Defusing Phở: Soup Stories and Ethnic Erasures, 1919–2009

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Notes

1. The French empire labeled northern Vietnam “Tonkin,” southern Vietnam “Cochinchina,” and central Vietnam “Annam.” Calling phở a “soupe tonkinoise” is a way to name the soup's colonial provenance nostalgically rather than as a problematic source of disruption and violence in people's lives. Naming phở has posed an enduring problem for the French. In 1927, Tardieu transcribed the name as “Pho-ô,” with a long o, despite Marquet's 1919 evidence that it was “pheu.” French mispronuncation of the soup as “phô” (“faux”) continues today. In June 2000 Le Figaro described the Parisian restaurant PHO 14 as serving the “plat national vietnamien … au cœur de l'authentique … autant dire qu'on a raison d'avoir ‘tout pho'” (Monsat). One is right to be wrong, the soup has left the colony, and we call it what we like (just as we always did). Recent French efforts to correct the mispronunciation suggest improbably that the soup was named for its similarities to a pot-au-feu. (Corlou; Greeley 80).