Vietnamese language in the United States

following the fall of Saigon. The history of Vietnamese in the United States is fairly short and intimately connected to the presence of Vietnamese people in this country. Prior to World War II, Southeast Asian languages were virtually unknown in the US. At that time, Indochina was a French colony, so research on the Vietnamese language was primarily conducted by French scholars. In the 1950s, schools such as Cornell, Columbia, Yale, and Georgetown, as well as the Foreign Service Institute of the Department of State, brought the language into their curricula. In 1954, the Army Language School began to teach Vietnamese in the military. In 1969, there were about only 3000 Vietnamese people in the entire United States, including wives of American servicemen who served in Vietnam. As the Vietnam War deteriorated, the number of Vietnamese people gradually increased. By the early 1970s, there were 15,000 Vietnamese; this number doubled to 30,000 by 1975. Following Operation New Life, the number of Vietnamese people in the US drastically increased. In 1978, Người Việt, the first Vietnamese-language daily newspaper in the United States, began publication in Orange County, California. The newspaper helped to bring news from the homeland to the refugee community, and helped them prepare for a new life in the United States. In 1980, Vietnamese had 200,000 speakers and was the 14th-most spoken language in the US. From 1980 to 2010, Vietnamese was the fastest-growing language in the United States, having increased sevenfold. By 2010, Vietnamese had surpassed many other languages to become the sixth-most spoken language (behind English, Spanish, Chinese, French, and Tagalog). In the early 21st century, Vietnamese began to show signs of losing its hold on new generations of Vietnamese Americans who are born and raised in the United States and having limited connections to Vietnam. Vietnamese is still maintained among recent immigrants while more than 90% of third-generation Vietnamese Americans only speak English. However, only 20% of second-generation Vietnamese Americans entirely use English, compared to 46.8% in the first generation. This shows that there are efforts to preserve the language among Vietnamese speakers. Additionally, there are efforts among Vietnamese Americans to bring the language to public school curricula so that their children do not forget their heritage language. == Demographics ==

Distribution } Vietnamese speakers are primarily ethnically Vietnamese, so the language is most spoken in places with a high presence of Vietnamese Americans. In 2019, it was estimated that 71.4% of Vietnamese speakers were born in Vietnam, 23.5% in the US or its territories, and the remaining 5% born in another country. In four states (Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Washington), Vietnamese is the third-most spoken language, behind English and Spanish. It has a strong presence in the West Coast, with 40% of speakers living in California, while Washington has the third-highest number of speakers. Vietnamese has a limited presence in larger cities; they have higher concentrations in the suburbs rather than in the inner cities. Fluency The fluency of the language among Vietnamese Americans is divided by generation. The first generation is defined as those born outside the United States (mainly Vietnam), the second generation are those who are born in the United States, while the third generation consist of those born in the United States and having at least one parent born in the United States. In 1980, 95% of Vietnamese Americans belong to the first generation, 3% in the second generation, and 2% in the third generation. By 2006, the first generation decreased to 77% while the second increased to 19%, the third generation still at a modest 4%. According to US Census Bureau estimates, by 2019 the percentage of foreign-born Vietnamese Americans decreased to 60.3% while those who are born in the US increased to 39.7%. Among those 5 and older, 22.3% only used English at home, while the remaining 77.7% used other languages (primarily Vietnamese) — among those 44.0% don't have a good command of English. Research in 1998 by Min Zhou and Carl Bankston showed that Vietnamese is maintained when it is used at home and in the community. From 1980 to 2006, the percentage of Vietnamese Americans who do not use Vietnamese at home (only speaking English) increased modestly (from 9.4% to 11.8%) while the percentage of those who speak English "very well" while still able to speak Vietnamese increased considerably (from 20.6% to 31.6%). This indicates a trend consistent with language assimilation theories — Vietnamese immigrants adopting English while maintaining fluency in their native language. However, there are signs that English is increasingly replacing Vietnamese among young people (under 21). In the first and second generations, about 46.8% and 19.9% respectively no longer use Vietnamese; in the third generation, while currently a small percentage of the total, more than 90% use English exclusively. == Usage ==

While not as well known as Spanish or some other European languages, Vietnamese maintains a presence in some aspects of public life. In the media and creative arts, it is mainly used among the Vietnamese American community. It also has a small presence in commerce and administration. Most DMVs provide Vietnamese-language driving instructions, and some states even allow the test to be partly taken in Vietnamese. Vietnamese is an elective subject in many colleges and universities, and is seen less often in high schools. Early newspapers focused on local news for Vietnamese Americans; later they expanded to serving other readers. Người Việt has an English edition for Vietnamese Americans born in the US. Besides these publications, other publications in many other languages are also in circulation in the Vietnamese American community. Radio Saigon Houston was cited as helping to attract Vietnamese people from California to resettle in Houston when they hear its programming rebroadcast in California. Television stations include Saigon Broadcasting Television Network (SBTN) heardquartered in Garden Grove, the first Vietnamese-language TV station broadcasting 24 hours a day via cable and satellite nationwide since 2002. SBTN attracts a wide variety of audience in its diverse programming, including news, theatrical films, drama, documentaries, variety shows, talk shows, and children's shows. Besides SBTN, there is also VietFace TV owned by Thúy Nga Productions, also broadcasting 24 hours a day in Orange County and nationwide via DirecTV; These and other networks are broadcast over the air on digital subchannels of television stations in large cities, such as KSCZ-LD in San Jose. Outside of California, Viet-Nam Public Television (VPTV) headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia serve the Washington, DC area. Some localities also have Vietnamese language programming on public access television. VTV4, the international broadcasting arm of the Vietnamese state-owned Vietnam Television, was once broadcast via satellite in the US, but was deemed "boring"; its main audience consists of international students or recent immigrants from Vietnam. VTV4 stopped broadcasting via satellite since 2018. During the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 elections, fake news became an issue in the Vietnamese-speaking community, especially among the elderly who are not well-versed in English and do not consume mainstream media. In response to the proliferation of fake news, some younger Vietnamese Americans who are fluent in both English and Vietnamese formed groups with the aim to challenge the fake news and bring accurate news in Vietnamese to the community, including Viet Fact Check, VietCOVID.org, and The Intepreter. Arts and literature After 1975, many artists, writers, and intellectuals from South Vietnam left the reunified country under communist rule and moved to the US. In the beginning, Vietnamese-language literature published in the US revolved around themes of nostalgia for the past, the feeling of guilt for those who stayed, and exile. The early writers criticized American values such as material pursuit as well as social and moral values. With the arrival of Vietnamese boat people since 1977, Vietnamese literature in the US changed themes to wrath and agony; these new writers left Vietnam with a clear ideological purpose: to seek freedom and to tell the world about the "Vietnam in blood and tears". These themes are not only manifested in literature; in music and art the boat people composed works full of misery and anger. Hundreds of magazines and newspapers and books were published in Vietnamese with the aim to alert the world about the ordeal of the boat people. In contrast to the nostalgic works of earlier writers, the works of boat people authors paint a picture of Communist Vietnam as hell on earth full of human misery and agony. In the beginning, Vietnamese Americans watch dubbed Hong Kong and Taiwanese films via VHS for their entertainment needs. Starting from the 1980s and 1990s, the variety show Paris by Night by Thúy Nga Productions became a connecting bridge between the various Vietnamese communities around the world. With the changing tastes of the audience as they assimilate into American society, later programs shifted themes away from politics and towards contemporary American culture. Genres of Vietnamese music performed in the US include folk music, cải lương, đờn ca tài tử, pop, etc. Because most Vietnamese people in the United States came from the South, these genres originated from southern Vietnam. Cải lương composers continue to create new works, while mobile theatrical troupes perform nationwide. In larger Vietnamese communities, pop music predominates. Additionally, many Vietnamese American authors achieved success in the mainstream American literary scene, primarily with English-language works describing the experience of Vietnamese people in the United States. They include Viet Thanh Nguyen who received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the poet Ocean Vuong who received the MacArthur Fellowship, journalist Andrew Lam, writer Le Ly Hayslip, and cartoonist Trung Le Nguyen. Although their works were written in English, the authors include in them some Vietnamese vocabulary and cite the influence of their native language in their diction and syntax. Commerce branch with a welcome greeting in Vietnamese In Little Saigon, Orange County, California, Vietnamese is ubiquitous: it can be found in signage in front of offices, stores, cemeteries, on billboards advertising companies such as Toyota and McDonald's, and even on bus advertising. Many stores and offices in the area serve a primarily Vietnamese clientele, so they use Vietnamese. In a survey among the Vietnamese American community in the Greater Los Angeles area, more than 50% of first-generation immigrants indicate that they use Vietnamese in their place of work, while the proportions for the 1.5 and 2nd generation are 25–30% and 50%, respectively. Vietnamese people have a large presence in the nail salon industry in the US. In 1987, there were 3,900 Vietnamese nail technicians; this increased to 39,600 in 2002. Vietnamese people account for about 40% of those in this profession nationwide. In California, they account for about 59–80% of workers, and applicants can take tests in Vietnamese to receive their license. In cities with a large presence of Vietnamese people, there are also classes teaching this profession to newly arrived immigrants. In a survey in 2007 among Vietnamese-owned nail salons, 70% of technicians prefer to read publications in Vietnamese. The existence of a large support network in the Vietnamese language for nail technicians in turns attract even more Vietnamese people into this profession. At many locales in the US, Vietnamese American small business owners form Vietnamese American Chambers of Commerce to support each other and provide training for companies seeking to conduct business in Vietnam. In San Jose, the Silicon Valley Small Business Development Center opened an office to serve local Vietnamese-speaking small business owners with resources in Vietnamese to help them navigate bureaucracy, new technologies and market expansion. Government and politics As one of the largest immigrant languages, Vietnamese is used in government, especially in areas related to immigration. In the federal government, since 2000 Vietnamese has been one of six languages used in forms people can fill in for the census. The Voting Rights Act of 1965, amended in 2006, requires that state and local governments provide voting material to assist voters who speak minority languages if they are more than 5% of the voting population in a voting district, or if there are more than 10,000 citizens of voting age who do not have the English skills necessary to participate in the voting process. Accordingly, as of 2021 there are 12 voting areas nationwide where Vietnamese-language voting materials must be made available (including six counties in California, a town in Massachusetts, three counties in Texas, a county in Virginia and a county in Washington). Additionally, many federal agencies also provide materials in Vietnamese to serve people who are not proficient in English, such as the Internal Revenue Service. At the state level, most departments of motor vehicles provide informational literature in Vietnamese and some offer part of the driving test in Vietnamese. At the local level, many areas with a large presence of Vietnamese people have programs providing assistance in Vietnamese. In San Jose, the Vietnamese American Service Center (VASC) was inaugurated in 2022 aiming to provide health and social services to more than 220,000 Vietnamese people in Santa Clara County. Some local agencies do not have Vietnamese language translations available but have personnel to translate when needed, such as via phone. Politicians in California have sparred over campaign advertising airtime on Vietnamese-language radio and television programs. == Education ==

Researchers found a correlation between Vietnamese language ability and school performance among Vietnamese American students. A 1995 survey among Vietnamese high school students in New Orleans showed students with higher Vietnamese fluency had better academic achievements even though their schooling was primarily in English. According to Bankston and Zhou, the students' Vietnamese language ability is connected to their ethnic self-identification, which was connected to adults in the social group, which in turn provide a support network for the students, promoting academic achievement. These results showed that parents enrolling their children in Vietnamese language schools will not only improve their Vietnamese language ability, but also their academic achievements. In 1998, there were about 8,000 students enrolled in 55 community language schools throughout Southern California. The Union of Overseas Vietnamese Language Schools (TAVIET), formerly the Union of Vietnamese Language Centers of Southern California, counts among its members about 100 Vietnamese language schools in Southern California. In addition, the National Language Center for Asian Languages (NRCAL) at California State University, Fullerton also develops teaching materials based on Vietnamese-American experiences, are more culturally sensitive and in accordance with community needs. Mainstream schools parading in 2023. From 1998 to 2016, bilingual education in California encountered difficulties due to a ban passed by voters. It wasn't until 2016, after voters repealed the ban, that bilingual education was allowed to flourish. In some school districts with a large Vietnamese American presence, many schools established bilingual classes in English and Vietnamese, principally at the primary level. In the 2016–2017 school year, 4 school districts nationwide had bilingual Vietnamese-English programs: Westminster School District in California, Austin Independent School District in Texas, Portland School District in Oregon, and Highline Public Schools in King County, Washington. In Austin, officials were considering more classes for middle and high school students. Students enrolled in these programs are primarily ethnically Vietnamese, but there are those from other ethnicities as well. In Westminster, the district coordinated with CSU Fullerton to develop the curriculum. and Orange County in California. Role of the Vietnamese government In a 2004 interview with VnExpress, Tôn Nữ Thị Ninh, then the deputy chairwoman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the National Assembly, answered a question about "individuals and organizations teaching Vietnamese to overseas Vietnamese people, without waiting for a project from the State": For many years, the Vietnamese government had plans to send language teachers to diasporic communities; in 2004, the Politburo launched a project to spend US$500,000 to send language teachers from Vietnam to work overseas "where it is possible". This project was aimed at researching the status of language teaching in overseas Vietnamese communities, building syllabi, publishing study materials and organizing classes in community and cultural centers. However, there were reportedly some difficulties in spending money, due to the prospect that any Vietnamese language school in a refugee community in the West funded by the Communist Vietnamese government will be immediately boycotted and picketed. Officials have approached Vietnamese academics overseas to offer financial support to develop syllabi and organize classes. These classes were planned to provide "neutral" language learning materials to "update" the "old-fashioned" Vietnamese spoken overseas, provide some professionalism to the classroom and create a forum free of politics, in contrast to the community language classes. However, with the difficulties associated with bringing government-supported teaching materials into diasporic communities, these plans were only possible via electronic means (through the Internet and satellite TV). Since 2005, the Vietnamese government began to compile the curriculum for teaching Vietnamese to overseas Vietnamese people. In 2016, the Ministry of Education and Training published two books, Tiếng Việt vui and Quê Việt for this purpose. The use of Vietnamese government-produced teaching material in the classroom was rejected by most of the Vietnamese community in the United States, particularly the refugees who fled Vietnam to escape communist rule. Those who are opposed contend that Vietnamese government-produced materials are not appropriate for Vietnamese American students, and do not fulfill the needs of parents in teaching their children why they left their country of origin. In 2015, the mayor of Westminster Tri Ta voiced concerns about a textbook widely used in public schools in the United States, in which terms that are only used inside Vietnam (such as "đăng ký hộ khẩu" - family registration and "đăng ký kết hôn" - marriage registration) are taught to students, and the communist Vietnamese flag is seen in a picture of a stamp. This was seen as proof that "Communist materials are used to teach Vietnamese". == Computer support ==

Vietnamese speakers in the United States were instrumental in adding support for the language in computer systems. In the early years of the Internet, Vietnamese users used the VIQR convention in online forums to express Vietnamese with the ASCII character set using standard keyboards used in the United States (which did not have support for tonal marks). In 1989, the Viet-Std Group was formed to coordinate with international standardization organizations to standardize the various encodings for Vietnamese. Viet-Std proposed the VISCII encoding standard to support Vietnamese characters with tonal marks. Another non-profit, TriChlor Software, developed word processing software that can support Vietnamese on computers. At the same time, other organizations such as VNI, VNLabs, and the Vietnamese Professionals Society also proposed standards and produced software to support Vietnamese. In 1999, , and John Balaban formed the Vietnamese Nom Preservation Foundation aiming to preserve the chữ Nôm script. The Foundation helped to digitize and make available online many works written in the script. The foundation was dissolved in 2018 after declaring that its initial goals had been achieved. == Characteristics ==

; here many English terms are used instead of Vietnamese ("cashiers" instead of "thu ngân" and "text" instead of "nhắn tin") After several decades with no frequent contact with the country of origin, the Vietnamese language outside of Vietnam, especially in the United States, has diverged. Observers have noted some differences between the varieties and observed that the language outside of Vietnam showed signs of influence from English, and some variations in syntax and vocabulary when compared to the language as spoken inside Vietnam. Influences from English Many Vietnamese speakers in the US are also fluent in English. In daily speech, many people code switch, mixing English vocabulary in Vietnamese phrases. The author also cited several syntactical formations that showed influence from English, such as excessive usage of the passive voice construction "bị/được bởi/do/nhờ" that is rarely used in Vietnam because their usage is still a matter of debate. For heritage language users, their usage of Vietnamese may show characteristic influences from English, such as using generic terms translated from English instead of more expressive terms available in Vietnamese (carry - mang, vác, khiêng, bồng bế, xách, bưng; wear - mặc, mang, đeo, đội), overusing the generic classifier cái or omitting classifiers altogether, not using reduplication, or using simple pronouns, such as con. While Vietnamese in the US also has three distinct dialects (Northern, Central and Southern) like in Vietnam, the Northern dialect is phonetically influenced by the Southern and Central dialects due to migration of Northerners to the South between 1954 and 1975. The Northern Vietnamese dialect spoken in the US does not merge the initial consonants l and n and does not pronounce the consonants r, d, and gi like the dialect in Vietnam. The Southern (Saigon) dialect remains the standard and is overwhelmingly used in the Vietnamese American community, whereas in Vietnam the Northern (Hanoi) dialect is promoted by the government as the standard. In 2018, the Vietnamese History and Culture Research Institute organized a convention to standardize the orthography of the Vietnamese language spoken in the US, attracting many participants. During this convention, participants voted on and agreed to maintain the current alphabet of 23 letters (without adding "f" or "j"), place the tonal mark on the main vowel (in accordance with phonetic principles), continue to use both "i" and "y" as vowels, and to use Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary in "a proper and judicious manner". == Challenges ==

Usage of Vietnamese in the public sphere has at times generated controversy. In 2008, two co-valedictorians used a Vietnamese phrase to thank their families during their graduation speech at Ellender High School in Houma, Louisiana. After the incident, the Terrebonne Parish School Board proposed rules to require that graduation speeches use only English. Faced with opposition from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL), as well as Vietnamese-American parents in Louisiana and Texas, the school board rescinded the proposal. Many Vietnamese Americans are leery of some Vietnamese words that appeared after 1975 and reject them as "communist" or as being characteristic of the communist regime. In 2010, after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, many Vietnamese American fishermen in Louisiana were initially reluctant to file for compensation from BP because the company employed translators from Vietnam who used allegedly "communist terminology". In 2018, a billboard advertising flights to Vietnam operated by ANA sparked outrage in the Vietnamese American community in San Jose because it referred to the largest city in Vietnam as "Ho Chi Minh City" in English instead of "Saigon" as in the Vietnamese text; this ad was quickly removed. In addition, many translations made by government agencies caused confusion when translating too literally, as in documentation for Obamacare, when "insurance marketplace" was translated literally as a physical marketplace. In many Vietnamese classes at the university level, instructors who were trained in Vietnam after 1975 often use the Northern (Hanoi) dialect to teach, as this was mandated by the Hanoi government. == References ==