Vietnamese people often say: “The storm is not as bad as Vietnamese grammar.” With just five words and different punctuation marks, twenty-three different meaningful sentences can be created. The sounds of my native language are often used in natural conversations, using intonation, regional accents, and can be used with non-verbal means such as expressions, gestures, etc., while written language has a specific punctuation system.
For spoken Vietnamese, it is only necessary to use the correct specific sounds that the other person can hear and understand, it does not need to be too complicated, it is the colloquial language style used in daily communication. Spoken sentences often use short sentences, omitting many parts, sometimes sentences only consist of one word. Sometimes, words are repeated or redundant without any rhetorical purpose. The difficulty for foreigners when learning Vietnamese is the diversity of tones and pitches, which can easily confuse and misunderstand listeners.
Meanwhile, for written documents, the writer must first adhere to correct spelling, correct letter format, and adhere to the principles of text presentation. Depending on the target audience or purpose of the text, there are different ways of presenting and writing. An administrative document will be different from a notice board, and also different from a piece of information. Vietnamese also uses the alphabet system. According to statistics, the average length of a word in Vietnamese is four or five characters, which is shorter than in popular languages such as English. Due to the characteristics of Vietnamese being a compound word, remembering words is even easier because the combination is very logical, systematic, and easy to get used to as well as to learn.
I agree that being proud of our mother tongue, or more broadly, our culture, is extremely necessary, especially in the context of globalization. As Vietnamese people, we should preserve and maintain the spoken and written language of the Vietnamese people. However, pride should be based on the right core values and have a sustainable foundation.