Bạn khoè không?

How are you? (Bạn khoè không? Come stai?)

Me and Danh had our second meeting on Saturday 26.09. We had to skip last week’s session because I was travelling to my home city during the day and Danh was busy in the evening. We had an intense second session though!

We started learning some grammar. I explained to Danh the genders in italian and how articles work. Grammar is quite difficult to explain to someone with no knowledge of the language, this is the part were both of us have to put most of the effort. For me, teaching these things is challenging because they come naturally to me, but I have to find the right way to explain how the rules work and to make my explanation as easy as possible for Danh to understand. Also, learning is always the hardest part at the beginning, especially concerning grammar and rules of the language.

The difference in italian and Vietnamese is huge, so we cannot use the same method for teaching/learning. I have to prepare material before hand and go over some rules myself, to be able to be clear e.g. on how to use the different articles.

Danh taught me about the different ways of approaching strangers, based on age and the level of intimacy with the person. It’s very interesting, because there are so many different words for pronouns! I enjoyed this part quite a lot, because I know some Japanese and there are similarities in the culture, especially the use of different pronouns for people of specific ages and/or to show more/less respect. I understood and assimilated this quite easily, mostly because of my previous knowledge in other language with similar use of pronouns.

For example:

  • pronoun for younger sister/brother: em
  • pronoun for older sister: chị
  • pronoun for older brother: anh

Some expressions:

  • How are you? : Bạn khoè không?
  • Nice to meet you? : Rât vui được gặp bạn

I am getting more and more excited to learn Vietnamese and I think that Danh and I are doing a good job in the teaching part. It’s the first time I teach someone italian and I think it’s the same for Danh so this has been quite the challenge! But the more challenging it is, the more excited I get to master a new language/skill.

I’ll add a picture of my notes, we again had a Zoom meeting seen as we cannot physically meet.

-Sara

 

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