Language Learning Stories
interview with Lingo Dada

1. How did you first get interested in learning Vietnamese?

My first language learning started in high school.  I did 6 months of Indonesian, and 3 and a half years of French.  I really enjoyed learning French.

I now work in an area of Melbourne that has a large Vietnamese population.  We all go out for Vietnamese lunches and I would hear the guys sitting outside the cafe, playing games and drinking their coffee.   I would listen to them and try to pick any words out, but being a tonal language, initially, I couldn’t pick out any words.  I decided I wanted to be able to talk to people around the streets, and especially when ordering my coffee and/or banh mi, I’d like to be able to do it in Vietnamese.

My first trip to Vietnam was for our honeymoon.  I think this trip really sparked my interest to learn more about the language.

 

2. You will be heading off with Lingo Mama and Lingo Bubba in November to Vietnam on a language learning trip – what do you hope to achieve language wise?

I can’t wait for the trip to Vietnam.  I have done two courses so far.  I did a short course through CAE in the city initially and that got me interested.  I then decided to do a longer focused course to attempt to increase my skills.

This will be my first Vietnamese course in Vietnam.  I think I’d really like to learn some more conversational type phrases.  How to talk to people a the cafe, how to order food/items at the market.  At the moment, my Vietnamese is very basic.  I can say hello, introduce myself, and ask their name.  I would love to be able to ask a few more questions to learn about the people in the community, and hopefully, understand their answers to my questions.

3. What motivates you to learn Vietnamese?

My love of Vietnam as a country, and having Lingo Mama that can speak such good Vietnamese motivates me to learn more.  I hate having to ask Lingo Mama all the time what people are saying when we travel around Vietnam.  I’d love to be able to speak to the locals like she can.  I also think it is a great tool for me to have at work, being in such a high Vietnamese population.  It would definitely help me at work being able to speak Vietnamese.

4. In your 20s and travelling through Europe – you made a pact to yourself to learn some of the languages of each country you visited. Tell us about that!

My first trip overseas was when I was 22.  I went to Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia.  I had been told it was polite to learn some very basic words when going to another country.  I learnt how to say hello and thank you (and “too expensive” for mainly Asian countries where bargaining is accepted).  In my mid 20’s I moved to London to live for 2 years and travelled all over Europe.  I kept the same theory of learning phrases in the language of each country I went to.  I would generally learn phrases such as greetings, please, thank you, how to order a beer, how to say my name is, and count from 1 -10.  I used the Lonely Planet a lot for the basic phrases and would learn the phrases on the train travelling from one country to another.

For numbers, I would practice saying the numbers whilst doing sudoku.  I went to and learnt these basics for Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Poland, Croatia, Switzerland, Slovakia, Hungary, Czech Republic and Turkey. I think it did make a difference showing the people that you took the time to learn something about their country and their language.

I hope Lingo Bubba has an interest in learning languages and can find a language that she loves and wants to learn.  Having Lingo Mama being so linguistic and reading and singing to her in Chinese and Vietnamese, I have a feeling she may choose one of these to learn, but I’m sure she will take up whatever she loves best.