The Importance Of The Vietnamese Language

There are both positive and negative aspects of learning a language, but people are likely to equalize two sides and try not to lose the relationships with their family and the society. Amy Tan, in “Mother Tongue” and Richard Rodriguez in “Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood” explain how they viewed their private and public languages through their experiences and how they managed these two languages and established themselves in the society. Tan initially felt ashamed of her private language and favored the public language; however, in the end she showed that she could manage the balance between the languages and finally utilized both in public. On the other hand, Rodriguez preferred his private language which made him feel comfortable;

Unfortunately, Vietnamese Americans make up only a small percent of the total American Population today. There are many stereotypes associated with the Vietnamese, but the truth is, we really know very little about their culture. After the Viet Nam War, many Vietnamese citizens immigrated to the United States to escape political Prosecution and poverty. Faced with a variety of obstacles and

Language is a very import part in our life, we carry it with us through all the steps, processes, moments experiences of our life, language built us and make us grow and the most important thing is that it grows with us, changes, modifies itself, and becomes more appropriate and specific. As we pointed out language help us to create and understand the world around us, gives meaning to everything and gives birth to emotions and feelings; a world without language would be meaningless and very lonely. Language it’s what help us grow up, the more we learn through it, the more we desire to experience and study in deep, leading us to new prospective, opening our mind to more specific and deep concepts, ideas, projects, goals. We really can’t

Language is one out of many significant factors that both archaic and contemporary civilizations are built on. In Richard Rodriguez’s essay “Aria” he focuses on the multiple aspects regarding his experience as a bilingual child. He states in one paragraph that “[i]t is not possible for a child — any child — ever to use his family’s language in school. Not to understand this is to misunderstand the public uses of schooling and to trivialize the nature of intimate life — a family’s ‘language.’” This excerpt is only one example of the way Rodriguez creates his claim through various rhetorical devices.

In the examining and writing my analysis of the article Mother Tongue by Amy Tan, I hope to appeal to an audience that wishes to expand their knowledge of the cultural use of various languages and their social impacts. In this case, the language would be English and the culture would be that of Asian-Americans. I would think that this work, and the analysis of, would primarily be of interest to those in academic or research fields of sociology and language. I would hope the reader of my analysis would be interested in gaining insight into how using a “broken” English system heavily influences one’s communication and feeling towards those outside of your culture. The analysis would benefit the reader by

Learning a new language seems to have only positive effects. However, for a Mexican American, accomplishing this goal brought him drawbacks in the interaction with his family. In his essay, ‘’Public and Private language,’’ Richard Rodriguez describes the difficulty in learning a new language and the sacrifice he makes to accomplish his goal. Richard Rodriguez shares the difficulty for older people, as they learn a new language; however, for younger generations is easier to learn a new language. Also, the new language creates a lack of communication for Richard Rodriguez.

We are all members of a social group and members of `society´ as a whole. People interact in many ways and communication is just about the most common and among the most important. Whatever is meaningful to a group, from their everyday life to their traditions constitutes their very own culture and is generally respected by all group members. Language is only one of such items. For ethnic minority groups that may have a language of their own, their language is a cornerstone in their culture.

Communication is easy and mothers can talk with their children and they can connect with them. Some people who have this benefit are unaware that some families do not have this advantage in their homes. Lee Thomas and Linh Cao understand that some families have language change through each generation. Cao herself lived in house where her relatives used several different languages and learned first hand that there are many losses when a family doesn’t share a common language.

Many parents believe that it is better not to speak English. When this happens the students will not receive the practice that they really need. The student must know their parents’ language it is imperative to the student’s cultural identity and has to maintain a healthy relationship with their family. Parents’ have concerns about using their native language with their children include: learning another language is too difficult it will delay their language development; the child will not be able to master either language; they will not be as proficient as the students who know one language; confusing the two languages will happen; and they will communicate in English with an accent. The school should address these concerns before the school year begins.

As a child, around the age of five, I became friends with the children of a family that had just moved to our neighborhood from Hawaii. The parents would occasionally make statements in a language that the children could not speak. I realize now that they were making these statements in Hawaiian, although they did not speak the language fluently, and their children did not speak the language at all. Unfortunately, this loss of language from one generation to the next has been quite common in Hawaii since the early nineteen-hundreds when the influence of the United States resulted in institutionalized language death.

Even though there is a slight gap between acculturation, the younger groups still maintain their traditional Hmong lifestyle that their ancestors withhold by attending Hmong New Years, weddings, speaking the native language and eating Hmong food. Most parents aren’t accustomed to their children’s lifestyle and create fear that their children will completely disregard their Hmong heritage. Most adolescent to younger adults identify themselves American compared to their parents because they were born in America and been exposed to institutionalization. While their parents are still holding on to Hmong cultural beliefs and values, they feel as though it doesn’t apply to them.

It then suggests that parents should maintain their home language with their children as learning their first language at home can benefit the child by making it easier for them to learn and better understand basic grammatical and linguistic rules of a second language. This also prevents the possibility for the child to lose the ability to speak their home language, as it should be supported and consolidated at home by the family.

Tan, “Mother Tongue,” also stated in her essay about broken English that she used with her mother and her husband. She also mentioned that her mother was also not fluent in English, but she felt love and intimacy with her mother when they spoke broken English. Tan said that language which we speak helps to shape our thinking, also helps us to express our feelings in a better way. Tan wants to convey the message to reader that mother tongue is not same as other languages, but they do help to value culture generation to generation. The language tells history about our family and where we are

Language attitudes, which include people’s perception about the language variety in their own community and language varieties in other communities, has been one of the crucial topics in sociolinguistics since 1960s.

Why should people nowadays see languages as a big prize? A person speaks more languages have more opportunities are skewed to him because he benefits the profit comparing to a person who speaks only one standard language. It is time for globalization and its effects on children for speaking other languages as a must. In two articles “Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood” by Richard Rodriguez and “Whose Voice Is It Anyway?” by Victor Villanueva, the two authors both expressed their opinions on native language and how the assimilation impacts a child. However, Rodriguez believed that the assimilation was beneficial for him as he had grown up in the English-speaking world and he disliked bilingual education which created many controversy.