Words By Ngân Dang (she/they)
I was perched on my chair, one leg tucked close to my chest (the classic Viet way), pondering an overdue history essay with a bag of my favourite kẹo lạc—peanut candy—at my side. My phone buzzed lightly on the table; the screen flashed to reveal a call from my ‘Bestie for life’—a nickname I spontaneously jotted down as Mum's contact a few years ago. It was 9pm here. And around 4pm back home.
Something that became the norm in our conversations were sudden ebbs of silence as I stuttered between English and Vietnamese phrases. The cogs in my brain were working overtime, trying to retain phrases that were running away from my mind. Even when the words managed to tumble out, they were clunky, messy, all over the place—like a child building blocks with shaky hands.
“You’re starting to forget your Vietnamese!”, Mum exclaimed after correcting my clumsy attempts. Dad chimed in half-jokingly, “Now that you know English better than Vietnamese, are you going to stay in New Zealand forever?”.
I moved here when I was thirteen, been away for five years. Since when did the familiar sounds of my language get lodged in my throat so unwillingly? Why are words rolling off my tongue so unnaturally, no longer second nature?
I’ve always been told that moving abroad was the best option for my future. Attempts to break free from my city and culture defined my teenage years. With such irrational resentment (more so boredom), my naive faith in the Western dream festered. Magical visions of a foreign land embedded with ideas of wealth, liberty, and independence dragged me away from home.
And so I set out on a path my parents paved for me. Alone, I traded fragments of myself to accommodate this new life. The delicate tones in my name got flattened. Replacing Ngân was Ngan, a goose in my language, and Indian flatbread here. I smiled through all the ‘naan bread’ jokes and tolerated the annoyance when the school dean mispronounced my name three times in the same prizegiving. Whenever an off-putting comment about my name slips out, they don’t know I was named after my late grandma. Anglicised, our names are all the same. They won’t notice the tonal indicator—a single downward dash on top of a hat—that differentiates our names, a symbol of our vastly unique lives, yet also the single strand of connection I held with someone I never met.
Between the winding alleys of jam-packed and chaotic Hà Nội, I was surrounded by my mother tongue—from the soothing lullabies that lulled me to sleep to the aunties’ gossiping down the street. Now, I barely use Vietnamese outside of texting my family and friends back home. I learn in English, the media I consume is mostly in English; I even think in this language most of the time. After years of being here, my mother tongue is turning foreign, an afterthought, something rusty and hidden in the murky depths of my brain.
I can write lengthy essays and construct glorious worlds with fancy English words. But I could never use Vietnamese to the capabilities of my peers back home; I probably couldn’t write a half-decent piece without succumbing to the hell of Google Translate, and the dictionary. Younger me would never imagine that my Vietnamese vocabulary bank would always be stuck at the level of a Year 8 student; the inner-perfectionist would’ve berate me for that.
Whenever people ask about my dream job, I tell them I want to become a journalist, to report important matters and amplify silenced voices. What good would I be, though, if I can’t even elaborate my thoughts with the community that raised and shaped me?
I didn’t know how much I’d miss being surrounded by my culture, people, and language until I left Hà Nội. The whirl of surprise still surges through my veins whenever I see Ngân—with the hat—in a text or when someone tries to pronounce it correctly. There’s always an impulse to talk my heart out in Vietnamese when I catch the distant echoes of it while strolling down the streets. Leaving home so young showed me new corners of the world. But more importantly, I realised that I can’t shrug away my Vietnamese heritage—it’s an integral part of my being, neat strands knitted together into colourful weaving. No matter where you are, you’ll crave the soothing familiarity of your mother tongue. Language connects people, communities, cultures— you could never deprive yourself of that connection when all you’ve wanted to taste is the safety of home.
I’m living this topsy-turvy life for me and my parents’ hopes and dreams; I’ve been changed by this journey, too. In Vietnamese, beautiful prose doesn’t come to me as easily; words don’t instinctively roll off my tongue. But I still mutter in Vietnamese under my breath as I do maths. I still shed a tear when I read a random Instagram caption in Vietnamese that seems too relatable.
My upbringing may have pulled apart my connection to my heritage, ripped me by the seams. But even with my awkward Vietnamese and fragmented childhood, I’m wholly and unapologetically Việt. Sitting here in this biting Wellington winter, I can’t wait to be reunited with my homeland, the vibrant culture and sleepless city that will always embrace my whole being.