For the last week, I have been continuing my indulgence in Vietnamese media at the urging of my study partner. However, I have moved on from musical entertainment and reality television to something like the food network. Logan and I have been watching documents and discussing about regional culture differences, especially in terms of food.
I'm originally from Hồ Chí Minh city and Logan is originally from around Cần Thơ. While both of us are both from the Southern region of Việt Nam, his hometown is much closer to the Mekong Delta region, nicknamed Miền Sông Nước (literally: river water region). So naturally, we started studying about Cần Thơ. Cần Thơ is a region south of Hồ Chí Minh city and although I've never been to Cần Thơ, I have heard of a lot about the region.
Cần Thơ is a famous tourism area known for its rice
fields. It is responsible for over half of the nation's rice production.
There's a famous saying about the region:
Cần Thơ gạo trắng nước trong,
Ai đi đến đó lòng không muốn về.
Cần Thơ's rice is white, its water clear.
Everyone who visits, will not want to leave.
In addition to its rice production, the region is also
known for its floating markets. Floating markets are markets where instead of
the traditional usage of stalls and kiosks, products are sold on boats in the
water, hence the ‘floating’. This type of market is popular in flood-prone and
water regions due to the historical importance of water transportation.
However, nowadays, with improving infrastructures, it has primarily become more
of a tourist attraction.
While watching the programs, we try to engage in discussions in Vietnamese. He primarily tries to get me to get used to using Vietnamese on a familiarity basis. Since we’re roughly around the same age, I shouldn’t be speaking formally to him. However, since I’m among one of the youngest members of my family, I have become so used to speaking formally that it has become something of a habit. So while the video serves as a topic of discussion, the main focus here is to fix my speech pattern to improve its fluency. I have to admit that it is incredibly difficult to break from the way that I usually speak, it is an interesting experience. The last time I used informal Vietnamese was probably around my friends before the age of 7, which is a really long time ago, so it is a nice change of pace to get back to speaking that way again.
Additionally, since one of my goals in learning Vietnamese was to be able to communicate more with my family, Logan has been urging me to discuss the things we talked about with my own family. I still find it very difficult to carry an entire conversation in Vietnamese, even if it is with my family. However, I have gotten into the habit of communicating with my family at least once a week for about an hour as practice.
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