Washington DC (VNA) – Teaching the Vietnameselanguage since 1995, Ngo Kim Viet, a Vietnamese woman living in the US state ofMaryland for over 40 years, always perceives that the value of the mothertongue needs to be maintained and passed down to younger generations of theVietnamese origin.

Preliminary statistics show that there are nearly 200establishments and centres teaching the language in the US, mainlyin the states housing large Vietnamese communities like California,Texas, and Washington, but most of them are of small scale and still depend onvoluntary teachers.

Meanwhile, the US’s centres of foreign languages have just openedVietnamese language courses for diplomats and nationals preparing to work inthe Southeast Asian country.

Viet told the Vietnam News Agency that her decision to teachthe language came from her love for the homeland, adding she doesn’t want theVietnamese born and growing up in the US to be unable to speak the mothertongue due to the shortage of schools, teachers, or an environment for them topractice.

Given this, she decided to voluntarily help children ofVietnamese families to learn the language and open classes at churches.

In 2014, her nephews returned to Vietnam on business trips. Despite their Vietnamese origin, they still had to hireinterpreters during those trips. Therefore, Viet decided to teach them via Zoomso that they can communicate in Vietnamese in future returns.

The woman has also been teaching at languagecentres of the US whenever she has spare time. She has bought language teachingbooks along with those about the culture and history of Vietnam, and alsoreferred to images and videos in the internet to compile her own lesson plans.

Though the part-time job brings her almost no income, Viet still wishes to maintain and popularise thebeauty of the Vietnamese language, prompted by her love for the mother tongue. 

Viet said she was happy that the VietnameseEmbassy in the US recently invited her to attend a Vietnamese language classheld by the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs for expatriates. Due to thetime zone difference, the class started at 5am in the East Coast of the US, butshe didn’t miss any lessons because she considered this a precious chance forher to improve specialised knowledge and teaching skills.

Sharing some interesting stories about her students, she saidthe Vietnamese language has helped one of her nephews to confidently return tothe homeland without an interpreter, another to assist his company in the US tosign a contract with a Vietnamese partner, a US priest to talk to hisVietnamese followers and understand more about the country’s culture, and manyVietnamese-origin people in the US to support those unable to speak English.

With their patriotism, Viet and those engagingin the teaching of the Vietnamese language in the US are inspiring the interestin the mother tongue among young people there, while helping the youth be furtheraware of the necessity and value of the language maintenance and learn moreabout the homeland’s culture./.