Being born into a family that was fluent in another language rather than English, Vietnamese was and is still the spoken language at home. Although in many cases this is an advantage, it also has its many disadvantages as well. Walking in the hallways of school full of English-speaking people and speaking my own language, I was an easy target for the bully kids who think it is cool to make fun of something that does not sound "English." When I mentioned the word: "Pho," as in the "noodle soup" of the Vietnamese people, people assume that I just said a cuss word. When I say: "Tai Sao" for "why", people give me weird stares as if I had just grown another head. A majority of the time, when I speak Vietnamese in public, I would hear kids screaming some obscene things at me, most of them assuming that the language only consists of the words: "Ching and Chong," which in the Vietnamese dictionary, does NOT even exist. It is a sad to know that simple everyday words in another language that kids are not familiar with are often criticized by people who do not understand the complex and beautiful language, people who are ignorant to the truth, and people who have no care for the country and its amazing diversity.
Disheartening as it may sound, the simple act of trying to preserve one's language today is a lot harder than it seems because there are still people in the world who are not "open" to new things and the to the fact that there is more than one language that exists in our world.
