4.6 gave me back a page in HTML and CSS with smart quotes.

The HTML markups looked pretty clean too. Though I had to do some find and replace to create the HTML markups I wanted. I removed all of its CSS and wrote my own to design the page that I wanted. After choosing the typefaces, selecting the colors, and designing the layout, I went back to the HTML file to retype Vietnamese diacritics for each word. Even though I had learned so much about spelling and grammar doing that, I got tired after about 50 expressions. I still had about 775 lines to retype.

I uploaded the HTML file I was working on and asked Claude Sonnet 4.6 to put the diacritics on Vietnamese words. To my surprise, it did a decent job. I went back to check every line and 95% of the diacritics were correct. I was impressed.

Even though I don’t want to use AI in my web design process, I have to admit that AI can be helpful with automated tasks. I still do the design myself. Check out “Tứ Tuyệt.”

Vova Egoshin launched a new website for his type foundry. I love the white and blue look and feel. His display typefaces are very playful too. I licensed Zord and Spukies. Even though both of these typefaces are still work in progress, I hope that Vova will support Vietnamese in the future.

If you are interested in his typefaces, he’s running the first month’s 50% off with the code VOVARULES.

This summer, our family hasn’t gone on any vacation. We stayed around for the kids’ summer activities. Ðán decided to take a compressed online summer course on geometry. Xuân continued with the summer swimming season.

Ðán took his final exam and wrapped up the course last Thursday. He struggled throughout the course, but managed to pass—thanks to his mother. Despite her busy schedule, she helped him with homework every single night. For an Asian guy, I am terrible at math. I can’t recall if I even took geometry in middle school. On the other hand, my wife is a math wiz; therefore, she could help him.

As for Xuân, he had practice every morning. I drove him to practice on Mondays and Fridays, the days I worked from home. My wife drove him on Tuesdays through Thursdays. She also has technical knowledge; therefore, she worked closely with him. I just showed up at the meets and filmed him.

This season, he worked hard and improved his time. He ranks seventh in butterfly for his age group in Northern Virginia. That’s pretty impressive. He and his team, including his cousin, competed in the all-star medley relay and rank sixth in Northern Virginia. On Saturday, he will compete for the last time of the season in an all-star butterfly. Whatever the result will be, he is already my Xuânshine star. Behind Xuân’s success and Đan’s passing grade, my wife played a major role. They are extremely lucky to have her as their mother. They need to appreciate her.

Even though we hadn’t gone anywhere, I didn’t mind. I watched as many World Cup matches as I could. I practiced carvings on my longboard and rollerblades. I enjoyed watching Xuân compete every Saturday and Sunday. I spent time with my wife and kids. Most importantly, we saved money by not taking any summer vacation. I reserved my vacation days for the winter. I can’t wait to start skiing and snowboarding again.

In Vietnamese literature, tứ tuyệt (perfect four-syllable form) is often expressed in poems, folk songs, dictions, and proverbs. Tứ tuyệt expressions are frequently used in both ordinary conversations and literary writings.There are over three thousand four-syllable idiomatic expressions in Vietnamese.

In 1970, Mr. Nguyễn Đăng Liêm wrote a special study for the Pacific Linguistics at the Australian National University titled, “Four-Syllable Idiomatic Expressions in Vietnamese.” In his study, Mr. Nguyễn selected 825 commonly used four-syllable idiomatic expressions. He broke them up into 17 groups according to their internal structure and provided clear, concise translation into English. Because this study was published almost 60 years ago, the typefaces used in the publication did not support Vietnamese language; therefore; diacritical marks were added afterward by hand.

When I came across this study, I wanted to create a Vietnamese typographic sample to preserve our literary treasure and I wanted to put back in all the Vietnamese diacritics. The process was time consuming, but it gave me an opportunity to learn each expression and to pay attention to the spellings. The main content is typeset in Skolar and Skolar Sans, designed by David Březina. Display text is set in Ethera, designed by Quang Khải.

Check out tứ tuyệt (perfect four-syllable form).

I woke up early to take Xuân to swimming practice. I didn’t want to wait around for 45 minutes; therefore, I went to work on my carves. It was a beautiful morning and I just wanted to ride my longboard.

Since I hadn’t gone anywhere this summer, I spent almost everyday progressing my carves. I can’t wait to transfer my skills over to snowboarding in the winter.

Until then, I am just keep riding my longboard in the summer. Mad kudos to the parent who gave away his kids’ skateboards. I wouldn’t have giving skateboarding a try if I didn’t pick up the Kryptonics Cruiser Board.

As soon as my supervisor left, I made some small but significant changes on the Law School website that I had been itching to execute. The most notable one is changing out the footer navigation.

For the latest redesign, my supervisor contracted out to an agency to develop the front-end part of the site. Somehow the developer created three duplicates of the main navigation: one for mobile, one for desktop, and one in the footer. When I looked the codes, I was horrid. Ideally, it should have been one set of navigation that would serve for all three different places. When we had to update the global navigation, we have to do both in the header and footer instead of just one place.

Of course, I brought up this issue during the development phase and the agency wanted to charge more if we wanted to make the change. For me it was crucial since every page would need to carry three massive sets of navigation, but my supervisor didn’t want to spend anymore money since we already went over budget.

Since we already had a super navigation on the header, repeating the same set in the footer was a huge waste of space. We could use the footer for other items such as jobs, shop, accessibility, privacy statements, and Consumer Information (Required Disclosures). I quietly pulled the plug over the weekend and I haven’t heard any complaints. It feels great just to make that one small change.

My supervisor spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to completely revamped the site, switched the CMS, and left the mess for us to clean up.

“Nhớ em nhiều nhưng chẳng nói. Nói ra nhiều cũng vậy thôi”. Tuy gặp em mỗi ngày vậy mà những giây phút không gặp em lại nhớ. 18 năm rồi mà nói ra những lời này nghe như giả dối nên tôi cũng chẳng nói ra. Thôi thì đọc những tình khúc “Không Tên” của nhạc sĩ Vũ Thành An đi vậy. Phong chữ NaN Druid và Nan Druid Sans, thiết kế bởi Anna Khorash và Reymund Schröder, thật đẹp và rõ nét.

Shuichi was an insurance salesman who was facing cancellations from clients. As a result, he struggled to make ends meet to raise his family. At his downest moment, he hoped into a mysterious taxi. The taxi driver gave him advice on how to change his life. The whole point of the story is to stay positive no matter the circumstances. I love a simple novel like this. Mad kudos to Novelist Yasushi Kitagawa and Translator Takami Nieda. It’s an enlightening read.

Here’s an advice from the mysterious taxi driver:

“The first thing is to stop comparing yourself to others. Stop comparing your life to the lives of others and focus on your own. All the others are going about their lives, fulfilling their roles. It doesn’t matter that they have a lot, or that things are going well for them. Instead, take a good look at your own life. Then, you’ll realize how blessed you are. Start by genuinely acknowledging the blessings in your life. It all starts there. If you can see that with your whole heart, you’ll start to believe that there isn’t anyone more blessed than yourself.”