Society is responsible for linguistic purity
Associate Professor Pham Van Tinh, a linguist, has devoted many years
to studying Vietnamese. He talks with Ngoc Mai about how the
Vietnamese language is used today.
Associate Professor, Pham Van Tinh, a linguist, is currently the deputy editor-in-chief of Lexicography and Encyclopaedia magazine and a member of the Standing Committee of the Viet Nam Linguistics Association. He also teaches linguistics at some universities.
While many people have said they are worried about the way the Vietnamese language is used today, Tinh has a dialectical view of the language's current use.
Inner Sanctum: What do you have to say about the use of Vietnamese now?
I think that the purity of Vietnamese is at risk because of a few factors, but I don't think the problem is as serious as some claim. The mass media, including newspapers and television, seem to have exaggerated the impure use of Vietnamese and turned it into a serious issue.
Nationwide our language constantly adapts to reflect changes in all areas of society, including economic development, culture and cultural exchange. Since Viet Nam has opened its doors to integrate with the international community it is obvious that some foreign words and styles of speech will be adopted by the Vietnamese language.
For example, many Vietnamese people have started using the sentence pattern Tai sao khong? (Why not?), which follows an English speech pattern.
Generally speaking, if we were to maintain a closed door policy we would lag behind the rest of the world. Therefore, the penetration of foreign languages into our native tongue challenges the preservation of pure Vietnamese. However, this is a recent phenomenon that occurred because we opened our doors and began to integrate too quickly. Vietnamese is facing problems that could be considered an illness. So, what we should do now is diagnose the problem and find proper treatments to help the Vietnamese language recover and stay healthy.
Inner Sanctum: What should we do to treat the language's illness and preserve the purity of Vietnamese?
Preserving the purity of a language does not mean keeping it inflexible. In some cases, borrowing from other languages is an indispensable need.
But we should not make widespread and rash use of borrowed words. If we were to do so, Vietnamese would be vulnerable and become too mixed up. As a result, the use of both daily language and technical terms would fall into confusion or even chaos.
I would also like to add that language, in general, helps develop the overall mentality of people in all countries. We could say that Vietnamese is not only the soul but also the style of the Vietnamese people. It is a precious asset that we inherited from our forefathers. Therefore, when we conserve our traditional culture and values, we cannot forget to preserve the inherent beauty of our language. If we ignore the conservation of the language, we will destroy our own valuable asset. Language cannot be preserved by simply putting it in a safe as we can do with tangible things like diamonds. Language develops day by day; hence, the preservation must be concurrent with its development. Every member of society is responsible for this.
Inner Sanctum: What role does mass media play in the preservation effort?
In my opinion, mass media plays an important role in preserving the language. Newspapers and television have had both a positive and negative impact on the development of the language. It's impossible to imagine how backward our society would be without mass media. We would be unable to exchange language and information about the country.
To some extent, the mass media information channels have had negative effects on the development of the language. At times, accidental and even deliberate mistakes were repeated in the mass media many times. Based on the distribution network of the media in question, the information was spread quickly and widely. A filthy word or phrase that appears in the mass media can have strong negative and harmful effects. Firstly, people might believe that the words and phrases are nice and try to use them. Secondly, the mistakes could become part of popular usage. More dangerously, this action could exacerbate the use of impolite language.
I think that newspapers and television should take the lead and call on the entire society to make an effort to preserve the purity of Vietnamese.
Inner Sanctum: What about the role of education regarding this phenomenon?
We can't mention education. It is a fact that most of our students don't like studying Vietnamese language and literature. I've spoken with many literature teachers and seen how sad they are that their subject is not appreciated by students and their parents. Most students study the subjects as little as possible because they are not very interested. High school students tend to focus on the sciences, such as mathematics and chemistry, so that they'll be eligible to pursue popular university subjects and get high paying jobs in the future.
The creation and use of slang among young people is generally done in fun, but when its use becomes habitual and they use slang or acronyms in examinations, especially literature tests, it is unacceptable.
Young people are part of the modern age of rapid development of information technology, so they learn new things very fast. They need proper orientations to accept and learn appropriate things correctly, especially language. That is the responsibility of the education sector.
In my opinion, efforts to preserve the purity of Vietnamese should start today and should focus on the young people.
Inner Sanctum: Should we create a law for Vietnamese language protection?
A law must include specific provisions and sanctions as a foundation for accusing and fining people. However, it is too difficult to define what is right and what is wrong in a language. At this time, we're only able to develop activities to encourage people to protect the mother tongue.
I suggest that we should designate a "Mother Tongue Day". We already celebrated International Mother Tongue Day on February 21, but we have not designated a day especially for Vietnamese. On that day, we could look back at what we have already done to protect our language and consider what more we should do to develop Vietnamese correctly. With a specific day devoted to our own language, we could draw attention and boost awareness of the entire society to preserve and love our mother tongue. — VNS