Jacob H's Senior Project Blog

Project Title: Bridging Worlds: A Journey into Vietnamese Language and Culture
BASIS Advisor: Garion Johnson
Internship Location: Oracle
Onsite Mentor: Hoa Arnold



Project Abstract

The modern world, while in the process of homogenization as more places industrialize and connect through the internet, is still home to thousands of different cultures and languages. Even living in a diverse place like the United States, it is easy to forget how other minds live in vastly complicated and completely different environments from our own. In four months I will be traveling almost 9,000 miles across the Pacific to Vietnam. There, I will be immersed in an entirely new language, exploring cities, both affluent and impoverished, and rural parts of the country. Leading up to my trip, I plan to work every day to learn phonetic elements unused by English speakers, internalize the complex tonal system of Vietnamese, and educate myself about food, social relations, and distinct traditions in Vietnamese culture. In doing so, I will deepen my relationships with Vietnamese speakers with whom, without learning their language, I may never have been able to connect. This project will highlight the importance of language in cross-cultural communication and the ability to make connections with people from other places. By the end of my journey, I hope to have a strong grasp on pronunciation of the language, to comprehend written Vietnamese, and to understand others’ speech, culminating in self-sufficiency in Vietnam.

    My Posts:

  • Week 6: A Day in My Life Learning Vietnamese

         If I wanted to really pick up Vietnamese in a year, this is how I would do it: I would live in Vietnam for a year with a friend and their family, live and breathe Vietnamese language and culture, and practice basically every waking hour out of a necessity in order to survive.... Read More

  • Week 5: The Best (and Worst) Language Learning Resources I’ve Tried

    Learning a new language is one of the most desirable things one can achieve. It requires a total reconsideration of how to formulate ideas, different sounds made with the mouth, and much memorization. Thus, truly mastering a language requires multiple thousands of hours of hard work and dedication. If only there were a shorter way…... Read More

  • Week 4: Essential Vietnamese Phrases

         When just starting to learn a language, common phrases are crucial to boosting your perceived proficiency. You do not yet know how to really string verbs, nouns, and adjectives together, but you do have some phrases memorized for useful occasions. Native speakers can probably tell that your grasp of the language is tentative,... Read More

  • Week 3: Mastering Tones, My Experience with Vietnamese Pronunciation

         Being an English speaker is a blessing to many. It is the most in-demand language in the world. Using English is standard in most areas of work and research. Pilots must know basic English to communicate with Air Traffic Control. Mathematicians, physicists, and anyone who needs to publish findings has a far better... Read More

  • Week 2: First Impressions and The Biggest Differences Between English and Vietnamese

         Welcome back, readers, to my trials in learning a completely foreign language, Vietnamese. This week I learned a lot of things, including the fact that even the simplest things in English are some of the hardest things in other languages. I do not even know how to say ‘I’ or ‘you’ yet. Let... Read More

  • Week 1: Why I Chose to Learn Vietnamese

         If you could choose to speak any language, what would it be? To me, the answer was not immediately obvious until I thought about some of the connections in my life. I realized there was a huge language barrier between me and my friends’ families. For one in particular, it is hard to... Read More