Overseas Vietnamese Women in USA Preserves Mother Tongue

Ngo Kim Viet, who has lived in Maryland, the US, for over 40 years, has been involved in teaching Vietnamese classes to young Vietnamese Americans since 1995. Photo: VNA

There are currently nearly 200 Vietnamese language teaching centers and facilities in the US, mainly in the states with large Vietnamese populations such as California, Texas, and Washington. However, the majority of them still rely on volunteer teachers and operate under small-scale and self-initiated models.

At foreign language learning centers in the US, Vietnamese language classes are only designed for diplomats and Americans who are going to work in Vietnam.

Kim Viet said her involvement in teaching Vietnamese stemmed from her deep affection for her homeland. She is always committed to the idea that the value of the Vietnamese language needs to be preserved and passed on to the younger generations of Vietnamese people.

When seeing Vietnamese born and raised in the US gradually neglecting their mother language, and no Vietnamese language schools, Kim Viet has voluntarily taught the language to Vietnamese families’ children with lessons conducted in churches.

In 2014, her nieces and nephews returned home, yet they had to hire a Vietnamese language interpreter during their trip. Kim Viet, therefore, decided to teach the mother language to them through the Zoom application.

She has also engaged in teaching Vietnamese at language centers in the US during her free time. She self-purchases Vietnamese language teaching books, and others on Vietnamese culture and history, and collects images and videos for her lesson plans.

Kim Viet was invited by the Vietnamese Embassy in the US to participate in an online Vietnamese language class for overseas Vietnamese organized by the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

"My approach to teaching Vietnamese is through lessons on history and traditional culture, and the images of festivals, and the distinctive culture of Vietnam,” she said, adding such a method is expected to contribute to promoting the image of Vietnamese land and people to international friends.

Her American students learn Vietnamese because they love Vietnam and its melodious intonation resembling singing, but they all find Vietnamese to be a challenging language.

It can be said that overseas Vietnamese have found various ways to help their children speak and preserve the mother language. These seemingly simple actions are contributing to the preservation of the Vietnamese language, thereby promoting the unique cultural traits of Vietnam to international friends./.

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