How many of us are faced with this? Being born in a host country and coming from Vietnamese descent isn’t always easy. We are children who are stuck in both worlds: one foot in the Westernised cultures of being individualistic and “go-getters” while our parents nag us to maintain our cultures by “Học tiếng Việt!”. My stance is it takes more than this. Much more to reconnect and language is only an avenue. Personally, my level of Vietnamese is atrocious. If there was any Vietnamese language competition I would be denied an application form. If there was “Who wants to be a Millionnaire – Viet Version” I should be on the black list, calling me will be like shooting yourself in the foot.
A couple of websites and links I’d recommend that would help you give the illusion that you know your ABCs Viet One Two Three are below:
Vietnamese Dictionary Translation http://vdict.com/
People I’d recommend include my colleague Joseph Hieu Dinh (Oz-Viet 2009 of the Year). His obsession with the Viet language during his childhood has definitely paid off in his young adult years. He can now “pick up” English speaking, Vietnamese Speaking and Arabic speaking girls.
But I’d like to do a shout out to the commentators from my facebook account on their support on how I could improve my VietSkills.
So yesterday I posted:
Maria Tran Maria đang cố gắng tìm hiểu làm thế nào để đọc tiếng Việt.
And these are some of the responses I got below:
Two thumbs up!
The Vietnamesey in you Peter!
I prefer sooner....
Game on!
I hope you went to Vietnam doing "legal" things....
Công chúa....
By the way, if case you all are wondering if Joseph Hieu Dinh did any of the translations for my blogspot, he definitely did not.