The Vietnamese Language Essay

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.

The following paper will discuss Vietnamese Americans and their journey to America. I will talk about how these incredible and resilient people fought to succeed it a world that seemed to hold the odds against them. The culture, beliefs, and challenges of Vietnamese people are a precise paradigm of their strength and perseverance.

In the middle 1960s, every male in America had to register for Selective Service Draft at age 18. He would then be eligible for the draft and could be inducted into the Army for a period of two years. If you were a college student, you could receive a deferment and would be able to finish college without the fear of being drafted. However, once finished with college, a students name would be put to the very top of the draft list and could be deployed at anytime. The anti-war movement was about young men being drafted and then sent into war that most Americans did not believe threatened the security of the US. The Vietnam War was America’s rebellious war, a war without popular support

- After the invention of paper, the Chinese also began to use it for wrapping

Gonyea, D. (2014). LBJ Legacy: Vietnam War Often Overshadows Civil Rights Feat. Retrieved from: http://www.npr.org/2014/04/09/300836769/civil-rights-act-anniversary-may-polish-lbj-s-image

Vietnam was so significant to the United States partly as it would be the first war they would lose. It also had a tremendous financial impact on the country and the casualties were also more in the public eye than ever before due to the media. They learnt that: "a long war for limited objectives, with its steady stream of body bags, will not be supported by the American people" (Martino, 1996, p37). Some suggest that the US should have avoided any involvement in the war.

Vietnam was a French colony dating back to mid 1800s. Vietnam was meant as a farming colony where they would grow things such as tobacco, tea, and coffee. The French treated their colony poorly by denying civil

Do, Minh Hong T. Tieng Viet: Introduction to Vietnamese Language and Culture. 3rd ed. Sacramento: Cosumnes River College, 2004. Print.

There are some images associated with Korean food, but the most well- known Korean food is absolutely Kim-chi. Kim-chi is a traditional fermented Korean food. According to the Health Magazine, Kim-chi is one of the top 5 healthiest foods in the world. It has full of Vitamins A, B and C. But since it is a fermented food, its biggest benefit is their healthy bacteria which are called lactobacilli.(health.com) So, Kim-chi by itself is just a pack of lots of good stuff and we can see our ancestor’s wisdom of keeping their body healthy from food. From the early stage that Korea has been settled down, Kim-chi has been served on Koreans’

In the 1950's, the United States had begun to send troops to Vietnam and during the following 25-year period, the ensuing war would create some of the strongest tensions in US history. Almost 3 million US men and women were sent thousands of miles to fight for what was a questionable cause. In total, it is estimated that over 2 million people on both sides were killed.

The type of writing Brakke uses is manuscript. He writes all his letters the correct way, is consistent with the size that he writes his letters and words, and his handwriting is very readable. Also, I notice that he places his pointer finger after each word that he writes to space out his words.

In most cultures, there are many ways to write and express music. Here in America, there are chant notations, staff notations, solfege, and many more. China has another form of notation called Gongche. Gongche is written in traditional Chinese characters that represent the note or part of solfege that should be played. However, recently there are forms of writing music called Jianpu, which are numbered notations that represent the note that needs to be played. Jianpu is a simplified version of Gongche, however, instead of using Chinese characters, numbers are used to represent a solfege.

It is not easy to define culture because culture is too broad a concept, can be both abstract and specific. However, what is agreed is culture covers all faces of our life as well as direct the way we behave, interact and communicate. (Liu et al., 2011). One popular definition is that “Culture is the total way of life of a group of people, comprising of the deposit of knowledge, experience, belief, values, traditions, religion, and notion of time, roles, spatial relations, worldviews, material objects and geographic territory”. (Liu et al., 2011, p.57). In this essay, I will analyse components and characteristics of culture, and based on that grounds, I will reflect on my own culture-being a Vietnamese. Dodd (1998) considered that culture is made up by three layers which consist of the core layer, the intermediate layer and the outer layer. I will examine what values and beliefs are considered important in my culture. Those are components of the inner core. Then, I will take some examples of the intermediate layer (expression of cultural activities by manifestation) such as communication patterns, customs and festivals.

Moreover in Qin dynasty, especially under the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, the Small Seal scripts were created. In the former era there were hundreds of territories. This means there were hundreds of ways of handwritings. However, his policy was the centralization of power so he wanted to know about all of his territories. He divided his land into 36 parts, sent his subordinates to each part, and made them record the information about the lands in order to grasp the width, population, or products. His subordinates recorded about each lands in their originally simplified characters and sometimes the emperor had difficulty in reading them. So in order to rule the country efficiently, less complex scripts were adopted officially. "Unification of writing system meant consolidation of power, especially that writing is used I taxation, trade exchange, day-to-day communication, etc. Small seal script unified not only the forms and variations, but also the methods of writing, by introducing rules of writing, proportions, and symmetry" (Ryuurui). In this sentences, the words "unification" and "unified" emphasizes the importance of establishing simplified standard characters. Therefore, the improvement of political systems, especially land systems, and the simplification of Chinese characters are deeply related. Second, the improvement of letterpress printing technology largely affected the simplification of Chinese characters. Although in the 15th century

The traditional fondness for learning of Vietnamese people is great. We have tried our best to improve knowledge form all aspects, specially in enriching Vietnamese vocabulary. “Vietnamese romanized alphabet which is called Quốc Ngữ or “Nation Language”, does not fully represent the phonology of any single variety of Vietnamese”(Alves, 2009, p.617). In the past, Vietnam suffered a lot from wars and invasions of such countries as China, France, Japan, United States... At a result, cultural habits are imported and affected Vietnamese culture as well as language. In this essay, I would like to draw attention to the phenomenon of using loanwords, especially in Vietnamese.