I learned something new recently. According to my newly acquired textbook, Vietnamese is sometimes mistakenly thought to be a monosyllabic -- a word containing only 1 syllable -- language, but that is not the case. Vietnamese words are primarily disyllabic -- a word containing 2 syllables -- (according to wikipedia, about 80% of the lexicon are disyllabic) and some are even polysyllabic -- a word containing more than 2 syllables. For example:
| ghế | "chair" |
monosyllabic |
| vội vội vàng vàng |
"hurry-scurry" | polysyllabic |
| ghế | "chair" | monosyllabic |
One thing about my textbook though is that it seems to utilize the northern dialect in a very formal tone of the language that I was not intending to focus on. As a result, it seems to be less helpful to me in terms of helping me improve my communicate skill since it's not very realistic to use extremely formal language all the time. On the other hand, the cultural lessons from the book can be quite interesting. My favorite part of the book is the various Ca dao tục ngữ (proverbs) that are present throughout the book. One of my favorite proverbs is: có công mài sắt có ngày nên kim -- "if one polishes iron enough, it will become a needle one day" or "practice makes perfect".
In light of the recent events, it have been difficult to meet with my language partner. Part of it due to the fact that I now have more work to do and so does my partner. However, luckily, I'm at home, surrounded by family members who are also native speakers, so I will have more opportunity to practice my speaking skill as well as listening skill.
Recently, I have started to talk to my mother about my current and future classes and classwork workload -- in Vietnamese, of course. It was a struggle since I have to use words that I have rarely used before, but I ended up learning a lot of new vocabulary from our conversation. For example:
- chuyên ngành -- specialization (in terms of major)
- nghệ thuật -- art
- khoa học máy tính -- computer science
- kinh tế học -- economics
- chính trị -- politics
The conversation, although short, allowed me to make me some headway with one of my lesson plans: being able to talk about various mundane things like my day-to-day life at school and classes I'm planning to take.
Additionally, with the pandemic being such a big deal, the coronavirus has become a popular conversation topic between my family. Additionally, my mother had been watching a lot of Vietnamese news program that also cover the topic. Thanks to that, I was also able to meet another one of the goals I made in my learning plan: vital information.
- Cô Vy - covid
- bệnh dịch - disease
- ý thức - awareness
- viêm phổi - pneumonia
I believe that continuous exposure to the language through television programs and discussion with my family will allow me to learn more than my textbook will allow.
Also, I recently came across an educational music video on the Coronavirus, in Vietnamese, of course, and I would just like to share it.
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