“But the most significant derivation from the meaning of as ‘water’ is the concept of people who have gathered near a body of water to grow rice for one another, and founding a stable community, sharing rain and drought, plenty and famine, peace and war: from ‘water,’ its basic meaning, has come to designate ‘the homeland, the country, the nation.’ It is in this ultimate exception that the monosyllable nuoc reverberates throught the deepest and farthest recesses of the Vietnamese collective unconscious and stirs there the most potent feelings. The nation’s fateful course, marked by ups and downs, is figuratively rendered as a ‘tide of water’ (van nuoc) with its ebb and flow. The highest virtue demanded of a Vietnamese is that he or she ‘love the nuoc‘ (yeu nuoc).” –Huynh Sanh Thong (no relation)
