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The firm rule: “Only speak Vietnamese with your child!”

Unlike many Vietnamese families living in bilingual environments, Dr. Tra My set a firm rule: since the day her daughter was born, she has used only Vietnamese in all daily communication. The mother tongue - Vietnamese - was the only language spoken. Therefore, if the child wanted to understand her mother, she had to listen, comprehend, and speak Vietnamese.

Thanks to this consistency, Vietnamese became CiCi’s “natural language” from infancy to her first words. If CiCi happened to slip into Chinese, Dr. Tra My would pretend not to understand, refrain from responding, and gently remind her to repeat the sentence in Vietnamese. This patient, pressure-free approach allowed Vietnamese to naturally permeate the child’s thinking and become the language she used with her mother.

Now, every evening after finishing her homework, CiCi studies two additional pages of Vietnamese. On weekends, she video calls relatives in Vietnam to “share” stories from the week. She has a Zalo account, checks daily updates, and interacts with her “big family group” in Vietnam.

Dr. Tra My and her daughter CiCi.

Bringing the Child Back to Vietnam Often - The Key to Keeping Her Vietnamese Language Burning Bright

Dr. Tra My emphasizes that Vietnamese only becomes strong and instinctive when children have a linguistic environment where they can use it. Family, she says, is the ideal setting for that practice. Immersed in the warmth of her Vietnamese relatives, the child grows to love Vietnam, its people, its language, and its culture.

“Every holiday, Tet, or school break, I bring CiCi back to Vietnam and ask for her to ‘join’ a local kindergarten class, as a way for her to fully live in Vietnamese and the culture of her homeland,” she shares.

CiCi studies at Thang Nhi Primary School, Vung Tau Ward, Ho Chi Minh City in 2024.

To help her daughter develop Vietnamese skills as systematically as children in Vietnam, Dr. Tra My decided to let CiCi complete a full year of first grade in the country. The results exceeded expectations: CiCi adapted, integrated, and kept pace with local students remarkably quickly. By the end of the school year, she had earned the title of excellent student. Not only did she master all core language skills, listening, speaking, reading, and writing, but with her mother’s encouragement and guidance, she even began innocently composing poems in Vietnamese.

Now that she has returned to China for school, the little girl adorably “teaches” her Chinese teacher how to speak Vietnamese, teaches her classmates how to count in Vietnamese, and even sings the Vietnamese national anthem for them. One of CiCi’s poems, “Tet Doc lap” (“Independence Day”), has been displayed at her primary school in China. This is a priceless treasure - an enduring foundation that will accompany CiCi throughout her life. From time to time, she also dances to the song “toc me bac mau may…” (“Mother’s hair faded like the clouds…”). For her, Vietnamese is now more than just a language; it is the language of family, of homeland, and of the nation.

CiCi’s poem.

It is clear that Dr. Tra My’s journey of preserving Vietnamese for her child is rooted in several principles: parents must consistently use Vietnamese 100% with their children from an early age; Vietnamese must never be replaced within family communication; and opportunities must be actively created for children to engage frequently with Vietnamese family members, environments, and culture.

CiCi (second from left) earned the title of excellent student in first grade in Vietnam.

Dr. Tra My shared that the State Committee for Overseas Vietnamese has previously partnered with several universities to open Vietnamese-language courses for children of the diaspora. Additionally, parents can bring their children to Vietnam to participate in domestic “summer camps.” In China specifically, the Vietnamese Embassy will also organize Vietnamese-language classes in 2025 for children of the Vietnamese community living there. Therefore, the Vietnamese community can take advantage of such valuable opportunities for their children to learn Vietnamese and experience their cultural roots.

Dr. Tra My affirms: “Vietnamese is not only the language of our homeland; in the context of comprehensive and friendly bilateral cooperation between Vietnam and China today, talents fluent in both Vietnamese and Chinese are also very much needed. Therefore, helping children master Vietnamese is giving them an additional choice - a future pathway for their lives.”

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