Vietnamese language use in NYC

Today I met Professor James Lap who has been teaching Vietnamese in Columbia University for about 12 years. His major is not linguistics (he studied Computing Engineering in Columbia Uni); however, he analyzed Vietnamese as a linguist.

In his class, the ratio of between Vietnamese American and other people from other nationalities is 50/50. He told me a perspective that more and more people had been coming to Vietnam to invest in business and to know about Vietnamese culture. Therefore, the responsibility of a Vietnamese language teacher is not to teach the language but also to teach the culture and history of Vietnam, so that his students could adapt to Vietnamese lifestyles and become Vietnamse's friends.

In terms of Vietnamese language learning, the most struggling problem is about tone. Vietnamese has 6 tone markers that create different words which has the same letter combination. For example:
ma': mother
ma. : young paddy
ma~ : horse
ma? : grave
ma : ghost

To deal with such a difficulty, Professor James Lap put words on the melody frames. And how surprisingly, students, especially who love music, can speak Vietnamese well.

(cont.)