Even though almost all young participants in the Vietnam Summer Camp 2007 lasting from July 19-30 were born abroad, many of them speak amazingly fluent Vietnamese.  

"Learning the Vietnamese language and studying the Vietnamese culture would not only help us preserve our original cultural identities, but these heritages also constitute a link between us and our native land," Hoang Hong Phuong, a Vietnamese national living in Britain, said while talking with media workers. Only by learning well Vietnamese, we can understand Vietnamese history and culture, Phuong affirmed in Vietnamese.  

Phuong said that she acquired good Vietnamese because she usually communicated in the language with other Vietnamese living in Britain and always use Vietnamese at home. Phuong works as an accountant at a hospital in London, and actively takes part in activities of the community of about 4,000 Vietnamese residents there. 

Born and grown up overseas, Anh Vu, a student of Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal (Canada) is very good at Vietnamese. Vu said that in order to have a large vocabulary of Vietnamese, Vu did not only attend Vietnamese course at the Hong Duc Cultural Centre in Canada, but also learnt the language by watching TV programmes in Vietnamese, reading Vietnamese on-line newspapers and used Vietnamese whenever he has chances. He said to preserve the national identities means to improve his own skills in using the Vietnamese language. 

In addition to speaking Vietnamese at home and attending Vietnamese training courses, many Vietnamese families living overseas have also sent their children to the home country to improve their language skills. Quoc An's parents, whose family is living in Bulgaria, brought their both children to the home country to learn Vietnamese before they began going to school. As a result, An can use his mother tongue in a smart and humorous way.

Almost all those overseas Vietnamese youth who participated in the summer camp this year expressed their hope to improve their Vietnamese language skills as means to get closer to their original cultural identities, traditions and history.  

This is also the wish of around 3.2 million Vietnamese living in more than 94 foreign countries and territories. To this end, many Vietnamese teaching schools have been set up by overseas Vietnamese communities in Bulgaria, Canada, Ukraine and the Czech Republic. Especially, Vietnamese teaching classes in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia have been provided with textbooks compiled by the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training. In Australia and some other countries, Vietnamese has been taught as one of foreign languages.

In the US, where a large number of Vietnamese are living, Vietnamese teaching and learning activities have developed rapidly. According to a recent survey, more than 200 Vietnamese teaching establishments have been set up, concentrating in California, Texas and Washington. These centres open classes for Vietnamese children in summer vocations and weekend. Each centre has an enrolment of between 100-1,000 pupils.

Since August, 1998, the Committee for Overseas Vietnamese Affairs has provided a Vietnamese teaching programme on the committee's website as a helping hand to the overseas Vietnamese communities’ efforts.  

The Committee also offers Vietnam Summer Camp and Vietnamese teaching programme annually to provide Vietnamese living abroad, particularly young overseas Vietnamese, with opportunities to learn and use Vietnamese language.

Nguyen Quang Tinh, acting director of the Information and Cultural Department of the committee, said that the government has also launched many programmes to support the Vietnamese teaching and learning efforts, such as sending teachers to Cambodia, presenting textbooks to poor children and building schools in Cambodia and Laos.

This year, the Vietnamese embassy in Cambodia plans to send disadvantaged Vietnamese students in Cambodia back to Vietnam for learning the language.  

For its part, Vietnam Television broadcasts Vietnamese teaching programmes on channel VTV4 for overseas Vietnamese. (VNA)