As a bilingual student, being fluent in Vietnamese and English, I speak both languages in different styles and in various environments and situations. Vietnamese is majority spoken at home with family and friends, and sometimes in predominantly Vietnamese environments such as restaurants and markets. My English can vary depending on its environments as well such as the classroom, the workspace, with friends. There are similarities between my private and public languages within English and Vietnamese. All with the inclusions of speaking in differing styles and language barriers, speaking more than one language means speaking in various ways depending on the presented environment.
Vietnamese has its styles of being spoken like English. Talking to my mother or my father, there’s less specification in our sentences because it is understandable between family members. For example, the sentences, “Nó ở đâu? Tôi không biết nó ở đâu” which translates into, “Where is it? I do not know where it is” can be said in a different order because, in Vietnamese ears, it’s understandable whereas, in English, the sentences must be said in a specific order for American ears to understand.
My father’s English was never and won’t be perfect. Whenever we go out, I’ve seen how different his English is from mine. With a mixture of a thick accent and pronunciation, it would be difficult to understand, but his point gets across. Even when he works from home, my father uses “computer language” over the phone with his co-workers and due to his accent, he must enunciate specific words, so nothing gets lost in translation. An example can be when he’s giving an access code that consists of letters and numbers. For the letters, he would use military language: A as in alpha, B as in Bravo, C as in Charlie, etc. Since he was born and raised in Vietnam before coming to America, Vietnamese was his first language and had a below-basic u...