Ebook How about the Vietnamese writing and its influence on the language present a brief history of the Vietnamese script; the visual and the hearing; the implications for pronunciation, learning and teaching; phrases, reading and making them preface.
About this edition: (Bản dịch tiếng Việt trang tiếp theo) Trading Hats works together with the Vietnam Cultural Exchange Company (VCE) to promote the Vietnamese culture abroad Trading Hats has offered this limited exclusive version for Vietnamese students and teachers to something back for the warm welcome foreigners always get when they visit Vietnam The book is written in English, when you’re interested in voluntary translate it for the purpose of studying into Vietnamese , please contact Miss Oanh from VCE, also for all other questions: leoanh2410@gmail.com Conditions of use: When you share the book, please make a full copy, no reimbursement has to be paid for study purposes in Vietnam provided that: However for the use of parts of the book: - the original title, author & YT link have to be mentioned; - one have to send information to VCE that parts are being copied and a copy of the target edition has also being sent to VCE; - It is not permitted to use parts for commercial or political activities without the permission of Trading Hats The commercial e-pub version of this and other of our books is available on Amazon When you feel like supporting the VCE activities please subscribe and promote the YT channel, visit the website and FB of VCE http://vietnamculturalexchange.org/ VCE YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDPSxiSMl5cXYmvR1DVPhvw https://www.facebook.com/pg/B%C3%B4ng-Pancake-Art-For-Children388736755242890/about/?ref=page_internal Donate some of the Dongs you don’t use to the bank account of Trading hats: Vietinbank / Ronald Bellemans / 9704 1552 2276 5192 When you’re interested in sharing the experience of Roby in the field of making exhibitions and educational projects, please become a Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/robybellemans I hope you enjoy reading it, Roby Bellemans Đà Nẵng 6-6-2020 Về phiên này: Trading Hats hợp tác với Cơng ty trao đổi văn hóa Việt Nam để quảng bá văn hóa Việt Nam nước Trading Hats cung cấp phiên độc quyền giới hạn cho sinh viên giáo viên Việt Nam để làm điều đáp lại cho chào đón nồng nhiệt mà người nước ngồi ln nhận họ đến thăm Việt Nam Cuốn sách viết tiếng Anh, bạn có hứng thú với việc tình nguyện dịch sang Tiếng Việt nhằm mục đích học tập, vui lịng liên hệ với chị Oanh từ VCE, cho câu hỏi khác: leoanh2410@gmail.com Điều kiện sử dụng: Khi bạn chia sẻ sách, vui lịng tạo đầy đủ, khơng phải trả tiền cho mục đích học tập Việt Nam với điều kiện: Tuy nhiên, việc sử dụng phần sách: - Tiêu đề ban đầu, liên kết tác giả link Youtube phải đề cập; - Mọi người phải gửi thông tin cho VCE phận chép phiên mục tiêu phải gửi đến VCE; - Không phép sử dụng phận cho hoạt động thương mại trị mà khơng có cho phép Trading Hats Phiên sách điện tử thương mại sách khác chúng tơi có sẵn Amazon Khi bạn muốn hỗ trợ hoạt động chúng tôi, bạn đăng k{ quảng bá kênh Youtube chúng tôi, Truy cập trang web Facebook VCE http://vietnamculturalexchange.org/ VCE YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDPSxiSMl5cXYmvR1DVPhvw https://www.facebook.com/pg/B%C3%B4ng-Pancake-Art-For-Children388736755242890/about/?ref=page_internal Bạn qun góp số tiền mà khơng dùng đến cho tài khoản ngân hàng Trading hats: Ngân hàng Vietinbank/ Ronald Bellemans / 9704 1552 2276 5192 Khi bạn quan tâm đến việc chia sẻ kinh nghiệm Roby lĩnh vực triển lãm dự án giáo dục, vui lịng trở thành Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/robybellemans Tơi hy vọng bạn thích đọc nó, Roby Bellemans Đà Nẵng 6-6-2020 About the influence of writing on the Vietnamese language Why people find Vietnamese difficult to learn? An attempt to answer this question Report of an investigation, recommendations and conclusions Roby Bellemans Dà Nẵng 2020 With special thanks to Aura Op den Camp and Lê Thị Kiều Oanh http://www.trading-hats.nl http://www.vietnamculturalexchange.org Available through Amazon In Vietnam via vnculturalexchange@gmail.com © Roby Bellemans Contents The influence of the writing systems on the Vietnamese language Accountability Preface A brief history of the Vietnamese script 11 1.1 200 BCE the Han Chinese enter the logographic script 11 1.2 17th Century European priests develop a script for catechesis in Vietnam 15 1.3 1910 The French occupiers oblige the use of Chữ Quốc Ngữ 20 The visual and the hearing 25 2.1 The difference between handling visual and auditory information 26 2.2 Analysis of the visual 29 2.3 Difference between logographic and alphabetical writing 33 2.4 Comics 36 2.5 Difference between logographic and auditory information 40 2.6 What influence does the interaction between writing and speech have? 43 2.7 Communication, about the difference between visual and auditory information 46 The implications for pronunciation, learning and teaching 48 Preface 48 3.1 What we see in the current situation with regard to learning and teaching 48 3.2 Learning a language 56 3.3 Producing sound 60 3.4 Glides or semivowels 64 3.5 Tones 67 3.6 The Kinh and their language descend to the south 70 3.7 Single & Cluster Words 74 3.8 Classifiers 76 3.9 Pronouns, verbs and conjugations 78 3.10 Special characters such as those at the end of a sentence 82 3.11 Double words 83 Phrases, reading and making them 84 Preface 84 4.1 The visual presentation 85 4.2 The influence of culture 88 4.3 Questions 94 4.4 Communication 97 Literature 100 About learning Vietnamese: 100 About language: 101 About learning: 101 About Vietnamese Culture: 102 More about me: 102 The influence of the writing systems on the Vietnamese language Accountability Writing is our very personal expression using a writing system Every language has its own possibilities and impossibilities, we are very aware of that But what is the influence of the possibilities and impossibilities of a specific writing system on our language and expression possibilities? When I tried to learn Vietnamese, I soon noticed emotionally that something was not right with the language and I wanted to know what was not right What discrepancy, which made learning the language much more difficult than necessary, had I encountered? This is not a scientifically sound study; it is a representation of how I explain things to myself It is a very personal account of an investigation into the writing systems used in the past and contemporary used by the Vietnamese and their influence on their language I like to make parallel comparisons to illustrate what I say, partly because I thank they clarify things, partly because I always end up on all kinds of side roads I always describe myself as a tourist without an itinerary in my own life, always amazed at where I have ended up again I’m writing in my simple English, a language I’ve learned on the road Living mostly in Vietnam it is more convenient to use than my Dutch Besides, most literature and sources are in English and often difficult to translate well This book is based on the article I wrote for the Vietlish Dictionary There’s still a lot of research to do, still so much to know about language And precisely because of the circumstances that I describe below, I am quite illiterate as regards the written language, that it fascinates me enormously You will therefore regularly be amazed and irritated by my use of language and the examples cited On the other hand, it is precisely my distance from the written language that shows me connections that a user is not likely to notice Vietnamese words I mark Bold and translated words and sentences Italic Preface It is often said that the Vietnamese language is difficult to learn and the English spoken by Vietnamese is difficult to understand Two prejudices that I want to correct with this book Since my retirement in 2013, I spend most of my time in Vietnam helping museums and other organizations develop educational programs I gave a UNESCO lecture on the subject for the Vietnamese Museum Organization and for the Ho Chi Minh Fine Art Museum I organized the large MeetingPoint exhibition with work by Vietnamese and European contemporary artists I became the first director of the brand new Terracotta Park & Museum in central Vietnam and made many Vietnamese friends I have also tried learning Vietnamese and yes, like many others, I soon lost the will to continue It is also difficult to practice because the response to my Vietnamese is very often: No English!! !! No English!!, Tơi cố gắng nói tiếng Việt! I'm trying to speak Vietnamese!, No Inglish!! And while they shake their heads because I don't seem to understand this, they continue their work or slip away Younger Vietnamese are the opposite and incredibly enthusiastic, they always want to talk to a foreigner so they can improve their English Then after I introduced myself in Vietnamese, they react completely enthusiastically and tell me in English that my Vietnamese is so good, after which the conversation goes on in English At home I kept trying to learn Vietnamese, I know I am not a brilliant student, but my progress was so minimal that I decided to take a closer look at the courses During my education in Education, almost 50 years ago, I researched chess books for beginners Most are written by famous grandmasters and are very bad You can compare this to the fact that it is not because you are a great racer that you can also repair an engine Socrates later used this proposition for his Apology Teaching is a subject in which teaching beginners is a specialty My experience is that any primary school teacher can give an interesting lecture at a university, but very few professors can handle a group of toddlers There was a big exception among the chess books for beginners: the books written by the Dutch former world champion Max Euwe I was fortunate to have Euwe been one of my teachers during my chess instructor studies I asked him for his secret and he replied that his mother was a teacher, she had taught him to teach beginners Almost all Vietnamese books for beginners have the same problem: they are written by professors who know a lot of Vietnamese language and they are great advanced teachers, but to develop a course for beginners you need different abilities Today, mostly on the internet, we see more and more courses developed by regular teachers and they are often of better quality They have found their own solutions for the individual educational problems They see the problem and sometimes find a good solution, but they don't know what is causing the problem Do they need to know that? I think it can help some of them find solutions When you know the cause of a problem, you can search for solutions in a more targeted manner You may wonder why such a study has not been written before An important reason is that Vietnam had other priorities, the country has recently been greatly destroyed: hospitals, schools, roads had to be rebuilt It is not obvious to invest time, energy and money in the development of a study that only a very limited group will use It was more obvious to use the different textbooks that the visitors had left behind, such as Apprendre le Franỗais and ‘Learning English’ as an example for their Học Tiếng Việt Learn Vietnamese courses In itself this sounds reasonable because Vietnamese also uses the alphabetic script That's true, but it doesn't mean it also has an auditory base like most alphabetic languages And that widespread misconception causes the main problems: the Vietnamese use Latin letters, but the basis is still a logographic script That will be more than clear later in my argument, but we must first go back in time to see the development of the Vietnamese script Why I am so focused on the history of the Vietnamese language has everything to with my own background I was born in Belgium near Antwerp, at the time, seventy years ago, every city had a completely different dialect and we could hardly understand each other So the government decided to develop a completely new Dutch-like national language And it was really a completely new language, for example the sentence “Well boy, you have a nice bike there!” was in the new language “Zo jongen, je hebt daar een mooie fiets zeg!” and in my native language 10 "Amai, getga ne knappe velo e joeng!" It not only looked different, it also sounded completely different The new language ‘General Civilized Dutch’ (ABN) was introduced the first year I went to school Instead of my native language, I had to learn a language that was not spoken by anyone, only during the language lessons It was very strange, we had to learn to write, speak, learn grammar and all that, but we had no idea what the teacher said It was like reading a manual in a language you don't know about a topic you still have to learn Today, such an introduction would be 24 hours a day on at least one TV channel, unfortunately in the early 1950s people did not have TV yet Add to this that the new language sounded very much like Dutch and that did not immediately make her popular Years later, Prof P.C Paardekooper who designed the new grammar rules, concluded that the introduction was a complete disaster and the children who were the 'laboratory animals’ had completely destroyed the ability to learn a language This is because the grammatical knowledge of your native language is the necessary basis for learning new languages You compare the construction of the new language with that of your own language, when that knowledge is lacking there is nothing to compare In the meantime my native language is no longer spoken, the 'new' language has changed a lot, I understand it a bit, but I cannot speak it What I speak is a mix of old Flemish and Dutch since later I lived most of my time in the Netherlands What I write is the written version of this strange mix It is very difficult for me to learn a foreign language, even if it is Vietnamese But when I started reading about the history of the Vietnamese language, it seemed very familiar to me, as you can read in the next chapter But before we move on to the next chapter, it is good to emphasize that I am writing about the language spoken by the Kinh, người Kinh Vietnam has many ethnic groups, the Kinh being the largest group with more than 85% Vietnam is a small but very long country near the South China Sea, the 3444 km long coastline has been visited by sailors with or without their boats for centuries Some of those visitors stayed for a while or are still there and have enriched the culture of Vietnam in many ways Many visitors also from the north, every time new rulers came to China and the old dynasties were 'cleaned up', many Northerners thought Vietnam was safer They had no idea 90 and you should try to get the waiter's attention If you know the waitress name, you can say loudly: Hieng ơi! If you don't know the name, just say Em ơi! They won't hear you because you said it too softly Meanwhile, you can start cleaning your spoon, chopsticks, table and everything you see just like all Vietnamese What is the basic difference between a sentence in logographic and alphabetical writing? We saw that the alphabetic writing of words is based on sound, we hear letter by letter resulting in a word; creating a sentence is the same as the words we chose are related to the other words we use We often hear people talking when they actually say nothing, but it all sounds good In my youth, people used to say "The explanation is good, but the speculoos is no good." Famous are the videos by artist Bob Ross that are particularly popular with people who cannot fall asleep And what you may not expect is that I recommend those videos for people who want to present art and have no knowledge of it My opinion on the artistic level is not relevant here; however the language Bob Ross uses, the content and the way he presents it is extremely instructive The students start with the idea that they cannot and after one lesson they are enthusiastic and continue That's how the courses should be Vietnamese! “We'll add a little particle here, maybe one at the end… just it,” “You see, now that sentence is getting friendlier” A little tuyết snow on the mountain núi, because it is Sa Pa, the only place in Vietnam where snow can be seen ” The image of a character is much more concrete, but the meaning is more conceptual and also offers space for multiple interpretations This may sound a bit vague or philosophical, but consider the pronouns Western people start very directly with ‘you’ and ‘me’ and that is also how we see each other A Vietnamese starts by placing himself in the family They have to start thinking who they are and who the other is and what their relationship is, it's not an 'I' and an 'you', two more or less isolated single people, Vietnamese are part of a social system Fortunately, we are the guests within that system and they expect that we don't know how to behave So if our sentences have perfect grammar, they will already be very surprised and compliment you; but when our sentences show, even if clumsy, that we try to understand Vietnamese culture, they immediately see us as a member of the family I would like to refer to German linguist Florian Coulmas, who describes writing systems: “As the most visible items of a language, scripts and 91 orthographies are 'emotionally charged', indicating that they group loyalty and identities Rather than being merely practical tools, they are symbolic systems of great social significance which can also have a profound effect on the social structure of a speech community ” Typical of a Vietnamese phrase is that it will almost always try to please you; a natural behavior of Asians A friend of mine used to work as a marketing director for Philips and they had a factory in Taipei Very capable employees worked there, but when they reported their progress to the head office in the Netherlands, they always brought positive news They wanted to make the Dutch happy, so they couldn't bother them with their problems We Europeans will think that they did not tell the truth, but that is not important for Asian people, it is important that you feel good So my friend had to move and live in Taipei, luckily for me because later he invited me to a project for kids over there It's the same in Vietnam; I hear regularly that you can't trust them That's wrong, you can trust them very well, but if you ask them something, you have to ask it the right way Not grammatically, that's not important As we mentioned before, you can make a question in Vietnamese by phải không? Yes No? adding that gives some room for the answer Another typical example is that Vietnamese answer a question with Dạ, which is an affirmation So you ask: “Is your store open?” They will answer: Dạ! Cửa hàng không mở Yes! My store is not open The beginning Dạ is not an answer to the question, it is only a polite confirmation that they have understood your question after which the actual answer comes It is very confusing when they speak English, especially when their English is limited Especially in the beginning I sometimes had these kinds of conversations: “Can I exchange money here?” “Yes! You cannot exchange money here” Because I was not used to their English and my English is not great, I especially heard the ‘Yes!!’ After which I stepped in and it took a while before it became clear It was always a happy thing because they keep smiling at you friendly, but that kindness and lack of awareness of their culture has also led to really dramatic consequences The Americans were looking for the Vietcong and questioned villagers as to whether they had seen Northern Vietnam warriors Unfortunately, those people had no idea what the question was and so that they would not lose face, they would look and smile very kindly They that when they are happy but also when they 92 really don't know what is going to happen, it takes little effort to imagine the situation: a poor Vietnamese family, 1.5 meters and skinny, looking up at a couple of heavy armed people who weigh nearly four times as much and are half a meter taller and speak a language they first hear On the other hand, you have soldiers who have entered a kind of war in a foreign country where all their technical advantage does not help against the snipers who defend their country that they know like the back of their hand As impressive as it may be, those soldiers were often just as scared as the villagers laughing at them The basis of a sentence is Vietnamese culture, to please the reader, make them feel comfortable For example, when you are walking and you ask if it is still far When they see that you are tired, they will say that it is not far When they see that you enjoy a lot, they will say that it is still a long walk Their answer is not based on the number of miles to go, but on which answer will please you the most How the sentence is structured is related to the possibilities of logographic writing When we read a sentence, we can cut it into parts to see the word combinations, this will help us understand and pronounce the sentence For example, the sentence: We now eat here Bây ăn we should see it as Bây / / ăn / Now / we / are eating / here The tone of chúng goes up, so it makes more sense to say Bây chúng ‘flat/down/up’ and then ăn three words flat, just squiggly and flat again Now I exaggerate a bit, but for us the tones are markers for the pronunciation, for Vietnamese they are indicators of meaning It's another reason why all those tone exercises result in a misunderstanding of the language, especially when you can focus only on the sound rather than the meaning Like the green-blue colors, it is a very poetic language: the green of a leaf, the blue of the sky and the blue of the deep water Although it is a simple sentence, he still tells us a lot We see that the Vietnamese sentence starts with the time indication Logographic writing was 93 set up in the past as a comic book: a long story without dots and commas, to indicate a new action they start by telling the time A logographic phrase is more a combination of images rather than words, and it is read with the visual part of our brain It is the difference between a novel and a comic book, or between a novel and the film based on that story They are different forms of communication, which makes Vietnamese so confusing because the bone structure is logographic but it looks alphabetical In logographic writing, we place the most important information first and then the additional data is added In a sentence like “I bought this interesting book yesterday” The most important thing is the purchase, then what was bought / then why and finally when So a Vietnamese will say: Tôi mua / sách / thú vị / / hôm qua I bought / book / interesting this / yesterday You are probably wondering now why the sentence does not start with yesterday hôm qua, the time indication In this case the sentence starts with Tôi mua, mua is to buy and by adding it becomes clear that it took place in the past In the sentence We eat here now we see that here has been translated into In English we have a system with here and there: this is close and that is further away In Vietnamese, we have a system with other options There are two different systems: person-oriented versus distance-oriented directions The distance system makes a difference between close by, slightly further away and more distant concrete distances In addition, and we cannot emphasize this enough, to make good sentences we have to try to think like Vietnamese and the most important thing for Vietnamese is the family, the family relationships and the relationships between people in general, because they are somehow being family, as we saw when dealing with the pronouns Knowing this, it shouldn't be strange to discover that the Vietnamese are using the person-centered system - near the speaker we say this = này, - further away, but you are near the person you are talking to, that = - further away from both the speaker and the listener, that = 94 Người this person indicates that the person being referred is relatively close to the speaker, while người indicates that the person being referred is further away from the speaker And this is only the beginning of the possibilities to say this and that! There is a bit further than đây, more distant than For example, there are several possibilities to indicate an increasing distance in time for, for example, the noun ngày day (time indication): ngày kia, ngày kìa, ngày kía, ngày kịa, ngày kĩa in the future Another example that I read somewhere is to use ngày for close (the tone goes down), while a little further away is ngáy (the tone goes up) almost like speaking louder Far away is Ngau there's no point shouting, it's too far It is clear that it is a clear consequence of the combination of cultural needs and the logographic script In English we see that many of these variations are formed with sound and also very different possibilities with this and that and the other demonstrative pronouns We saw that omitting the classifier made the sentence more abstract, the same can be done with the nominals đây, and đâu which are used only as nouns that usually indicate a space or time, but they can also be used to metaphorically refer to people refer as in: I'm going to the theater, are you going too? Đây / / nhà hát, / / có khơng? This / goes / theater, / that / also goes? In other words: [This] goes to the theater, does [that] go or not? In English we would say: ‘This person’, we personalize, it is ‘me’ and ‘you’’ Vietnamese refer to individuals in a more metaphorical way 4.3 Questions Because of the logographic writing, it's no surprise that the structure of the sentence usually doesn't change much to make it a question, for example, by placing a word like nghe which means listening at the end of a sentence, the sentence becomes interrogative One could translate it as isn't it? or more literally you listen? It reminds me of Chinese [ma] and Turkish [mi / ma], you can also put those words at the end of a sentence to make it a question The Turkish language 95 has an interesting form of sound harmonization: when the first vowel of the sentence is spoken in the front part of our mouth, the following vowels in the sentence are modified, the same as the first vowel in the back of our mouth is produced, it is a great form of sound harmonization, something we also do, but more on an individual basis In any case, depending on how the sentence started, it is questioned with [mi] or with [ma] Let's take a look at an interrogative and answering sentence: What (1) are (2) you (3) cooking (4)? I (3) am (4) cooking (2) Phở (1) Bạn (1) (2) nấu (3) (4)? Tơi (1) (2) nấu (3) Phở (4) We can divide the sentence “What are you cooking?” in two parts One part contains the factual information: you cook, the other part is the communication part: what we want to know? In English we immediately start by asking what we want to know: WHAT are you cooking? Vietnamese are focused on the people and they want to know what YOU do, BẠN nấu gi Interesting is that means ‘in the process of doing’ it is a time indication! Instead of asking what are you cooking, we can ask what? gi? Change in how long? ? How long have you been cooking? Bạn nấu (rồi)? Or we can change the sentence further in The interrogative pronouns are almost always at the end of the sentence in Vietnamese: how / how much / what (cái) / where đâu As I wrote before, in logographic script the usually starts with a timestamp, so it makes sense for the question ‘When’ to find the interrogative pronoun at the beginning of the sentence: When Khi 96 Here is a statement note: we see that goes down as we mentioned before, but for foreigners who are used to making a sentence questioning by raising the last word, it is important that we pay special attention to this, I am making often that mistake A good example of these difficulties is that we want to ask someone “if they like coconut” To make an interrogative sentence, we just have to look at the last word, in this case ‘coconut’ In Vietnamese, coconut is dừa, your voice should go down When we want to ask Do you like coconut? Bạn có thích dừa? so we have to go down in the end, but when we ask the question in our usual way it becomes Bạn có thích dứa unfortunately dứa upwards pronounced means pineapple, which has a completely different taste It is not the tone of the word, but the tone in combination with the place of the word You may have practiced dừa a hundred times, but when the sentence appears to be a question it automatically becomes dứa That is another reason why practicing individual words with tones is not very useful, you have to practice the tones in a sentence… When we speak Vietnamese, we cannot use the normal sound possibilities that we use in English For example, in the following sentence: If you don't go, I won't go Nếu anh khơng tơi khơng If we want to put the question more hypothetically, we can pronounce the sentence in a different way Vietnamese cannot that because the meaning of the words will change, so they will add a word In this situation they add mà and the sentence becomes Nếu mà anh khơng không To us, the sentence and its will sound almost the same and this is what causes the difficulties both when listening and speaking To make an alphabetic written sentence into a question we end in general the sentence with the question mark [?] In the old logographic writing they didn’t had punctuation Reading common alphabetic writing and seeing the question mark we know we will have to raise our voice a bit Reading Vietnamese it is not working like that, the question mark is only an indication that the sentence is a question, it is no pronunciation indication For Vietnamese reading English with its punctuation is often difficult to pronounce For example a sentence like “Are you crazy!!” can be a question and then have to be pronounced as a question 97 4.4 Communication Then there is the question, "Why don't they understand me???" The message is what it's all about However, we learn written language to use it as the spoken version Let's see the difference in a situation where we want to tell you that we are thirsty To communicate within a language, our goal is to convey meaning, we can this with punctuation, with our voice, and choice of words, gestures also important is the information structure, The way we present the information, the normal structure is S-V-O However we can play with the sound and the place of words, a sentence like “He has carefully removed the lid” can be said in different word order: “He removed the lid carefully.” “The lid? He removed It carefully.” In English we have certain customs such as: - old for new - heavy information at the end of the sentence For the dramatic effect we can: - pre-posing: put it in the beginning “A big wolf came through the door” - postpone: put it at the end, “through the door came a big wolf” We this automatically, and automatically we will this with our Vietnamese sentences, whether it is possible or not To avoid this problem, it is important not to start with the English sentence When you are just starting to learn a language, it is therefore more convenient to keep sentences short and concise Not beautiful sentences but correct information and looking forward to the reactions Especially when we ask something Why someone does certain things in a specific way can be interesting to know But ask: “Why are you doing it like this?” Tại bạn lại làm vậy? can lead to a long explanation with many words that we not know We can then make a note and look it up later, but it is more convenient to ask other questions The best questions lead to simple, clear and short answers, preferably in combination with a demonstration Like when showing the products: How you mix the salad? Làm để bạn kết hợp rau xà lách? Even if the statement is strange, the body language will clarify what the question is about 98 Then they can show it as they say: first the vegetables rau and it is easy to understand In addition to body language, the meaning of words is often made clear by the connection with the other words and the place in a sentence So when we try to speak a new language, we often fall back on our original language and sentence structure to decide which words or phrases we emphasize or give extra sound or rhythm We will discover that the pronunciation is not difficult because of the 'tones themselves' but because of the function of the different words in the sentence In the written language we could say: Sorry to bother you, but would it be possible to have a drink? Thank you!? Xin lỗi làm phiền bạn uống đó? cảm ơn bạn nhiều! If you are a beginner, but even if they don't know you, you can be sure they don't understand you Let's use the real spoken language: You make a big smile, bring your hand to your mouth and make the drinking gesture and you nod with a friendly nod: Can I have a drink? Tơi uống khơng? They will certainly understand you, mainly because you used body language Body language is an essential part of the spoken language Several parts of the sentence can be omitted, making the sentence even clearer The nice thing is that even when you pronounce drinking, uống as u-on, with a completely wrong pronunciation, they will still have no problem understanding what you want I know this from my own practice When we speak, the words get their meaning from the context, the extra body language, the situation or from a good sentence However, we should not forget that there are two groups of Vietnamese, those who want to understand you and those who will respond with wild gestures and say: No Inglish! No Inglish! anxiously looking for someone who seems Vietnamese Unfortunately, they are not related to the great singer Joe Cocker and they are difficult to calm down, that no longer works with words If you really need something you might get upset about the situation but there is no point in raising your voice because they don't use this communication technique they will just find you very rude but still don't 99 understand what you want All that remains for them is to smile with a frightened face They don't want you to lose face The best solution to this problem is to always have a paper that says: Tơi cố gắng nói tiếng việt I try to speak Vietnamese The smile will change completely and the eyes will shine followed by a flood of unintelligible words Time for you to give them a big smile I know the most common argument that if you don't know how to pronounce the language, you can't communicate This is simply not true When I was the director of the brand new Terracotta Park & Museum near Hội An, in central Vietnam, I constantly had to go to the local shops to buy very specific things Among others to the carpenter who had a lot to deliver to us I just went there on my own without a phone with google translate Yet I always found what I needed and the carpenter made exactly what I wanted The reason is simple: they wanted to understand me and I knew exactly what I wanted, something they had or could make for me When we later lived in Hà Nội and my speaking skills had increased a bit, I went to the nearby market almost every day; the sellers never had problems understanding me But when I was in another market, it often happened that they looked at me, saw that I was a foreigner, and suddenly they no longer understood me I was once talking to a group of about 20 students in Ho Chi Minh City Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh and they tried to convince me how important the pronunciation was HCMC students often come from small villages far away, sometimes all the way from the north, so I asked them all to say a certain word The result was a lively discussion about who had the correct pronunciation, because none of them did the same and there were significant differences We all know that there is a different pronunciation in the south than in the north, but you can also be sure that a doctor in Hà Nội will have a very different pronunciation and lexicon as the fishmonger on the same Hà Nội street Roby Bellemans, 100 Because of the Corona house arrest I was able to work for two weeks straight, normally I went to get a breath of fresh air every day at the beach nearby I will publish the photos I took with a phone lent to me in a free ebook Literature A selection of the books I have read and consulted About learning Vietnamese: o o o o o o o A Concise Vietnamese Grammar; Vietnam National University Hanoi, Institute of Vietnamese Studies and development sciences.1234567804354 2012 Colloquial Vietnamese, Routledge Taylor and Francis group , 9780415092050 Eurotalk – Talk Now! Hoc Tieng Viet/ Talk more Hoc Tieng Viet2006; Eurotalk Giáo Trình Tiếng Việt Cho Người Nước Ngồiiao Trinh Tieng Viet Cho Ngouoi Nuoc Ngoai, Vietnamese as a second language; Nha xuat ban dai hoc quoc gia Ho Chi Minh 2010 Spoken Vietnamese, R.B.Jones, Huynh Sanh Thong, 0879503718 Spoken Language service 1979 Teach Yourself Vietnamese 9780071434324, 2009 Tieng Viet co so, Vietnamese for foreigners Nha xuat ban Phuong 101 o o dong1806100000032 2010 Tieng Viet, Vietnamese for beginners (2-3-4-), Nha Xuat Ban Van Hoa Saigon 0646133225, 2009 Useful Vietnamese for Expats 1,2 & 3, Nha xuat Ban Hong Duc, 2018 About language: o o o o o o o o o o o Abenteuer Sprache Ein Streizug durch die Sprachen der Erde, J.Storing, Langenscheidt KG Berlin 1987 An Introduction to Language, Victoria Fromkin/ Robert Rodman 1993, 9780030753794 Harcourt Brace College Publishers Chinese Letterkunde, inleiding, historisch overzicht; W.Idema & Lloyd Haft; prisma 8710952417024 1985 Cung toi hoc Tieng Han, Tran Di, xingfen 2017 Filosofie en taalwetenschap, H.Parret, van Gorcum 1979, 9023215494 Het ABC van Japan, Schrift en schrijven in een fascinerend land, R.Berkel, Scryption Boekenfonds, 9075159188, 2000 Het verschijnsel taal, P.M Nieuwenhuijsen,Coutinho, 2004, 9062839894 Nieuwe tongen, G Dorren, SDU-taal, 9789057970191, 1999 Taaltheorie en vreemde-telen onderwijs, J.P.G Ickenroth, 9001867022, Wolters Noordhoff, 1974 The muse learns to write, E.A.Havelock, Yale University Press, 1986 Zin en Onzin, F Staal, Meulenhoff Amsterdam 9029096683 1989 About learning: o o o o o Educational(+) project, R.Bellemans 9789490355012, Trading Hats 2009 Inleiding in de historische pedagogiek, N.F Noordam, 9001641490, Wolters Noordhoff, 1976 Leren C.F van Parreren, 9001690505, Wolters Noordhoff, 1976 Leren door handelen, C.F van Parreren, 9060493672, van Walraven, 1983 Ons creatieve brein, D.Swaab, 9789045030579, Atlas ontact, 2016 o Ontwikkelings psychologie, F.J.Monks & A.M.P.Knoers, Dekker & van de Vegt, 1978 9025598910 o o Psychologie van het leren & 2, C.F van Parreren, van Loghum 1971 Schriftelijk studie materiaal, A.Pilot e.a 9789001710811, Wolters Noordhoff, 1992 Wij zijn ons brein, D.Swaab, 9789025435226, Atlas contact, 2010 o 102 About Vietnamese Culture: o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o Cham sculpture and Indian mythology, Huynh Thi Duoc, Danang publ.house, 2014 Da Nang xua, Nha Xuat ban Da Nang 2012 Ethnic Minorities in Vietnam, Dang Nghiem Van a.o the Gioi 2010, Half the World, cultural history China, Japan, Korea & Vietnam, 13 studies A Toynbee Thames & Hudson, 1973, Histoirer du Vietnam, Le Thanh Khoi, 285881001x, Sudestasie 1981 Hoa van gom VAN HOA DONG DAU, Bui Huu Tien, the gioi 2014 Making of Vietnam, Ha Van Tan, the gioi 2018 Nguoi o….NX ban Thong Tan/ VNA publish house 2007, several from this series Origines the streets of Vietnam a historical compagion, J.Wills Burke, thr Gioi 2010 Secrets of Hoi An,C, Howland, the gioi 2011 Single woman in Vietnam, Le Thi, the gioi 2008 Sources of Vietnamese Tradition, Columbia Univ Press, 9780231138635 2012 Technique du people Annamite 1,2 & 3, Henr Oger, the gioi 1909/2009 The civilization of Vietnam, Nguyen Van Huyen; The Gioi Publishers, 2013, 9786047707212 Understanding Katu culture, Ta Duc, Thuan Hoa publishing house 2002 Vietlisch Dictionary, R.Bellemans,Trading Hats, B07H44QJ8J, 2018 Vietnam Heritage, magazine, several from this series Vietnam, in the past by French engravings, VHDT,1997 Vietnam, the great family of ethnic groups, ECICO 2014 Vietnamese contemporary Art, Bui Nhu Huong, Pham Trung, Knowledge publishing house 2011 Vietnamese Culture, Frequently Asked Questions, The Gioi, several from this series Vietnamese Hat Boi, theater act, Nguyen Loc NX Ban VAN Hoa, 1994 Wandering through Vietnamese culture, Huu Ngoc, VN-TG-31181, The Gioi publishers, 2010 More about me: o o A Dutch school project of mine in the Mondriaanhuis 2008: “From Chinese Calligraphy to Breakdance”: www.You Tube.com/watch?v=37b5upEJI3Q UNESCO lecture for the Vietnamese Museums Association: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3KyLJE4bHw&feature=youtu.be o Introduction to the Vietnamese Dictionary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRuOJyAA7Zc&feature=youtu.be 103 o MeetingPoint exhibition in HCMC Fine Art Museum: o http://meetingpoint.123website.nl/369340081 Article in the Saigon Times: https://english.thesaigontimes.vn/35758/Roby-Bellemansfalls-in-love-with-Vietnam.html o The Terracotta Park & Museum where I was the first director: o o http://thanhhaterracotta.com/?mode=gallery_show&id_gallery=20 The museum in the media: https://www.vir.com.vn/largest-terra-cotta-parkinaugurated-in-quang-nam-34884.html Because of my work https://vnexpress.net/trien-lam-su-tu-va-nghe-thuan-viet-landau-den-voi-tp-hcm-3134288.html My e-books can be ordered through Amazon In Vietnam via the Vietnam Cultural Exchange company (VCE) Introduction videos about my books and activities can be found on VCE YT channel, click on the subscribe button and stay informed of new releases and activities For those interested in creating exhibitions and educational projects, they can follow and support me through Patreon And for those interested in partnering with VCE, you can contact co-founder Oanh via FB, YT or email You will also find the VCE address details on FB Downstairs, Phuong has his gallery of traditional and new work On the first floor there is the Art for Children gallery & lending and on the second floor you will find the “Trà Nôm”, or Tea & Calligraphy Oanh: leoanh2410@gmail.com http://www.vietnamculturalexchange.org vnculturalexchange@gmail.com YT-VCE: https://www.You Tube.com/channel/UCDPSxiSMl5cXYmvR1DVPhvw https://www.patreon.com/robybellemans http://www.trading-hats.nl info@robybellemans.nl roby.bellemans@live.nl © Roby Bellemans Đà Nẵng 2020 104 ... although their tradition is very old and the culture is very strong, the connection with their language is not The historical connection through the language was broken when they started to use contemporary... pronunciation, it is obvious that we should the same The statement is somewhat the icing on the cake; it is like the roof on the house In other words, no one starts with the icing or the roof There... over the world, oral language has long been the most important The written text was only a reduction of the spoken language In Europe, the work of the Greek poet Hesiod is considered to be the