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Personal Narrative: I Am Vietnamese

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I’m Vietnamese, but I cannot speak the language. Both of my grandparents are immigrants who came to Vietnam after the war. My dad was born in Vietnam and my mother was born in Louisiana. All of them speaks fluent Vietnamese, but only my mother speaks English. Growing up, it became harder and harder for me to communicate with my family in a sense that they did not know what I was saying and vice versa. Granted, I went to a Vietnamese school when I was younger but later dropped out once my family became busy with life.
For those who do not know, Vietnamese is one of the hardest languages to master. Due to the fact that it is purely phonetic and that every word in the language is one syllable. One word can mean multiple things. For example, muối, …show more content…

The streets of Ho Chi Minh City are beautiful around the summer time, but my favorite city was Huế, the city of cheap eats. My siblings and I have never been to Vietnam before, so it was an experience for all of us. As we were sitting down in a restaurant, looking at the menu, an old lady came up to us to take our order. My mother used to order for my brothers, so she ordered for them. When the lady looked at me, waiting for me to give her my order, all I could do was point at the picture on the menu and give her a smile. The look on her face was clear displeased. “She was born in America. She doesn’t know Vietnamese,” my father quickly told her, apologizing for my lack of knowledge. I felt embarrassed, lowering my head whenever she came near us. It was not my fault that I did not know my native language, but it was not my fault entirely for being able to learn it all these …show more content…

My Vietnamese is very limited, I do not know how to write or speak it. Whenever I talk to someone in my native tongue, they either receive my knowledge well or poorly. When it comes to speaking with my elders, they ridicule me for not knowing the language from where my ancestors were. It was not my fault in all honesty. I had the materials to learn the language right in front of me, but I never really took the time to go do it. Life just got in the way. Both of my parents were struggling to make ends meat. My father even had to go out of state once, just to find a job while my mother was still in

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